How to Install Etcher, the USB Writing Tool, on Ubuntu

What is Etcher, the USB Writing Tool?

Etcher is an open-source USB Image Writer developed by resin.io. It is a cross-platform application which helps you burn image files like ZIP, ISO, IMG to USB storage.  It is extensible for developers, and works on any platform which includes, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X etc. Before we proceed on how to install Etcher Image Writer on Ubuntu, lets take a quick look at its features.

Features of Etcher Image Writer

• Comes with an attractive and easy to follow user interface
• You no longer need to write images on corrupted cards hence increasing productivity
• It is a cross platform app, hence it works on all systems
• Etcher is developed with JS, HTML, node.js as well as Electron
• A notable feature is it burns 50% more faster, as well as simultaneous writing for multiple drives
• Drive selection is more visible to avoid wiping all your entire data in hard-drive

How to install Etcher Image Writer on Ubuntu 17.04 and below

The etcher GUI is installed same way on any distribution because it is an AppImage. So first we download etcher AppImage from the official site. You can use also download it for the terminal, but it will download current version at the time writing of this article. For latest version use official site.

wget https://resin-production-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/etcher/1.0.0-beta.14/Etcher-linux-x64.AppImage

We need to set executable and access permissions to the AppImage

chmod a+x Etcher-linux-x64.AppImage

And then we run it with sudo or as root:

sudo ./Etcher-linux-x64.AppImage

You should get the etcher started like this: