Experimental SteamOS recovery images, an ISO partition you can finally mount from the file manager, and a stable /dev/mapper/VentoyPart — this release is all about the small fixes that make a multiboot stick genuinely useful.

Every sysadmin has the drawer. The one full of USB sticks, each Sharpie-labeled and obsolete before the ink dried: "Ubuntu 22.04", "Memtest+", "CloneZilla 3.1", "WinPE — DO NOT REFORMAT". Ventoy was supposed to end that era by turning one stick into a multiboot buffet: drop ISO files onto it, pick one from a boot menu, done. Version 1.1.18, released this week, doesn't add a flashy headline feature — it does something better. It fixes the small, annoying reasons people kept a second stick around.

Your ISO partition is finally useful

The biggest change hides in item two of the changelog: Ventoy's Linux remount feature now makes the ISO partition mountable out of the box on mainstream desktop distros. If you've ever booted a live distro from a Ventoy drive and tried to grab a file off the same stick, you know the pain — the partition existed under a device-mapper path, but half the desktop environments refused to touch it or showed it as a mystery volume you couldn't click. Now the partition shows up in the file manager's sidebar on mainstream distros and mounts with a click, no terminal gymnastics required. (If your distro still plays hard to get, mount /dev/mapper/VentoyPart is your fallback — more on that path in a second.)

Related and equally practical: the ISO partition is now mountable from CloneZilla. That single line means your Ventoy stick can be the CloneZilla boot medium and the storage holding the disk images you're restoring. One USB, boot tool plus payload — no more carrying a second drive for the image library.

A name your scripts can trust

Power users get a quieter but bigger win: the ISO partition's device-mapper name is now the stable /dev/mapper/VentoyPart on every boot. Previously it could shift between boots, which silently broke any script, fstab line, or backup routine that referenced it. A predictable path turns the stick from "that boot thingy" into infrastructure you can automate against. If you run a small shop or a homelab where a rescue stick gets passed around, pinning scripts to VentoyPart instead of guessing dm-N is the kind of boring reliability upgrade that prevents 2 a.m. confusion.

The changelog also kills the duplicate disk icons that cluttered file-manager sidebars on some distros — cosmetic, but the kind of cosmetic that stops a junior tech from unmounting the wrong volume.

Steam Deck owners, your recovery ritual got shorter

Experimental support for SteamOS recovery images means you can now boot Valve's SteamOS recovery image straight from your Ventoy menu. Deck owners previously had to sacrifice an entire USB to the official recovery tool; now it's just another ISO on the stick. The keyword is experimental — expect rough edges, and don't discover them on the Deck you actually need. Test on hardware you can afford to laugh about.

The rest is pure maintenance hygiene

  • Boot fixes for Fedora 45 beta and Grml 2026.09 — if either refused to boot from Ventoy recently, this is the fix.
  • Ubuntu desktop persistence finally behaves: the intermittent failures that silently dropped live-session changes are gone, so your persistent Ubuntu session is actually persistent now.
  • Windows and WinPE users get a fixed Secure Boot version check.
  • Custom Syslinux-based ISOs are now supported, and VentoyPlugson validates Boot Conf Replace entries so misconfigurations get flagged instead of mysteriously not booting.

The operator's playbook for upgrading

  1. Upgrade in place, don't rebuild. Ventoy upgrades are data-nondestructive — your ISOs stay put. Grab the release from the official page (links below), verify the SHA-256 checksum published alongside it, and run the installer over your existing stick.
  2. Mind the Secure Boot key. Since v1.1.14, Ventoy uses a new UEFI Secure Boot CA, so if you're jumping from an older build, you'll enroll the new key once on first boot. Plan for that if you're updating sticks for other people.
  3. Rethink your stick's layout. With a mountable ISO partition and CloneZilla support, a 64 GB+ stick can now hold your distros, a CloneZilla payload library, and still serve as scratch storage during live sessions. One stick per tech, not a drawer per tech.
  4. Test the experimental stuff where it can't hurt you. SteamOS recovery support is flagged experimental for a reason — try it on a spare Deck or in a VM first.

Ventoy remains free and open source — and still the cheapest upgrade you'll make to your recovery kit all year.

Sources: Ventoy 1.1.18 release notes on GitHub; ventoy.net