MultiOS-USB

MultiOS-USB

One device with multiple ISO/WIM files. Easy to use: install once, add ISO/WIM files and boot computers from it

Features:

• BIOS and UEFI support
• Secure Boot support (boot, manage uefi keys)
• Load UEFI drivers
• Launch .efi executables and other boot loaders
• Boot Linux from .iso images
• Boot WinPE from bootable .wim images
• Boot Windows 10/11 installer from ISO
• Boot Linux installer from network (experimental)
• Boot locally installed systems: Linux, Windows
• Automatically update configuration files
• Without background services
• exFAT file system support
• Automatic detection of compatible ISO images (GRUB loopback)
• Support for systems without loopback support
• Allows customisation of ISO boot menu (for example: custom kernel options)
• Support for USB, SSD, nvme, mmcblk, loop, nbd and virtual disks
• Support for x86, x86_64

Tested ISOs

A list of tested ISO images can be found here

Installation

SparkyLinux

# Refresh the package list and install MultiOS-USB
sudo apt update
sudo apt install multios-usb

# Display available USB devices
multios-usb -l

# Install to the selected device (replace sdX with your target device)
sudo multios-usb /dev/sdX

Nix/NixOS

# run without permanent install (flakes must be enabled)
sudo nix run github:Mexit/MultiOS-USB -- /dev/sdX

# create shell with MultiOS-USB available
nix shell github:Mexit/MultiOS-USB

Arch Linux

# install using AUR helper like yay or aura
yay -S multios-usb-bin

# or install by cloning and executing makepkg -si
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/multios-usb-bin.git
cd multios-usb-bin/
makepkg -si

# for usage instructions see SparkyLinux (usage is the same)

From GitHub - Linux console

Go to Releases, download and unpack the downloaded archive.

Check and install the required packages (in most cases they should be installed by default):

• tar, bzip2, xz
• sgdisk, wipefs
• mkfs.fat, mkfs.exfat, …

Go to the directory where you extracted the files and run the following at the console

./multios-usb.sh -l

This command will show you the USB devices available on your system.
To install MultiOS-USB, type the following command, replacing /dev/sdX with your chosen device path. For example:

sudo ./multios-usb.sh /dev/sdX

From GitHub - PowerShell installer or manual installation (UEFI only)

Recommended installation method for Windows. Installation details can be found here and in the downloaded archive.

From GitHub - Windows: image based installation (BIOS + UEFI - experimental)

Required external tools. Installation details can be found here and in the downloaded archive.

First use

After installation, copy your ISO files to the /ISOs directory and boot your computer from USB.
You can also add your own configuration files to the /MultiOS-USB/config_priv directory. They will not be deleted during the automatic MultiOS-USB update.
If you want to change the configuration for a given ISO - copy the one you have chosen from the config folder, paste into config_priv and update it according to your needs.
The updated configuration will be detected automatically.

On the first boot with Secure Boot enabled on each new computer, a MultiOS USB certificate must be installed.

Press Enter

Select: Enroll key from disc

Select MultiOS-EFI as partition, then browse to the EFI/cert directory and select MultiOS-USB.cer, Continue and confirm (Yes) key enrolling.
You can also immediately add certificates (keys) from popular distributions in the same way.
If you want to add a certificate later, you can do it by selecting in the Main Menu:
EFI Tools --> and then Add UEFI key or hash.

Update MultiOS-USB:

You can add support for new operating systems. No need to reinstall.
Download zip or tar.gz archive and unpack MultiOS-USB repository

Automatic update

To update configuration files, simply type the following command, replacing /dev/sdX with your chosen device path.

./multios-usb.sh -u /dev/sdX

Manual update

• Remove all files and directories on your USB in /MultiOS-USB/config/
• Copy the downloaded files and directories from config to the above directory.

Project URLs

• https://gitlab.com/MultiOS-USB - full MultiOS-USB source code
• https://github.com/Mexit/MultiOS-USB - MultiOS-USB releases