Don't want to sound mean, but have you actually tried Rufus 2.3 against the Acronis 2016 yourself, then? You may find (as I just did), that Rufus 2.3 will create a bootable USB from that ISO just fine if you select a pure UEFI option ("MBR for UEFI" or "GPT for UEFI") and boot an UEFI system, or, for BIOS systems, simply select DD-Image write mode when prompted (since that ISO is an ISOHybrid)... EDIT: Now, there's one small issue with the error message that Rufus displays when the "MBR for BIOS or UEFI" option is selected (it talks about changing the file system when it shouldn't), and I'll fix that in the 2.4 release.
Fair enough, no, I have not tried Rufus on any Acronis ISO for a while now. I normally use WinPE based ISO image to put it on USB using a few CMD lines to preserve its dual boot ability for BIOS and UEFI boot. I was just curious if Acronis ISO (Linux based) has actually changed boot loader, since it showed different behavior when mounted in Windows Explorer. I am not a developer, not even a Computer Science major, so I don't understand anything deep in the boot system. Just intended to have your confirmation whether Acronis changed their Linux boot loader. So it appears Acronis indeed changed its boot mechanism, based on your test? Sounds great and once again your hard work is always highly appreciated.
I'll have a fix for this message soon, but I'm not planning to release 2.4 for a month or two, as a lot of it will depend on getting about 30 translators to update their translations... For now, you just need to select one of the "MBR for UEFI" or "GPT for UEFI" option under "Partition Scheme and Target Type" (and select DD-Image when prompted for the write mode if you want to boot from BIOS).
I don't remember exactly how long ago I started to observe the different mounting behavior of the Acronis ISO in Windows Explorer, could be about a few months ago. Edit: I thought the UEFI support has been in the Acronis ISO (Linux based) for at least a few years now?
Yup, the option to write image files has been there for a while. You can even write compressed image files.
But it does not work to write ISO images? When I select a ISO image it switches to ISO mode, with usbwriter I can write ISO to USB.
It does if your ISO is an ISOHybrid. Version 2.3 will actually ask you if you want to write in ISO (file copy) mode or DD (disk image) mode. If it doesn't prompt you, then your ISO is not an ISOHybrid, and neither Rufus nor usbwriter will be able to do anything to make it bootable when written in DD mode. Please try to write your ISO and report.
Yeah, when I select DD and then select a ISO, it will auto switch back to ISO but once I press start it asks me if I want to use ISO or Hybrid. There is one weird thing going on on my UEFI PC. Yesterday I tried to boot Elementary OS by using Rufus ISO method and it failed too boot with the error "initramfs unable to find a medium", I could not boot it no matter what I tried, even booting in legacy mode did not help. Then I used usbwriter to write the ISO to USB and it booted fine in legacy mode after I add nomodeset and remove quiet splash boot parameters. But now when I use DD mode in Rufus to write the ISO to USB, it also fails to boot with the same error "initramfs unable to find a medium", I tried to use usbwriter again and get same error although the same ISO written to the same USB with usbwriter yesterday booted fine So I have really no idea what is going on here, how can a written ISO image boot fine on day and then fail other day
I tried Elementary OS (Freya, amd64) a few times, in ISO mode, and never encountered this issue. Knowing that flash is far from everlasting, and that data corruption is how a failing USB drive would manifest itself, I'd try to use a different drive and see if the same issue occurs... Or it could be specific to the system you tested Freya on, in which case I'd try on a different system.
I tried another USB and it's same. It probably does not like Skylake/Z170 chipset. I see a lot of USB related stuff before it shows the initram error so I assume that it might have something to do with USB 3.0, Intel has removed eHCI from Z170 chipset and it's only possible to boot from USB 3.0 ports. Anyway, there is some Linux distros that behaves weird when ISO method is used in Rufus, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is one of them. When I use ISO method and boot it from USB in UEFI mode, it gets stuck at "failed to find mbr identifier", when I write it using DD method and boot it in UEFI mode, it boots fine.