.iso for MANJARO-KDE allowing persistence?

Hello,
I’m planning a new laptop and want to give a try to MANJARO-KDE. A dealer allows me some tests with different machines, so I’d like to use an USB-Stick with VENTOY (no URL allowed), which allows for persistence.
Is there any downloadable image allowing this?
Thank you, Michael

There is no Manjaro ISO supporting persistence.

When you have prepared your usb using ventoy - simply resize the resulting partition - create a new partition and format to the new partition to ext4.

Ventoy don’t care as long as your ISO is on the first partition - ventoy uses exfat - but you can reformat the partition to ext4 - no problem.

Or you could use this project https://mbusb.aguslr.com/ to create an ISO with persistence and USB storage.

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Thank you,
actually I used VENTOY and have an USB-Stick with MANJARO (non persitent), KDE-NEON (persistent) . From your message I understood, that there is no chance to get MANJARO persistent with VENTOY?
On the other hand, your option

provides a persistent .iso? I could not find an instruction on their webpage.
Thank you, Michael

I have been playing with the possibility of changing the size of the partition ventoy creates - no success so far.

EDIT: Use gparted and remove the one big partition - then create two partitions in the released space - save and format to ext4 or exfat.

Copy the ISO(s) to the first partition and boot.

But the other project is different and very easy to use.

The essential part of the topic is this (change the last argument to change size of the storage partition)

Say you got a 16G stick - split it 50/50 which will leave you with 8G for ISO and 8G for storage

replace /dev/sdy with your device

$ git clone https://github.com/aguslr/multibootusb
$ cd multibootusb
$ sudo ./makeUSB.sh -b -e /dev/sdy ext4 8G

Actually there is (now):

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@freggel.doe
@linux-aarhus
Thank you for your proposals. Both seem to exceed my experiences by far. If once an KDE .iso (like the XFCE 20.0.3) should be available, I’d appreciate …

If the XFCE persistent USB is not to your liking, you can always:

  1. “Burn” the standard KDE ISO to an old slow USB stick.
  2. Switch the PC you want to test to BIOS / CSM / … mode
  3. Boot and install the standard ISO to another (fast) USB stick
  4. Run the second USB for testing purposes on any machine after you activate BIOS / CSM / … mode

Why switch to BIOS mode?

That’s the easy way to ensure you don’t use the existing machine’s ESP when installing and running. Just reverse back to UEFI mode before you return the test machine.

:innocent:

Or easier yet…don’t make the ISO read only. Then we can use the program of our choice to make a persistent USB stick. Hm? Seems simple to me and seems simple to most every distro I try.

When the filesystem used is ISO9660 - the readonly is unavoidable.

If the ISO was not read only then it would be very easy to make copies with malware which lures innocent users into making their system botnet ready.

I very much prefer that you know what is inside - and besides that - it makes it a piece of cake for the core Manjaro team to disprove any allegations of spreading malware with the official ISO - a claim which is not taken out of the blue - it happened a few days ago.

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That is a fine moral standing but then you must feel that the 95% of the linux distros are bad actors. They are not being safe from malware.

Could a bad actor intent on spreading malware use something like Unetbootin, place malware in there and put it all back together as a Manjaro ISO?

Thanks for getting back to me, I just happen to disagree with the reason presented as the need to make a read only Linux ISO.

Well - if it is that simple why don’t you clone the tools on gitlab and present your turnkey solution in a merge request?

You have been presented with the available options - if you don’t like it - that is okay.

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