Problems burning iso files to usb drives

[capt-zero]

I'm a relative Linux newbie, and have been using Kubuntu because it just happened to be the distro offered to me gratis by my brother. I am very pleased with Kubuntu and have no real complaints. However, I felt it only fair to give some of the other distros a try before settling on a particular one as home. In particular I wanted to try out openSuse, but going to the openSuse site I found that the only live cd I could download was a limited, non-upgradable, older version. Since burning a dvd wasn't an option for me at this time, I decided to download a usb drive version of the latest stable version 12.1. I immediately ran into some stumbling blocks. In order to burn the iso to a usb stick I needed to install an Imagewriter application available from an openSuse repository not available to (K)ubuntu. I did find Ubuntu Imagewriter from Muon and downloaded it, however it couldn't recognise the iso in my download folder (in fact the iso is largely invisible everywhere in Kubuntu I tried to move it (including the desktop where it was visible right in front of me), I couldn't even find it with the locate command from Konsole. Attacking the problem from another angle, I also installed Unetbootin and tried it. Unetbootin couldn't locate my usb stick and suggested I needed to format it to fat32. When I tried to do this, Kde partition manager said the usb disk (a brand new sandisk cruzer 8Gb) was already partitioned in fat32.>
I suppose these questions might be better addressed in the openSuse forum and I will join that forum and post these issues there also. I was hoping though, to attack this problem in both arenas. Any ideas concerning these issues would be greatly appreciated. I also wish to do this without Windows involvement. The whole point of my foray into Linux was to get out of that vunerable, nested and shoddy enviornment.

[rms]

Have you tried using usb creator?

Edit: I don't know if you can use usb creator to burn SuSE image. If it fails, try a Windows app just one more time
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/univers...easy-as-1-2-3/

[GreyGeek]

Here is how to do it from the command line: http://pthree.org/2011/09/26/how-to-...-command-line/

[capt-zero]

Thanx rms and GreyGeek. Both of your suggestions were helpful. I broke down and resorted to Windows for the installation. A couple of notes on that though, for anyone wanting to try openSuse. After installing, I found it to be slow and unresponsive in comparison to Kubuntu. The look and feel were similar, but I found the whole expeirence to be disappointing. One thing I should note that put me off a lot; after installing openSuse, I noticed that it changed the boot log and I could no longer boot Kubuntu normally after a restart. I'm sure there is a simple workaround by configuring the grub(?) file, but when I went to openSuse forums to explore this point and register I was bounced to a Novell sign-up page that wanted more personal information than I felt they were entitled to. Further, after biting the bullet and passing on that info, instead of returning me to the forum I was sent to a location of "404 not found". Manually returning to the forums, it would not accept my sign in and gave me no option for sending a message to the moderator for a sign up password. At this point, in my frustration of being balked at every turn after three days of wrestling with this, I just reinstalled Kubuntu and am glad to be back.
p.s. Oddly enough, after reinstalling Kubuntu, Kubuntu's boot log offers both Kubuntu and opensuse options.

[rms]

Yes, openSuse is comfy but heavy-weight, demanding a fast machine for best experience. Welcome to Kubuntu!