At least with Debian you can try to write it directly to the USB stick with dd, it doesn't need software like Unetbootin.

I tried that, but I'm having trouble with dd.

Here is the command I am using. I have unmounted the blank memory stick at sdc. The source iso is on another memory stick:

/home/steve# dd if="/media/C08D-ABF3/My stuff/debian-live-6.0.5-i386-xfce-desktop.iso" of=/dev/sdc


It takes absolutely ages. The target memory stick is flashing, but after about 15 minutes I give up and the console displays:

3161510+0 records in
3161510+0 records out
1618693120 bytes (1.6 GB) copied, 816.381 s, 2.0 MB/s

I check the target memory stick - nothing there, still empty.

Am I using dd wrongly?

That will happen if you exectue your dd code while /dev/sdc1 is mounted.

I went into GParted and thought I had unmounted the device. Did GParted only unmount the partition then?

Can you just confirm that the correct shell command in my case to unmount is:

umount /dev/sdc

umount /dev/sdc1

Thank you, I shall try again tomorrow. Cannot all distro ISO's be extracted to memory sticks using DD then? If not, what defines which ones can and can't?

With regard to my original query, I have found that the Linux Mint ISO I downloaded (linuxmint-12-lxde), once written to a CD, did load okay on my laptop, and connected wirelessly to the internet once I had entered the correct details into its network manager. So I will install Mint to the laptop in due course, since it worked okay in Live mode. I've never used Mint before, only Ubuntu, so it will be a good experience in using a slightly different distro.

To be able to write an ISO to a stick with dd it must be in the hybrid-iso format. While this is true for many distros, unfortunately Ubuntu and many derivatives don't deliver their ISOs in that format.

Have you tried Slackware? The Pentium M CPU is supported on Slackware through the normal kernel for 32-bit, but not the SMP kernel.

I've never used Slackware, but from the information I have read about it, it requires significant knowledge of Linux systems in order to set up and use correctly. Is my knowledge out of date, and it is now much easier to use?

"Ubuntu's stick was formatted FAT32 but DSL's was formatted FAT16 (go figure...). Can some BIOS's only USB-boot from FAT16-formatted sticks?!"

Well, maybe but might be an issue with syslinux/isolinux. That system ought to boot to most any modern distro. Another issue might be how your usb is being seen by the bios.

I'd go to pendrivelinux.com for some ideas to try for getting linux on a disk. If you only want to install the OS, you don't need to have a dd iso to usb. You can use any live usb install.

Which filesystems are supported for boot is solely dependent on the bootloader. The BIOS doesn't care at all about filesystems, it simply reads the bootloader from the MBR and hands control over to it, the BIOS' job is done at that point.