How to install Linux on a USB flash drive. Nothing can beat having a great Linux distro installed on a super- fast hard drive, with all your favourite apps configured just how you like them and all your files at your fingertips. But this has one major drawback: perfect as your setup is, it's also just one machine, and sooner or later you'll be forced to leave that computer behind and use something else. Something that might run Windows. Something that might not even have Firefox. Because no one likes being parted from their data for too long, we present a smarter option: store it all on a USB flash drive.. In older days, you were able to store Linux on a CD and use a flash drive just to save changes. After some advancements, you were able to run Linux straight from the flash drive, but it didn't store any changes you made. But the latest generation of Linux distros - namely Ubuntu 8. Fedora 9 - have a memory overlay system that allows you to store your Linux distro and any changes you make to it on a single flash drive. Sure, you'll need at least 1. GB to be able to fit the entire distro on there, but it does mean everything you need is all on the one device. Once you switch your install to a flash drive, it means you can take it pretty much anywhere and get back to work immediately. Whether you're using a server, a desktop or even a tiny little Aspire One or Eee PC, the vast majority of modern computers support booting straight from USB, so you can just plug in your drive and go. You'll need a flash drive with at least 1. GB of free space, and ISO images of either Ubuntu 8. Fedora 9. It's likely there are other distros out there that work with similar or perhaps even identical instructions, but Ubuntu and Fedora are the big two so we stuck with them. One of the first thing you encounter when switching to free software are people who want to let you know all a bout the difference between free beer and free speech, and that's all very nice. But for most us, nearly all our software is free of cost and free to modify, so in our minds we balk at the idea of paying for functionality. However, if you want to put Linux on a flash drive you really do have to fork out and buy some hardware, so if you don't already have a good flash drive you need to read this first. There are five things you'll want to consider when buying the perfect flash drive for Linux. If we order them with the most important first, it looks like this: Reliability. This is easily the most important thing to care about, because it doesn't matter how cheap, fast and spacious a flash drive is when it dies after 2. If losing your data is simply not an option (and, let's face it, that's almost certainly the case), go for a brand name you trust - we chose Corsair, because it's a company with a huge amount of experience making quality flash drives, and its Flash Voyager range is designed to be water- and shock- proof. Cost. This is always going to be a consideration, but fortunately flash prices have dropped dramatically in recent years - whereas 2. MB drives used to be £6. GB drives for the same price. That's over 1. 00 times the capacity for the same price! Capacity. 1. GB is the absolute minimum needed to get started, but it really depends on how much data you want to store - and also how much extra software you want to install. Associating the files with patches. The "WINDOWS\Installer\" folder has several key sub-folders. You can search for the sub-folder name (without the braces {}) in the.Danny, I have tried to install Ubuntu on my HP Envy(bought in July 2013), both with Windows and, eventually without; after last summer's "Security Update" borked. If cost is an issue, the best value drive sizes right now are 4. GB or 8. GB. Speed. The simple rule here is "pay more, get more". Companies such as OCZ and Corsair specialise in high- performance devices - Corsair even makes a special range of flash drives (known as 'GT') that are made from extra- fast components. Remember, your entire computer will be running from this tiny device, so only go for a slow drive if you're a very, very patient person. Size. Arguably the least important consideration is the actual physical size of the flash drive. Even if you needed to upgrade your current computer, it’s probably easier to adjust to a new version of Windows, than to learn a completely different operating. This guide shows how to make a bootable USB of Windows operating system to quickly install Windows from a USB drive instead of DVD. This isn't usually a problem because all flash drives are necessarily small, and it's only if you're after a particularly tiny one that you even need to consider this. San. Disk's Cruzer Micro and Corsair's Flash Voyager Mini both come in 4. GB and 8. GB capacities, despite being less than half the size of conventional drives. Make your choice. There are two distinct ways of running Linux from a flash drive, but we'll only be covering one of them here - and for good reason, as you'll see. The two ways are: using your flash drive as a Live CD, and using the drive as a full Linux install. Perhaps surprisingly, the first option is the better one for several reasons: Live CDs scan the hardware at boot time, and so are likely to be compatible with the most machines. Live CDs must by necessity have a small footprint, which means there's more space for your files - or you can just buy a smaller, cheaper drive. Live CDs run as much as they can in RAM, which makes for better performance. Live CDs don't use swap. That last point is actually the most important one of all: Linux makes extensive use of hard drives to save temporary data, and if you treat your flash drive as a real hard drive then Linux will use it for swap, too. The problem is that flash drives, like all flash memory devices, have a limited number of times they can be written to before they fail. Most drives are able to withstand 1. Again, this is a reliability factor, so if you care for keeping your data intact for a long time it's worth you buying a trusted brand. Just how fast is it? As fast as flash memory is compared with mechanical hard disks, it's still limited by the throughput of USB. But on the upside, the lack of swap availability means that Linux will take advantage of your RAM much more, which means the most commonly accessed data will be just as fast if not faster when using USB drives. If you're used to using a Live CD, you'll also be pleased to know there's much less noise (the triple- digit decibel whir of a busy DVD drive is, of course, absent with flash drives), and there's also none of the latency that usually happens when the OS lets the DVD drive go idle. On the flip side, the nature of Live distros means they must detect their environment during boot up, so expect boot times to be a bit longer. Do it with Ubuntu. Ubuntu 8. 1. 0 doesn't contain much in the 'wow' department, but it does come with a USB installation wizard as standard. This works by mimicking the Casper system of running a live operating system from read- only media - with the exception that flash drives aren't read- only, so you can actually make changes to the OS. Even after Ubuntu is installed to your drive, it still looks and feels as if it works in Live mode, so you'll be prompted to choose a language when it boots up. This might seem like an annoyance, but it does come with the added bonus that the Ubuntu hard disk installer is always within reach - you can use your flash drive as an Ubuntu installer on as many PCs as you want. Get Ubuntu on your flash drive. Start the app. Plug in the drive - Once the app is running, go ahead and plug in your flash drive. Ubuntu will automatically mount the drive, and it will appear in the USB startup disk window. Download Ubuntu - Now download the version of Ubuntu you want to use. It doesn't matter whether it's 3. LTS or 8. 1. 0. If you have an Ubuntu CD handy, you can use that. Select your ISO - Click on the Other button to choose the ISO you just downloaded. If you have a real CD, it should be auto- detected. Choose free space - Make sure you specify that documents and settings be stored in reserved extra space, then drag the slider up as far as you want it. Don't worry - the space for the Live CD image is automatically deducted. Sit back and wait - When you're ready, click Make Startup Disk, then sit back and wait - it will take a few minutes to copy the image, and if you have a large flash drive you can expect it to take up to 1. Reboot your PC - When the installer finishes, click Quit then reboot your computer. This is the tricky part: you need to press a key to get to your BIOS boot screen then choose the right device. Booting from your flash drive. The more advanced your motherboard, the more options you will have to boot from. But sometimes even the best motherboards don't have a USB booting option - even though they support it. To get started, read the BIOS output when your computer boots up and note down which key you have to press to select your boot device. Some BIOSes don't have such a screen, so you may need to go into the setup system to manually reorder your boot devices.
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November 2017
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