Create a Windows 11 Bootable USB on Linux with WoeUSB

Overview

NeoWin tech media published a post describing how to use the WoeUSB tool to create a Windows 11 installation USB on Ubuntu or other Linux distributions. The article follows the experience of editor Paul Hill, who switched his laptop from Linux back to Windows 11 and documented the process.

Installing the command‑line version of WoeUSB

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tomtomtom/woeusb

sudo apt update

sudo apt install woeusb

Identify the target USB drive

Before inserting the USB stick, run lsblk to list current block devices. After plugging in the USB, run lsblk again and compare the outputs to find the new device identifier (for example sdb).

Write the Windows 11 ISO to the USB

Replace sdX with your USB identifier and /path/to/file.iso with the full path to the Windows 11 ISO file. This operation erases all data on the USB, so verify the identifier carefully.

sudo woeusb --target-filesystem NTFS --device '/path/to/file.iso' /dev/sdX

The writing process takes a few minutes; once it completes you can reboot the computer and boot from the USB to install Windows 11.