How To Make A Multiboot USB In Linux And Windows

Do you wish to make a multiboot USB? Do you want to have multiple OSes on a USB drive for installation or for recovering other systems? Do you want to boot and use multiple operating systems from your USB drive, I got you covered. Let us look at two ways of achieving this.  

MultiSystem – Making the Multiboot USB on a Linux or Windows system

  1. Download the latest version of MultiSystem from here.
  2. Open the Script with Ubuntu’s Archive Manager
  3. Extract the install-depot-multiboot.sh Script to a folder, for example, your Desktop. (Alternatively, you can download the installation files (.deb and .rpm) files for various distros from this link here. You can go ahead and use your favorite package manager to install multibootusb.
  4. Double Click install-depot-multiboot.sh from your desktop and select the option to “Run in Terminal” to install it.
  5. Insert your target USB drive
  6. Launch the MultiBoot script from your launcher. Will be found under Accessories
multisystem make multiboot usb in linux and windows

7. Select your USB Device from the list and click on “Confirm”.

8. Drag and Drop an ISO into the Window to add the Distribution.

multiboot usb with multisystem
create multiboot usb

Repeat the process to add more ISOs.

​You can restart your PC, set your boot menu to boot from the USB device, Select the Distro you want to Boot.   NOTE: You can uninstall distros on your multiboot USB. To do that you must select a distro from the list and choose “Uninstall Distro” button. A Review Selection window will pop up and ask you to confirm. Click Yes button to remove the installed distro. The progress bar will indicate the progress of the uninstall process. You will get the completion message after successful uninstall of the selected distro.  

XBOOT- Making the Multiboot USB on a Windows system

Download the latest version of XBOOT from here.

No need for installation. Extract and run XBOOT.

xboot make multiboot usb on windows

Drag and drop some ISOs into the XBOOT window.

drag and drop iso in xboot

Then go ahead and select Create USB.

create multiboot usb with xboot

Select your USB Drive from the Droplist.

Choose your preferred Bootloader to use.

Click OK to begin the creation.

You can restart your PC, set your boot menu to boot from the USB device, Select the Distro you want to Boot.  

Conclusion

Now you can easily create your multiboot USB for whatever purpose you desire depending on the operating system you have available. There are other tools available to use for making multiboot USBs. You can also try others such as YUMI and SARDU and all are available on Windows also. I hope you find this post quite useful. Share your thoughts and experiences with us in the comments below.

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3 Comments Text
  • Ubuntu 18.04 user here…I have been trying to make one multiboot USB drive since many days with just fails and nothing else! Both Windows apps via Wine on PlayonLinux and Linux apps are not working properly, even the popular ones. Some does not open only…Some does not recognize USB drives…Some needs only FAT32 (no support to NTFS) USB drives…Some support only making a single bootable USB device and that too does not work properly like Windows apps in Windows! What to do?

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