rufus-linux

Linux port of Rufus — a utility for formatting and creating bootable USB drives. The UI is built on stilus, a minimal C++20 GUI toolkit that fully statically links (no runtime GUI dependencies), while staying as close to the original Windows layout as possible.

Features

• Automatic detection of USB block devices (libudev)
• Direct write of isohybrid ISOs and raw disk images (.img)
• Image-type detection (isohybrid · ISO9660 · GPT · MBR via on-disk magic bytes)
• Partition table creation (MBR / GPT, libparted)
• Filesystem creation (FAT32 / exFAT / NTFS / ext4 / btrfs / UDF)
• Syslinux install for FreeDOS-style bootable FAT32 sticks
• Hash verification (MD5 / SHA-1 / SHA-256 / SHA-512, OpenSSL EVP)
• Background writer thread — UI stays responsive during writes
• Self-contained GUI via stilus (Wayland / X11 backends, no GTK dependency)

Build

Install dependencies (Debian / Ubuntu)

sudo apt install \
    meson ninja-build pkg-config \
    g++ \
    libudev-dev \
    libblkid-dev \
    libparted-dev \
    libssl-dev \
    libcurl4-openssl-dev

stilus is bundled as a git submodule (third_party/stilus) — no external GUI toolkit needs to be installed.

Build

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/soichi11208/rufus-linux
cd rufus-linux
meson setup build
meson compile -C build

If you already cloned without submodules, run git submodule update --init --recursive before building.

Install (for polkit integration)

sudo meson install -C build

The polkit action definition (res/org.rufus.linux.policy) is installed to /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/.

Running

Writing to a block device requires root privileges.

# Quick path for development
sudo ./build/rufus-linux

# After install — a GUI auth dialog appears via pkexec
pkexec /usr/bin/rufus-linux

How to use

1. Device — click the ↺ button to scan for USB drives, then select the target from the dropdown
2. Boot selection — choose "Disk or ISO image" and click SELECT to pick an image file
3. Image option — usually no change needed (isohybrid ISOs are auto-detected)
4. Partition scheme / Target system — the defaults (MBR / BIOS or UEFI) cover most use cases
5. Format Options — adjust volume label, filesystem, and cluster size if needed
6. START — after the confirmation dialog, writing begins in the background

Supported filesystems

Filesystem	Command	Package
FAT32	mkfs.fat	dosfstools
exFAT	mkfs.exfat	exfatprogs
NTFS	mkfs.ntfs	ntfs-3g
ext4	mkfs.ext4	e2fsprogs
btrfs	mkfs.btrfs	btrfs-progs
UDF	mkudffs	udftools

Layout

rufus-linux/
├── meson.build
├── README.md           (English)
├── README-ja.md        (Japanese)
├── LICENSE.txt
├── res/
│   └── org.rufus.linux.policy   # polkit action definition
├── third_party/
│   └── stilus/        stilus GUI toolkit (git submodule)
└── src/
    ├── rufus.h         shared types and prototypes
    ├── main.cpp        stilus application entry point
    ├── ui.cpp          stilus main window
    ├── drive.c         USB drive enumeration (libudev)
    ├── iso.c           image-type detection (magic byte inspection)
    ├── part.c          partition table creation (libparted)
    ├── mkfs.c          fork+exec wrappers for mkfs.* and syslinux
    ├── format.c        write orchestrator
    ├── hash.c          MD5/SHA hashing (OpenSSL EVP)
    ├── worker.cpp      background worker thread
    ├── privops.c       pkexec privilege elevation
    └── log.c           logging (stderr + in-app buffer)

Differences from the Windows build

Feature	Windows	This Linux port
Device enumeration	SetupAPI + VDS	libudev
Disk I/O	DeviceIoControl	ioctl (BLKGETSIZE64 etc.)
Partitioning	VDS	libparted
Filesystem	built-in formatters	mkfs.* fork+exec
GUI	Win32 dialogs	stilus (C++20, Wayland/X11, statically linked)
Hashing	Win32 CryptAPI	OpenSSL EVP
Privilege elevation	UAC	polkit / pkexec
Settings storage	HKCU registry	~/.config/rufus/settings.ini (GKeyFile)

License

See LICENSE. rufus-linux inherits GPLv3 from upstream Rufus.