I recently picked up a AMD Athlon Laptop running windows vista. I want to run Linux from a USB drive. Can I do this without installing it to the hard drive? Which is a good Distro for this?

I think you can install (the way you can save changes) to usb Ubuntu and Debian too.

1 members found this post helpful.

Try TinyCore. There are instructions on the site.
DSL works for this also.

I heard that Knoppix (the original LiveCD and still arguably the best) has a USB option, but I have not researched it.

Nearly every active live distro has a USB option and instructions. It really is a nice way to go. I use it often.

1 members found this post helpful.

Are you meaning to install a Live CD to a flash drive? You should be able to do that with pretty much any Linux distribution as well as install to the flash. You are not very specific on what your intentions are.

1 members found this post helpful.

There are a few ways to use a usb on a newish computer.

One is to just take your distro and install it to the usb just like it was a real hard drive. Be careful though.

Second is to use one of the how to's at www.pendrivelinux.com and use either or not persistence.

There are some ways also to use some iso files there if you don't want to create a live usb as such.

Many disto's now offer a usb or hybrid image to just use the command dd to copy it to the usb.

Others like the LPS offer a batch file to copy the data.


Some folks might consider a virtual machine to use also.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes, I was thinking a live CD to a flash drive. That way I could leave the software in the Laptop the way it is. I am currently using a Mac Mini, and a Firewall running Slackware Linux. A very helpful Systems Administrator helped me get started using Linux years ago.But it has been a very steep learning curve for me. Anyways I bought a switch, and was trying to put the Laptop on this home network. It seems impossible to assign a static IP address with Vista, so I thought it would be easier to do it using Linux. Also could I be able to use Linux at a Wi-Fi hotspot safely?

Although I've never used Vista, I, for some reason, doubt that very much

If you are using vista and want to put any Linux version on a flash, you can go to the unetbootin site, download the version of it for windows to your vista partition, download whichever Linux version you want and use the unetbootin program to create a bootable flash drive. You can also use a program called "pendrivelinux". Googling either name should get you the site. If you create it successfully, you will have a Live CD on the flash which will be read-only. If you want to write to it, read about persistence.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yeah, go to www.pendrivelinux.com. It has lots of good info.

SLAX is a distro made to run from a pen drive. It is well organized and mature. It's my standard recommendation for your question.
--- rod.