UNetbootin ("Universal Netboot Installer") is a cross-platform utility that can create live USB systems and can load a variety of system utilities or install various

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s and other

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s without a CD.

Modes

USB install

This installation mode creates bootable

USB flash drive A flash drive (also thumb drive, memory stick, and pen drive/pendrive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and u ...

s and bootable USB

Hard Disk Drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

s; it is a

Live USB A live USB is a portable USB-attached external data storage device containing a full operating system that can be booted from. The term is reminiscent of USB flash drives but may encompass an external hard disk drive or solid-state drive, thou ...

creator. * Cross-platform (available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) * Non-destructive install (does not format the device) using Syslinux. * Supports mainstream Linux distributions, such as

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

, Fedora,

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable r ...

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream (softw ...

, Gentoo,

Linux Mint Linux Mint is a community-developed Linux distribution. It is based on Ubuntu and designed for x86-64 based computers; another variant is based on Debian which is named Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and has both 64-bit and IA-32 support. T ...

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an Open-source software, open source, rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant ...

Mandriva Mandriva S.A. was a Public company, public software company specializing in Linux and open-source software. Its corporate headquarters was in Paris, and it had development centers in Metz, France and Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. was the deve ...

MEPIS MEPIS was a set of Linux distributions, distributed as Live CDs or DVDs that could be installed onto a hard disk drive. MEPIS was started by Warren Woodford and MEPIS LLC. The most popular MEPIS distribution was SimplyMEPIS, which was based pri ...

Slackware Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System (SLS), Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distr ...

as well as

FreeDOS FreeDOS (formerly PD-DOS) is a free software operating system for IBM PC compatible computers. It intends to provide a complete MS-DOS-compatible environment for running Legacy system, legacy software and supporting embedded systems. FreeDOS ca ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

and

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

. * Can load a variety of system utilities, such as Ophcrack, BackTrack. * Other operating systems can be loaded via pre-downloaded

ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. IS ...

or floppy/hard drive

disk image A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's content typically stored in a file on another storage device. Traditionally, a disk image was relatively large because it was a bit-by-bit copy of every storage location of a device (i.e. every ...

files. * Automatically detects all removable devices. * Supports LiveUSB persistence (preserving files across reboots; this feature is for Ubuntu only) Multiple installs on the same device are not supported.

Hard drive install

This installation mode performs a network installation or "frugal install" without a CD, similar to that performed by the Win32-Loader. UNetbootin's distinguishing features are its support for a great variety of Linux distributions, its portability, its ability to load custom

(including

) files, and its support for both Windows and Linux. Unlike Wubi, and similar to the Win32-Loader, when installing to hard disk, UNetbootin installs to a partition, not a

, thus creating a dual-boot setup between Linux and Windows.

Reception

A review in ''Full Circle'' in February 2021 stated, "despite the rather dated-looking interface, UNetbootin works perfectly, allowing the writing of almost any Linux or BSD distribution to a USB stick for testing or installation. It is a great example of the

Unix philosophy The Unix philosophy, originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to Minimalism (computing), minimalist, Modularity (programming), modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading devel ...

: an application that does one thing and does it well."

References

External links