How to create a bootable linux USB drive with a single command!

The command

BEWARE 1: I am not responsible for any damage you may do to your system and devices by improper use of the unix dd utility.
BEWARE 2: the following command will erase any data contained in the target USB device. You don't even have to format it first :)

The magic command is one of the oldest and greatest army knives of every Linux user, Data Duplicator (DD):
sudo dd if=manjaro-kde-17.1.11-stable-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress

if = input file = The ISO image of your operating system of choice (In my case, the great Manjaro distro).

of = output file = The device you are going to write the ISO image to. I repeat, the device and not the partition.

/dev/sdb = Device

/dev/sdb1 = Partition

Hint: to find how your USB stick is called, simply run:

sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 223,6 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x58e6b2a7 Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/sda1 2049 450402085 450400037 214,8G 83 Linux /dev/sda2 450402086 468857024 18454939 8,8G 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/sdb: 14,4 GiB, 15497953280 bytes, 30269440 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/sdb1 * 64 4232079 4232016 2G cd unknown /dev/sdb2 4232080 4240271 8192 4M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)

In my case /dev/sdb is the USB drive.

The output

2168455168 bytes (2,2 GB, 2,0 GiB) copied, 291 s, 7,5 MB/s 517+1 records in 517+1 records out 2171019264 bytes (2,2 GB, 2,0 GiB) copied, 291,41 s, 7,5 MB/s

When it finishes you may have to unmount and remount the drive to allow the data to be synced.

That's it! your bootable USB drive is ready to use!

Conclusion