No BS. Just the terminal and straightforward steps to format a USB drive in Linux:

1. Locate the USB drive.
2. Unmount and format the USB drive.
3. Verify the process was successful.

1. Locate the USB drive

Use this command to locate your USB drive. In my case (when I plugged in my USB on my PopOS desktop), it is /dev/sda.

df

Man page:

df - report file system disk space usage

2. Unmount and format

We will use FAT32 filesystem, because it is ideal since it offers maximum compatibility on Windows, Mac, and Linux. To build FAT32 filesystem on your USB drive, run:

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sda

Make sure to use your location. I used /dev/sda because it is my location.

Man page:

mkfs - build a Linux filesystem

mkfs.fat - create an MS-DOS FAT filesystem

3. Verify the process

sudo fsck /dev/sda

Man page:

fsck - check and repair a Linux filesystem

A USB drive with no files indicates successful formatting. Something like this:

/dev/sda: 0 files, ......

DONE!