balenaEtcher is a utility for flashing images. It’s beginner-friendly, and as a popular Rufus alternative, it’s commonly used to create live Ubuntu and Windows USBs. We’ll explain how you can install and use Etcher on Ubuntu in this article. Install with .deb File The recommended method for installing Etcher is with the deb package that you can get from the Github releases page. The latest stable version is v1.18.4, so we’ll download that. wget https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/releases/download/v1.18.4/balena-etcher_1.18.4_amd64.deb Use apt to install the downloaded DEB file. sudo apt install ./balena-etcher_1.18.4_amd64.deb In case the installation fails due to dependency errors, you can fix the missing dependencies with sudo apt update && sudo apt --fix-broken install Afterward, you can search and open Etcher from the applications menu. Run Using Appimage An AppImage is a software packaging format that’s designed to work on multiple distros. Technically, you’re running a portable Etcher version with this method rather than installing it, but the end result is the same. Download the AppImage from the official Etcher downloads page. Right-click the AppImage and select Properties. In the Permissions tab, enable the Allow executing file as program checkbox. Now you can launch Etcher by double-clicking the AppImage. Creating a Bootable USB with Etcher As mentioned earlier, Etcher is very beginner-friendly thanks to its easy-to-use interface. We’ll create a live Ubuntu USB for demonstration. Connect the USB drive to your machine and launch Etcher. First, click on Flash from file and select the image file to flash. Next, click on Select target and pick the USB device. Finally, press Flash! and enter your password to write the image to the selected device.