> Limnivorous, can you please point out which distribution does not > make GNOME Disks available to its users?
Slackware (and its derivatives) for one. Though it is listed at the URL you gave, that is just a "repo" of buildscripts, in this case for an old version - YMMV. I am sure there are other cases where its availability is marginal or absent.
> I could agree on "more straightforward to use": Etcher does only one > thing, i.e. exactly what we need here, while the functionality we need > here is treated somewhat as a corner case (and almost hidden) in > GNOME Disks. > > However, according to https://repology.org/metapackage/etcher/versions, > Etcher is not available in most major Linux distributions, so > installing it will be hard for most users. Of course, upstream > offers Linux binaries, but I'd rather not suggest that to Linux users, > for many reasons.
I agree about downloading the containerised version of Etcher (that's how I tested it, but normally I would not). However, many distribution "packages" probably just unpack it rather than being true builds. The project is geared towards direct downloads and that's probably why not many distributions have bothered.
Why would it be worse for Linux than it is for MS and Mac for you to just host the binary? Users who know enough to be wary of that too can probably manage to use dd, and those who don't would be no worse off than Windows and Mac users.
All in all, it looks like there is no ideal solution. But Etcher seems to be a good, straightforward graphical tool for the job.
