Post by @pedersen@c.im

2026-08-23 04:38 UTC

I got to try out something new tonight. After building my new PC, and switching to it as my daily driver, the old one is looking for a purpose. I'm going to turn it into a server. That means getting another USB stick ready with another downloaded ISO. And then I remembered https://www.ventoy.net/ is a thing I've heard about recently. If you don't know of it, it's a bootable USB stick that lets you store a bunch of ISO images, and then choose which one to boot. I had a 64g USB drive laying around, so I put the Ubuntu server and desktop ISO images on it, and was able to successfully boot each one on the old PC. I'm not reformating yet. Got some other stuff to clean up first. But this works. And I can use it elsewhere. Definitely keeping this in my toolbox. #Ventoy #Linux #homelab #ubuntu

Replies (2)

@david@social.gamefan.net 2026-08-23 04:47

@pedersen@c.im that's awesome have fun. I was lucky enough to buy a Hetzner dedicated at auction for $50/month with an i9-9900k and 128 gigs of ram and I didn't know what to do with it for a long time but now I have a huge home lab on it. Admittedly I'm using AI in a CLI environment to enhance it but it's fun and I only use it for personal use I would never "vibe code" anything serious haha

Open ##5387981
@RockyC@fosstodon.org 2026-08-23 12:20

@pedersen@c.im If you can get yourself a small external SSD, your installs will go MUCH faster. Flash drives are SLOW. I have a 1TB external SSD with 2 partitions: 1 for Ventoy and 1 for backups. I put my OS ISOs into the Ventoy partition, along with the Rescuezilla ISO. This way I can quickly back up any computer to the same SSD I'm installing Linux from. Makes distro-hopping and backups a breeze. #linux #ventoy #homelab #rescuezilla

Open ##5387987