# Previously I have used Balena Etcher to flash raspberry pi images, but have found that etcher is rather bloated
# and unecessary when compared with the command line tools that are available on nearly all Linux machines.

# Step 1 is very simple, just download the img from the website, once the img is downloaded, you may need to use xz to extract it.

```
xz --decompress my_rpi_image.xz
```

# Once you have the image ready, plug in your sd card and use the command lsblk:

```
lsblk
```

# Usually the device will appear as something like /dev/sda or /dev/sdb, if there are numbers following sda/sdb, those are partitions.
# It means there is something already written to the sd card, be sure you're ok with deleting and repartitioning the drive.

# To repartition the drive, use the fdisk cli:

```
sudo fdisk /dev/sda
```

# Type o to clear out any partitions on the drive.
# Type p to list the partitions, there shouldn't be any left.
# Write the partition table and exit by typing w.

# If you're using this guide to partition a standard drive larger than 2TB, fdisk won't be able to, but you can use parted instead:

```
parted /dev/sda
```

In the prompt you can create a new GPT table:

```
(parted) mklabel gpt

Warning: The existing disk label on /dev/sdb will be destroyed and all data on this disk will be lost. Do you want to continue?
Yes/No? yes

(parted) unit TB

(parted mkpart primary) 0.00TB 3.00 TB (replace latter with size of partition)

(parted) print

(parted) quit

Then continue by making the ext4 filesystem (see below)
```

# Create the ext4 filesystem:

```
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda
```

# Copy rpi image to sd card using dd:

```
sudo dd if=/path/to/rpi_image.img of=/dev/sda
```

# Depending on the size of the image, this might take a while, there won't be any progress bar or anything , but remain patient,
# it will write the img eventually and then you're all set.