balenaEtcher vs TFLint

balenaEtcher flashes operating system images to SD cards and USB drives, and can create USB installation media from bootable ISOs. Its three-step interface requires no command line. After flashing, it confirms completion to help users check that a card can boot and is not corrupted. To reduce the risk of choosing the wrong target, it warns users and hides system drives by default. Flashing erases the entire target drive and replaces its data. Etcher runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows: listed support covers most Linux distributions on Intel 64-bit systems, Windows 10 and later on Intel 64-bit systems, and macOS 10.13 and later on Intel and Apple Silicon. It can directly flash Raspberry Pi devices that support USB device boot mode. Etcher is free and open source. It does not configure persistent storage for live USB drives, and Windows images may need special boot preparation that Etcher is not designed to perform.

TFLint is a local command-line linter for Terraform, with checks supplied by plugins. Its bundled language rules can flag deprecated syntax and unused declarations, while cloud-specific checks look for potential errors in AWS, Azure and GCP configurations, including invalid instance types. It can also enforce best practices and naming conventions. Extend it with plugins, create your own, or write policies in Rego. An optional `--fix` flag can correct issues automatically, and reports can be emitted in default, JSON, Checkstyle, JUnit, compact or SARIF formats. TFLint runs on Linux, macOS and Windows and is free, with no free trial. The project provides a GitHub Action and Docker image; installation options include Homebrew, WinGet and Go. Most files use MPL 2.0, some files in the Terraform package use BUSL 1.1, and release binaries are bound by both licenses. The project recommends verifying release checksums with GitHub CLI artifact attestations and identifies Cosign signatures as deprecated.