Creating a single bootable USB device

OF the various pieces of software one could use for creating a bootable USB drive some of the more popular are:

1. Rufus
2. Pendrive linux – Universal USB installer
3. balenaEtcher
4. nLite / NTLite

Windows and MAC both have ways to create a bootable thumbdrive directly from the operating system. The limits of these are that

1. They only create the drive for the operating system you are on.
2. Unless you designate it otherwise, you will be limited to the same version of the OS you create the drive from
3. You generally cannot “slipstream” other items into your installation, with some exceptions.

This begs the question: What is slipstreaming, and why is it important? According to my AI, slipstreaming is:

Slipstreaming, in the context of computer imaging, refers to merging updates, patches, or other files into the original installation sources of a program, like Windows, before creating an image. This allows for a faster and potentially more reliable deployment of the image to other machines, as the updates are already included. Instead of installing updates after the image is deployed, they are pre-applied. 

The importance is that if you have an image of, say Windows 11, and want to include the latest windows updates, some essential drivers, maybe some other software, you can do this while creating the image instead of bloating the install aftewrwards by doing individual installs (and operating systems like windows gets easily bloated). Number 4 above, nLite/NTLite, does an excellent job of imaging and slipstreaming at the same time, resulting in an image that can be more easily used.