Rowan Thorpe

Thanks, that’s good to know, but for raw-writing a bootable image to a device do you (or anyone reading) know if there are also straightforward powershell commands for mapping devices at the block level? (as opposed to mounting at filesystem level)

The article at the end mentions they suggest dd as alternative for MacOS (due to Unix user space). It seems the balena -> rufus decision is about the easiest-onramp Mac+Win-portable option, for those uncomfortable dropping to low-level device-writing CLI tools in their current system.

Side-note: Last time I was on a friend’s Windows I installed dd simply enough both as mingw-w64 (native compiled) and under Cygwin. So for Windows users who are comfortable using dd it only requires a minor step. When I once used WSL devices were accessible too, but that was WSL1 (containerized), whereas WSL2 (virtualized) probably makes device-mapping complex(?) enough to not be worth it there.

…which are all layers on Debian.

I remember having a bit of fun playing things like Stunt Car Racer on MS-DOS back in the early 90s for a few days. Yeah, that’s about it. That’s the best I can do even when I’m trying to be charitable. As soon as I owned my first computer (late 90s) I bought a Linux magazine, installed a distro from a cover CD-ROM, and never looked back.

…and you just gzipped it.

So where does the PFJ fit in this timeline? :-D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4

This is an awesome TIL. I’m tempted to take a stab at introducing “thou” into my daily verbiage. I am wholly aware I’d sound like a pretentious prat, but still… :-)

My youth was at least partly misspent hacking z80 assembler on an Amstrad CPC664. Not as many regrets as one might assume. I miss when (8-bit) assembler was simple enough to hand-code without playing “surf the reference manual”.