I tested Rufus, Ventoy, and balenaEtcher with Linux Mint to see which one deserves a permanent spot on my emergency USB drive ...

Rufus is a free, portable utility that creates bootable USB flash drives from ISO files. As of 2026, the latest version is Rufus 4.13 — and it’s faster and more capable than ever, with built-in ...

First, you can — and should — try Linux Mint before switching to it. Fortunately, unlike other operating systems, Linux distros like Mint make it easy to give them a test run before installing it.

There's an easy way to experiment and answer those questions: taking a Linux operating system for a test drive without making any harmful changes to your PC. If you're thinking of switching to Linux ...