Write Multiple Linux Images Onto a Thumbdrive With Multisystem

USB creator tools are the essential when it comes to experiencing varying distributions in a live system without the stress of burning an image onto a compact disc. Previously we covered the three best GUI-enabled tools for your Linux PC but then, none of those applications had the functionality of writing multiple images onto a single USB.

Multisystem is that tool that will enable to write more than a few Linux images onto a single USB drive and it’s especially useful for folks looking to try out multiple Linux distros without having them installed on an actual PC – the only limit to the use of the tool is the size of your thumb drive.

Installing Multisystem in Linux

There are two ways to running Multisystem on your Linux PC; first off, you can download the Multisystem script which can be run from the terminal.

$ sudo ./install-depot-multisystem.sh

Alternatively, you can add the PPA to your system sources so as to ease updates when they’re available.

$ sudo apt-add-repository 'deb http://liveusb.info/multisystem/depot all main'
$ wget -q -O - http://liveusb.info/multisystem/depot/multisystem.asc | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install multisystem

Once installed, go to your dash and type in multisystem (if you’re on Ubuntu) or your app menu for any other distribution. Once Multisystem is up and running, insert your USB flash drive and mount it in your file manager after which you’ll go back to the app and confirm the installation of Grub2 on the pendrive.

The image below is the follow-up screen you’ll see once you’ve confirmed the installation of Grub2 on your USB drive. At this point, you can now drag and drop Linux images from your file manager to the smallest rectangle after the third demarcation.

Alternatively, you can use the little CD icon to locate the directory at which your image file is present.

The little program is open source, intuitive, and extremely extensive in functionality. Asides being able to install multiple Linux distributions onto a USB drive, Multisystem will also enable you to customize your Grub2 menu, drag and drop iso images from your file manager to the app, and an alternative boot manager called Plop.  Multisystem utilizes Grub2 as for its boot selection screen.

In, my test, i used a 16GB Kingston USB 2.0 drive and i managed to install a whopping 10 Linux distributions on the drive and Windows 7/8 – all of which booted just fine on a Lenovo core i3 Thinkpad that i used as my test system.

I was, however, unable to try it out with a USB 3.0 drive as i recently lost the only one i had. if you ever get to use it with a USB 3.0 drive, be sure to let us know how well it fared in the comments below.