[TriLUG] Portable Linux (Bootable USB Flash Drive) Creation?

btncix btncix btncix at gmail.com
Wed Aug 24 18:48:00 EDT 2011


I second the Slax distro, but I haven't played with this for quite some
time. A minor/medium issue with Slax use to be that you had to wait for the
experts to update the modular applications for the distro. I don't the how
things are currently.

With computers that have bios options to allow booting from a USB, it's not
hard to install a Linux distro onto a flash drive - like Reggie said, just
treat the flash drive as a regular hard drive when doing the install. I
think the big issue to consider is Xorg. Unfortunately, I don't know enough
about Xorg to help you with this. Fortunately, from my experience, most
distros these days handle the Xorg setup automatically fairly well.

I recommend people interested in this topic to consider the Slitaz distro.
Other distros to consider are TinyCore, Puppy, and DamnSmall Linux. I've
used Slitaz before, and I was quite impressed. It was less than 30 MB with
the ability to add additional applications.

-Sean




On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Igor Partola <igor at igorpartola.com> wrote:

> I believe Ubuntu can do this using the built-in Startup Disk Creator. You
> can allot some amount of space to keep the changes you make to the system.
> I've never used this feature, but from what I understand it does what you
> need. In the past I used Slax (http://www.slax.org/) for a USB flash drive
> OS, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
>
> Igor
>
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Scott Thomas <chemikalguy at yahoo.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Can someone point me in the right direction on creation of a bootable USB
> > flash drive Linux distro? I've used the Fedora USB creation software, and
> > LiLi and LiveUSB Creator, but they use the LiveCD versions of the
> distros,
> > so when you boot the flash drive, it 'thinks' it's running from a liveCD,
> so
> > you can't install software, etc. I want a distro I can install to a usb
> > flash drive, drop in my pocket, and use it anywhere I go, being able to
> save
> > files, install software, etc.
> >
> > Am I asking too much?
> >
> > Scott
> > --
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