Can I use cp or cat to make an Bootable Manjaro USB Stick?

I found that USB flash installation medium - ArchWiki (archlinux.org)

Arch recommends using commands like cat, cp, and pv

See [1] and [2] for comparison and perspective on the use of those tools and why dd may be the least adapted one.

Burn an ISO File - Manjaro still uses dd, and I want to know if cp or cat is possible and recommended.

I have tried cp and it tooks about 6 minutes to make an bootable Live-USB

You are free to use what-ever method works for you.

Different roads - some may be more difficult or longer - sometimes lead to the same place - and tools readily available is as good as any.

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I think, note: think, not know, the biggest difference is that with dd it will clone the filesystem as well, making the flashdrive the same ISO 9660, read-only filesystem, thus read-only, while cp will read of the ISO’s filesystem and copy to whatever’s the destination filesystem, ex. ext4.

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I am using Ventoy to boot several distros from one stick:
Clonezilla, Gparted, Manjaro KDE and XFCE, Systemrescuecd and ubcd.

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All of these methods work equally well - they write the data to the device.
dd has the most complex syntax - and it was “recommended” on the Arch wiki until not too long ago.
… just kind of a habit - recommend was what has always been used and has worked well

cp and cat and all the other methods do just the same

dd is more versatile - but for this application (writing one complete file to some medium) this versatility is not needed nor is it used

Use what you like - I use cat instead of dd because of the simpler syntax and shorter command.

But then again - I do use ventoy to boot .iso files
and only need the cp command anyway with this :wink:

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