Package name : ventoy Version : 1.0.99 Upstream Author : The Ventoy Authors<admin@ventoy.net> URL :https://www.ventoy.net License : GNU GPL-V3+ Programming Lang: C, C++, Shell Description : Create bootable USB drives for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files With Ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the image files to the USB drive and boot it. You can copy many image files at a time and Ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them. . You can also browse ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files in local disk and boot them. . x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way. . Both MBR and GPT partition style are supported in the same way.
Hi Manuel! I see you did a request for sponsorship that required some work, where you said you'd be working on a new upload... Do you need assistance? Do you still want to work on this package? Thanks for your work on Debian! a.
Hi Antoine, Ventoy is not ready for Debian, not even in the distant future... the program is not packageable. Furthermore, the Ventoy authors are hiding a lot of things, and many processes raise suspicions. I cannot even consider it for the non-free repository. I think I am ready to turn this Ventoy ITP into an RFP. Regards,
Also, I'd say that, if an effort to package software for Debian results in the project finding said software is simply not compatible with our policies and should not be packaged, the ITP should not be turned into an RFP... ... it should be closed. Plenty of software doesn't belong in Debian, and shady, weird, non-free stuff certainly classifies as this and it's perfectly fine to close this issue with such a reasoning! a.
Oooh... that's sad to hear! It sounded like such a promising project! I'd love to understand better which issues you have found. It's always good to document those publicly for the community, especially if the authors seem to be hostile. I have at least one friend using Ventoy and he has not suspected anything fishy by just looking at the website, which *does* make claims about being "open source"... Is this upstream issue the best one to read more about this? It seems to match what you're saying here... https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/3224 a.
EOn 2026-01-29 10:06:32, Antoine Beaupré wrote: Besides, there are (free-er?) alternatives to ventoy. Here's an overview: - Arch Linux has instructions on how to setup a key by hand in https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Multiboot_USB_drive It also lists a few alternatives (including ventoy, which seems packaged in Arch) - glim is probably the simplest and free-est I could find: https://github.com/thias/glim It's essentially a collection of preconfigured grub scripts that will load predefined ISO images from disk. Minimal bash script, easy to audit, could probably be packaged as is. - MultiOS-USB is also packaged in Arch, and seems similar to ventoy in design, if not a little simpler: https://github.com/Mexit/MultiOS-USB It seems to share ventoy's problems of shipping binaries in its git repository, so I suspect it will have similar copyright problems. - liveusb-builder seems to require a build for each iso, similar to glim but probably more complicated to audit, because there's a *lot* of files in there: https://github.com/mytbk/liveusb-builder - the latter links to a bunch more similar "multiboot" implementations which don't significantly improve the pool here I'd be curious if people have other options or thoughts, perhaps we could pick another option and ship it in Debian? :) a.