A Rufus-style USB formatting and bootable-drive tool for Linux, built with Python + GTK3. It is not tied to any one distribution: it runs on any modern Linux desktop, including Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Manjaro and their derivatives, under GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, Xfce, MATE and other desktops.

Bootable ISO · Compressed file extraction · Settings

• Lists only USB flash drives and SD cards (fixed USB disks behind the List USB Hard Drives option). Internal disks and the disk running your system are never shown, and the root helper re-checks this.
• Non bootable format: FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, ext4, FAT16 · MBR or GPT · volume label · cluster size · quick or full (zero-fill) format.
• Bad blocks check (1–4 write/read passes, like Rufus).
• Linux ISOs / disk images written in DD mode with read-back verification. Accepts .iso, .img, .raw and compressed .img.xz / .img.gz / .img.bz2 (decompressed on the fly).
• ISO mode (file copy): FAT32 UEFI-bootable drive from an ISO.
• Windows 10/11 ISOs: UEFI-bootable install drive.
  • install.wim > 4 GB is split automatically if wimlib (wimtools on Debian/Ubuntu) is installed; otherwise a FAT32 BOOT + NTFS INSTALL two-partition layout is used.
  • Rufus-style Windows User Experience options: skip TPM 2.0 / Secure Boot / 4GB RAM checks, skip the online Microsoft account, skip privacy questions (via autounattend.xml).
• Compressed file: format the drive, then extract a .zip, .7z, .rar or .tar.* archive onto it. Zip and tar work out of the box; 7z and RAR need 7-Zip (7zip or p7zip-full; unrar also works for RAR). The archive is checked before anything is erased: files over 4 GB on FAT32, archives too big for the drive and unsafe paths are refused. Extraction runs with your own user rights, not as root.
• MD5 / SHA-1 / SHA-256 checksum of the selected file (# button).
• Drag & drop an image onto the window; open images from the file manager.
• Progress, speed and time remaining, cancel, and a saveable log.
• Settings tab: remember the last used settings between runs, and check for and install new versions from GitHub (downloads are verified against their published SHA-256 checksum).

Get the files from the latest release.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thuutien/rufix/main/packaging/quick-install.sh | sudo bash

This installs dependencies via apt / dnf / pacman / zypper, downloads the release tarball and runs the installer. Variants:

curl -fsSL .../quick-install.sh | sudo bash -s -- 0.3.0      # pin a version
curl -fsSL .../quick-install.sh | sudo bash -s -- --no-deps  # skip dependency install
curl -fsSL .../quick-install.sh | sudo bash -s -- --uninstall

yay -S rufix

Or manually: git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/rufix.git && cd rufix && makepkg -si.

Download rufix-<version>-x86_64.flatpak from the release page, then:

flatpak install --user ./rufix-0.3.0-x86_64.flatpak
flatpak run org.rufix.Rufix

The Flatpak bundles the interface. Formatting still uses your system's tools (dosfstools, ntfs-3g, exfatprogs, e2fsprogs, polkit, Python 3), which most desktops already have; the root helper runs on the host through pkexec. Flatpak bundles are built automatically by GitHub Actions on every push.

sudo apt install ./rufix_0.3.0_all.deb

apt pulls in all dependencies. For splitting large Windows images, also install wimtools.

sudo dnf install ./rufix-0.3.0-1.noarch.rpm        # Fedora / RHEL
sudo zypper install ./rufix-0.3.0-1.noarch.rpm     # openSUSE

The package manager pulls in all dependencies. For splitting large Windows images, also install wimlib.

Download rufix-0.3.0-x86_64.AppImage, make it executable and run it:

chmod +x rufix-0.3.0-x86_64.AppImage
./rufix-0.3.0-x86_64.AppImage

It bundles Rufix itself and uses your system's Python 3, GTK 3 and formatting tools (same requirements as below). The privileged helper runs from inside the bundle via pkexec, so no system-wide installation is needed. (On older releases such as Ubuntu 20.04 / Mint 20, install exfat-utils instead of exfatprogs.)

Download rufix-0.3.0.tar.gz, install the dependencies (Python 3 GObject bindings, GTK 3, dosfstools, ntfs-3g, exfatprogs, e2fsprogs, polkit, util-linux), then:

tar xzf rufix-0.3.0.tar.gz && cd rufix-0.3.0 && sudo ./install.sh

./packaging/build-deb.sh        # dist/rufix_<version>_all.deb
./packaging/build-tarball.sh    # dist/rufix-<version>.tar.gz
./packaging/build-rpm.sh        # dist/rufix-<version>-1.noarch.rpm (needs rpm-build)
./packaging/build-appimage.sh   # dist/rufix-<version>-x86_64.AppImage (needs appimagetool)
./packaging/build-flatpak.sh    # dist/rufix-<version>-x86_64.flatpak (needs flatpak-builder)
cd packaging/arch && makepkg -si   # Arch Linux package

Rufix then appears in the menu under Administration / System Tools. To remove it: sudo ./install.sh --uninstall (or sudo apt remove rufix / sudo dnf remove rufix / yay -R rufix).

./rufix.py

Requires the dependencies listed above for your distro.

The GUI runs as your normal user. When you press START, it launches rufix-helper through pkexec (you get the standard password prompt), sends it the job as JSON, and the helper streams progress back. Only the helper runs as root, and it refuses any device that is not a removable/USB whole disk or that holds a system mount point.

• Bootable drives made in ISO mode are UEFI-only (no legacy BIOS boot loader is installed). For Linux ISOs, DD mode is the default and boots on both BIOS and UEFI.
• Windows-to-Go, persistent partitions and FreeDOS are not implemented.

Rufix is free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0 only, see LICENSE.