WowUSB

Copyright (C)2026 Robin L. M. Cheung, MBA. All rights reserved.

Clean-roomed 17apr2026 multiboot, f2fs, win11-to-go, and more. Inspired by Woe-USB and YUMI/Ventoy/iVentoy, but expanded far beyond it.

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Status: Pre-alpha — architecture and checklist only, no source code yet. The authoritative design lives in DOCS/ARCHITECTURE.md; the build plan lives in CHECKLIST.md.

What WowUSB is

WowUSB is a desktop application for forging bootable USB drives. It takes a Windows installer ISO, a Linux installer ISO, a full Linux distribution image, or a set of ISOs you want to multi-boot, and turns a USB drive into something that boots on real hardware — UEFI or legacy BIOS, modern or old, with the filesystem and partition layout that fits the content.

It is designed to be the tool you reach for when you care that the drive actually works: that Windows installs come up on UEFI systems, that Linux distributions boot with a filesystem that treats the flash cells with respect, that Windows-to-go layouts aren't crippled by FAT32's 4 GiB file limit, and that a single drive can carry a rescue kit of many ISOs.

Why it exists

The USB-bootable-forge space has accumulated a catalogue of tools, each strong in some dimension and frustrating in others. Some target Windows installers well but refuse to touch Linux full-installs. Some do multi-boot via GRUB menus but leave filesystem choice as an afterthought. Some extract ISOs, which fails on large Windows installer files; some loopback-mount ISOs, which fails on Windows installers that won't chainload.

WowUSB exists to build a single tool that does these things deliberately and well, under an explicitly prosocial ethos — no telemetry, no growth beacons, no engagement-maximising UX dark patterns, no data exfiltration, no dependency on third-party services that could be deprecated out from under the user. What the drive does after you close the app is what the drive does, forever.

Feature scope (v0.1 target)

• Windows installer forge — UEFI + legacy BIOS boot from one ISO.
• Windows-to-go layout — run Windows directly from the USB, with a large NTFS payload partition.
• Linux installer forge — hybrid ISO passthrough where the upstream image supports it.
• Linux full-install — actual installed distribution on the USB, not just the installer, with F2FS as the default filesystem for flash longevity.
• Multi-image mode — GRUB 2 menu, chainload multiple ISOs from a shared data partition.
• Five filesystems — FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, F2FS, Btrfs — with automatic suggestion when the image would overflow FAT32's 4 GiB file limit.
• UEFI + legacy BIOS dual-boot — single drive serves both firmware types.
• Offline-first — no network traffic required for any device operation. Licence validation is the only networked path and is clearly delineated.

Platform support

• Linux — primary target for v0.1, amd64.
• Windows — amd64, cross-compiled from the Linux build host via cargo-xwin.

macOS is out of scope for v0.1. The platform abstraction is designed to accommodate adding a macOS backend later without architectural reshuffle. There is no Android or iOS surface, and none is planned. USB forging is a desktop operation.

Tech stack

• Desktop shell: Tauri 2 (Rust).
• Frontend: React 18 + TypeScript + Vite.
• UI library: Radix UI primitives + Tailwind CSS (shadcn/ui pattern).
• Backend: Rust — tokio for async, platform-specific crates for disk operations (nix on Linux, Win32 APIs on Windows).
• Build system: Cargo + npm / Vite for the frontend, wrapped by Tauri's CLI.

The stack is chosen for small footprint, native performance on privileged disk operations, and a clean separation between the user-facing React surface and the privileged Rust subsystems that actually touch block devices.

Clean-room lineage

This repository is a clean-room re-implementation. It does not share code, identifier names, or file structure with any prior bootable-USB tool, including tools mentioned in the inspiration statement above. Inspiration is acknowledged at the level of observable product features; the implementation is derived from public specifications (UEFI, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, F2FS, Btrfs, GPT, ISO 9660, El Torito, GRUB 2) and from first-principles design.

The protocol enforcing the separation is summarised as: architecture and checklist are committed before any source code is written; the architect phase produces an entity table whose identifier names are demonstrably derived from design reasoning, not from upstream code; a clean-room audit grep records zero identifier overlap against the direct ancestor repository; all source is written against the checklist only. The audit trail lives in DOCS/ARCHITECTURE/clean-room-audit-forward.txt (forward mode: new-repo entities against ancestor source) and DOCS/ARCHITECTURE/clean-room-audit-reverse.txt (reverse mode: ancestor-only identifiers against new source). Both must return zero hits.

Build and install

Pre-code. There is nothing to build yet. Packaging work is tracked in CHECKLIST.md under milestone M6 — Packaging, and platform-specific build instructions will land in this section when that milestone is reached.

Documentation map

• DOCS/ARCHITECTURE.md — authoritative architecture, entity table with provenance, paywall decision matrix, CI topology.
• DOCS/ARCHITECTURE/ — per-subsystem design notes, PlantUML / Mermaid diagram sources, clean-room audit evidence.
• REQUIREMENTS.md — observable-behaviour contract the architecture must satisfy.
• CHECKLIST.md — deterministic build plan; the coder's single source of truth.

Monetisation

WowUSB is a single-SKU proprietary product. The default payment path is Polar.sh operating as merchant-of-record, handling sales tax and VAT on the copyright holder's behalf. A provider-trait abstraction keeps the internal coupling minimal, so alternative providers can be wired in without architectural reshuffle when a different commercial arrangement is warranted.

Customers of the product pay once, receive a licence, and the drive they forge is theirs forever with no ongoing obligation. There is no subscription, no "pro tier", no feature gating beyond the initial licence check.

Full details, including the multi-provider decision matrix, live in DOCS/ARCHITECTURE.md.

Contribution

Contributions are not accepted at present. The source is made visible under a proprietary licence to support auditability and user trust, not to invite derivative work. Inquiries are deferred until the copyright holder has the bandwidth to handle them well; deferring responsibly is preferred over engaging poorly. When contribution opens, it will be announced here with an explicit grant.

Licence

See LICENSE. Proprietary — all rights reserved. Source visibility is not a grant of use, modification, or redistribution.

Maintainer

Robin L. M. Cheung, MBA — sole proprietorship. Licensing enquiries through the canonical repository's published contact channels.