Caligula: A disk image burning tool for Terminal

Caligula: TUI tool for burning disk images

While it is true that, already in free and open-source operating systems based In GNU/Linux and BSD, it is not necessary to use the Terminal to perform basic or essential operationsIt's also true that many of us still prefer using the terminal for many things. Especially when we're intermediate or advanced Linux users like "SysAdmins," "HelpDesks," or "Devs." Therefore, when we're offered terminal alternatives with graphical interfaces for commands that don't have them, or as alternatives to simple but resource-intensive desktop programs, many of us choose to try and approve of these alternatives. And a very good example of this, surely for many, will be... the use of the "Caligula Terminal tool" replacing the “dd” command in the terminal or the “Balena Etcher” program on the desktop.

And why? Because, on the one hand, the "dd" command still lacks a sufficient level of visualization and interactivity to make it more user-friendly, and on the other hand, programs like "Balena Etcher," while very efficient and effective, tend to be quite large, taking up valuable disk space. They can even be resource-intensive, consuming RAM that might be needed for many other reasons or uses.

Balena Etcher: New version 1.7.3 of the useful disk image recorder

But, before going into detail and describing for the first time this useful and interesting software focused on burning ISO images onto storage media (CD/DVD/USB) called CaligulaWe recommend you explore and read our previous publication Regarding the contribution and importance of the Linuxverse in space technology, after reading this publication:

Balena Etcher is a tool built exclusively with open-source technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, Node.js, and Electron to ensure that flashing an SD card or USB drive is a pleasant and safe experience. Furthermore,What makes Etcher interesting from various tools similar to it is that it protects the user from accidentally writing to their hard drives, guarantees that each byte of data has been written correctly and much more. This makes it an excellent option for the novice user.. Whale Etcher

Related article:

Balena Etcher: New version 1.7.3 of the useful disk image recorder

Caligula: TUI tool for burning disk images

What is Caligula?

According to his official website section on GitHub, Caligula It is a software tool described briefly and concisely as follows:

Caligula is a lightweight and easy-to-use text user interface (TUI) for disk image creation.

However, they later add that among their most current and outstanding features are the following:

• It offers great graphics. which show the speed at which the disk image is written.
• Displays a list of connected USB drives, indicating the size and hardware model information of each one.
• Manage and decompress disk image files in a variety of fairly common and well-known formats, including gz, bz2, and xz.
• It includes validating image files using a hash before burning them.with support for md5, sha1, sha256 and more.
• Internally executes the sudo/doas/su commands, as a precautionary measure, in case the user I forgot to run it as the "root" user.
• Displays rich confirmation dialogs to prevent the user from accidentally deleting their main file system.
• Verify the recording medium and the ISO recording on itThe process has now been completed, to make sure everything was done correctly.
• It has a small size in its binary file, which does not exceed 5 Megabytes, even with a static link.

Installation and use

Different methods of obtaining, installing, and using the various existing GNU/Linux distributions are available:

• Binary files: DDownload the pre-compiled binary files from the latest version of GitHub, for later run them directly from the terminal.
• ArchLinux:

1. From the official repository: pacman -S caligula
2. From the AUR repositories.
3. Via Git from the AUR repositories.
4. Via Git from the "archlinuxcn" repositories.

• Nix:

1. Nixpkgs: nix-env -i caligula
2. From the flake repositories: github:ifd3f/caligula.

• From Homebrew: brew tap philocalyst/tap && brew install caligula
• From Position:  cargo install caligula
• Compiling the source code: git clone y cargo build --release.

“USBImager is aA really simple GUI application that writes compressed disk images to USB drives and creates backups. It's also cross-platform (Windows, Linux, and macOS), comes in both installable and portable formats, and is a really small application. It only takes up a few kilobytes and has no dependencies.".

Related article:

USBImager: Useful app to write compressed disk images to USB

Summary

In summary, we hope this short informative post is interesting and useful. Software focused on burning ISO images onto storage media (CD/DVD/USB) called "Caligula"may be useful and important to many. Especially those who prefer the use of the terminal and very small, low-resource software toolsOver complex and resource-intensive graphical software tools. Finally, if you'd like to suggest or recommend any other similar programs to achieve the same goal from the terminal, please mention them in the comments so we can consider them for a future post.