Linux on USB stick

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Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
7,318
Location
Melbourne
Hi,

Looking to ditch Windows for Linux on my work lappy, but cannot really mess with my Windows drive, as I risk invalidating my IT support, and seeing as I work abroad on customer sites a lot, a corrupt software installation would be a disaster!

My solution is to run Arch Linux off a USB stick and then access all my documents on the Windows HDD so I have a permenant state of synch between Windows and Linux.

Has anyone ever used Linux off a USB pen drive for extended periods? Do you get issues with corrupt segments or anything after several r/w activities? Also what is it like speed- wise?

Thanks
 
Do a search Its been posted loads of times. you'll find your answer honest, just cant be bothered to re-post info :p
 
http://www.puppylinux.org/

Puppylinux is only 100mb and you can have it set to run totally in ram from a USB stick and it will only access your windows drive if you tell the file manager to mount that HDD.

Your have to burn the ISO to CD or DVD first then do a USB install.It's very easy and Puppy linux auto detects most of the hardware.



puppy-4.00-screenshot2.jpg
 
I am currently experimenting with FaunOS.... It is absolutely superb, but I can't get it to save anything to my 8GB media at the moment :/
 
In a similar boat myself at my new job, currently using XP however we need admin rights to install things to the C: although we can install to the desktop. Now, I know that doesnt seem too bad however the problem lies in the fact that we need MSN Chat and Flash installed in order to do our job. Which we can't install!!

What I was wondering was, is there a light weight distro that would allow me to run linux, use the flash drive to install everything too but still allow me to use my work programs on the XP c:??

Most important is to have firefox running with the latest plugins as we need them to view the websites? IT is down in London and not due back up for about 2 weeks :(
 
AHarvey said:
In a similar boat myself at my new job, currently using XP however we need admin rights to install things to the C: although we can install to the desktop. Now, I know that doesnt seem too bad however the problem lies in the fact that we need MSN Chat and Flash installed in order to do our job. Which we can't install!!

What I was wondering was, is there a light weight distro that would allow me to run linux, use the flash drive to install everything too but still allow me to use my work programs on the XP c:??

Most important is to have firefox running with the latest plugins as we need them to view the websites? IT is down in London and not due back up for about 2 weeks :(
Click to expand...

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

I have used http://www.mcnlive.org/ which is handy because you can basically roll your own liveCD/usb, but it's based on mandriva 2005 so it's a little outdated but you could probably get ff 3 running.
udev causes some problems with the network setup if you change machines frequently too, but if you are just using it on one machine it will be fine.
 
I have just done the pendrivelinux and it works fine although at this point I have no idea exactly what I have ended up with :eek:.

I can boot to Linux on my laptop from the SD Card (internal card reader on my Dell D420 laptop is not bootable it seems) but I had to follow the instructions totally. A couple of attempts to install from the Live CD and have Grub as the boot loaded installed Grub to my hd0 (windows drive) and not my Sd Card. Only issues I have now is the Sandisk Micromate blocks both USB sockets on the back of the laptop.....

Bottom line is the pendrive instructions work fine if you follow them to the letter.

RB
 
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