usb based distros

schneidz · 10-13-2008, 09:58 AM

are there any other distros that do usb booting like slax does. which means that the remaining space on the usb drive is writable so i can install programs without using some persistent file.

i tried fedora and knoppix and they create a persistent overlay file that can be written to but that isnt what i prefer.

ideas ?

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also i installed pendrivelinux using my desktop but then it flaked when i booted it on my laptop trying to mount mountpoints that dont exist on my laptop.

SkyEye · 10-13-2008, 12:40 PM

I'm not sure what you are exactly looking for, but Fedora can be installed on a USB drive and you could use that drive to carry around data and so on. And I guess there are many other distros supporting building such an installation fairly easily.

schneidz · 10-13-2008, 02:05 PM

yeah but in fedora-9-live-usb it creates a persistent-overlay file which is a sparse file containing a virtual-file-system that can be used for storage. the problem with that is when it gets full it is prone to making the system un-bootable.

i would prefer to save my changes in a normal (read fat or ext2) filesysytem where my usb disk is mounted (in my case /mnt/sdb1).

fair_is_fair · 10-13-2008, 03:54 PM

Look at Puppy. It's universal installer makes usb drive installs a snap. I know you can install and save everything and I'm pretty sure you can partition the drive with a storage partition if you need to.

http://www.puppylinux.org/