# Ventoy

12 Hacker News commenters recommended Ventoy and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 4 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Lets you put many bootable ISO files on one USB drive and boot whichever you pick, while keeping the drive usable for storage. Critics say it alters kernel boot flags and its binaries are not reproducible.

## Why people recommend it

- Many ISO files on one drive (3 comments): "you can continue to use the same USB drive for storage, in addition to have the ability to boot from any number of .iso files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48860029)) "Using ventoy and having multiple rescue/install images on one flash drive is super nice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45891598)) "throwing Ventoy on a USB stick with a bunch of linux isos copied over to it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461553))
- Easy way to try distros (2 comments): "using something like Ventoy to make it easy to try out different desktop environments" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46501054)) "throwing Ventoy on a USB stick with a bunch of linux isos copied over to it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461553))

## What people warn about

- Hijacks kernel boot process (3 comments): "It literally adds an rdinit to the kernel boot line that hijacks the boot process and messes with it in a shell script." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47434289)) "It should not be hijacking the boot process, there's absolutely no good reason for it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441405)) "It silently messes with the kernel boot flags which breaks the boot process" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47415332))
- Security trust concerns (2 comments): "there were some pretty deep shenanigans in ventoy not too long ago" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47419567)) "You really shouldn't trust ventoy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47415629))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Rufus](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rufus.md): 30 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Ventoy", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ventoy/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).