I will not be able to update to Windows 11, as I have a 6 bit display, so I thought that I could use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, since they have security updates until 2025. I need to be able to use Ubuntu, for web browsing, as I have used Windows 10. I will need to be able to update any drivers needed. I read that it can not be done from a live USB with persistent storage. I am assuming that it is the same for an external HDD. I do not want to open up my laptop and install a new HDD, as I have damaged the enclosure, and do not want to risk it. My primary concern is that I can have a functional and secure web connection, as all I use a laptop for is watching YouTube, and paying bills.

Ubuntu will include (and manage updates of) the Intel drm driver package (i915) automatically - you don't need to go 'fetch' an exe as you would with Windows. Does this address your question? (there are a lot of other things going in your post)

Your choices may be to consider a free virtual machine.

You can use a flash drive or external hard drive to put a full real install of linux on.
You can create it on a desktop where you are able to remove the internal drive data/power to prevent any wrong choice on installing.

One would need to know state of your system uefi/secure boot so that the desktop also creates a uefi.

Ubuntu's drivers for Intel IGPs, like those of other distros, have their genesis in multiple upstream sources. Lower levels are in kernel modules packaged with each individual kernel and usable only with the kernels they accompany. Higher levels come from projects supporting Xorg and Wayland. The packaging of these components coming from upstream, like kernels and their modules, are the responsibility of various parties and QA teams dedicated to building and packaging of the upstream sources. The distros' package management systems take care of providing these various driver packages and updates and upgrades to them automatically, right along with updates and upgrades to other software from the various distros' FOSS repositories.

For all practical purposes in all recent and not that recent distros, there is only one optimal base level X driver for Intel IGPs, the Modesetting Device Independent Driver (DIX) included in the package providing the Xorg server. There exists an Intel Device Dependent Driver (DDX) that hasn't had an official release in about 8 years. It's been unofficially deprecated since the mainstreaming of the Modesetting DIX. Some users in some environments, usually due to unfixed bugs, may enjoy better behavior with the DDX, but the majority of optimal behavior comes from use of the DIX, along with optimal selection of higher level drivers, among which Mesa, OpenGL, VAAPI and Vulkan. Examples are highlighted in bold below:

I am more confused after reading these responses. I meant to post this in the newbie section? Uh, can I use Ubuntu 20.04 from a live USB/external hard drive, and have the OS be completely secure and functional, or do I need to install the OS on an internal hard drive?

Your original post was not very clear (go ahead and re-read it) - it contains no singular question. So getting myriad responses is not surprising.


That's where it is now - I don't know if it was moved here or not.

Yes. The iso that you download from Canonial will support non-persistent live booting (meaning you can run the full desktop version of Ubuntu, but any changes you make won't survive a reboot), as well as installing to a local system. You can use an external hard drive as the install target but performance may or may not be 'good' depending on how the drive is connected and its specifics (just a few years ago I would've said 'will be awful no matter what' but some external drives these days can approach 1000MB/s over USB-C, which is nothing to sneeze at). You didn't specify much about your hardware so it's hard to give clear guidance on whether or not this is a 'good' or 'bad' idea. If you want a persistent live image, see this guide for some information: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/1491...b-flash-drive/

'Completely secure' is nebulous - nothing can gurantee 100% security (and anyonew who says otherwise is trying to sell you someting), but it will be as secure as Ubuntu is, relative to user choices. I'm not sure what you mean by '[completely] functional' - hopefully the answer above at least gives you a starting off point to answer that for yourself.

As far as 'need to install to internal hard drive' - explicitly? no. Ideally? Yeah that is probably the easiest way to go about doing things, but again per my response above, and depending on your hardware, specific use-case, etc it isn't explicitly required. If you're looking for something that runs from a pendrive you may also consider another distro, are there some (like for example Puppy Linux) that are designed to run that way out of the box. Performance there (again, with modern USB-C or 3.x devices) can also be pretty good, it just comes down to the specifics of your machine, your use-case and requirements, etc as to what is the best choice. There's not really a single 'right answer' to what you should do, but there's many options for what you can do.

This is quoted from the link in your post. "You can’t modify system files, like the kernel. You can’t perform major system upgrades. You also can’t install hardware drivers." A post that I had read prior to asking the question. I understand this to mean that persistent USB drives will make Ubuntu 20.04 LTS less functional and secure, where networking is concerned. Is this true? Is this also the case for external SSDs?

The first part of that quote is true, your assumption is incorrect. Any Linux system can be installed to an external drive and be as function as it would be on an internal drive. You're confusing Linux with windows as windows cannot be installed to an external drive with the standard installer. You need to understand Linux naming conventions for hard drives and partition so you get the correct drive. It's usually easier to remove the windows drive unless you have a laptop as in your case. The link below gives some information on dual booting with Ubuntu/Windows on UEFI which should be helpful. It is also the official Ubuntu documentation. One thing you need to watch for is that Ubuntu (if your machine is UEFI) with the Ubiquity installer, will install the UEFI files to the first UEFI partition it finds which will be the one on the windows drive. It would be best if you could disable the windows drive in the BIOS firmware. If you have more questions after reading the Ubuntu documentation, post back.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

In addition to yancek's (excellent) points:

What this means is that your persistent USB install (and *only* a persistent USB install) is more or less set to the version you start out with (so for example Ubuntu 20.04) - that doesn't mean it has 'no drivers' or anything of the sort (again, this is *not* Windows - you don't need to be going out every-which-way and downloading a bunch of random exes from the web just to have basic functionality, as many drivers will be included in the distro). If you read the rest of the paragraph you're quoting, the author also writes:

Taken together, what this tells you is that you'd get (for example) 20.04, and when you wanted to upgrade to (for example) 22.04, you'd need to set-up a new persistent USB drive. This is, as the author implies, somewhat limited compared to a typical ('standard') installation, which can usually be upgraded in situ (although its still a really good idea to back-up any important user data before such an upgrade, and it may be faster to just do a clean over-install of the new release too).

You still have not specified what your target application is though, so it's impossible to know whether or not these limitations are something you will encounter, need to worry about, etc - playing detective through your replies to this thread your original question is becoming a bit more clear (probably along the lines of: "I want a linux distribution to replace Windows, and have selected Ubuntu 20.04 - what do I need to make it work?"), but I think this is very much an example of an XY problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem) in action.

Nobody could know this but you, unless you told us. I'm not trying to go after you here, please understand, just trying to help you ask better questions so you can get better answers.

The direct (and likely unsatisfying) answer here is: "it depends." Linux distributions are not Windows, and will generally include a great many drivers 'out of the box,' however if you need some specific package that isn't included in that way, it could require additional steps to get working (a common example is the nvidia proprietary driver). For networking I would expect pretty good coverage of anything reasonably modern, with potential gaps at both the bleeding edge and ancient history. The best way to figure out if you need to manually load anything would be to try live booting the distro of choice - this is not a 'persistent USB' install, just grab the live image (in Ubuntu's case this is the same as the install image) and boot it up. If everything works, then you're set; if something doesn't, then you have to investigate it.

Security is a secondary question - generally application updates (especially the web browser) is where you should be more worried for a standard desktop/laptop/etc, as that's where the most typical attacks will come from (and the persistent image can take those), however that doesn't mean the kernel doesn't get security updates from time to time. If you're using a persistent USB image, you will need to remake the image from time to time to receive those updates, but if you're installed on-disk those updates will be handled (by default) by the package manager in the course of regular system updates (which will also grab your application updates). If your goal is a persistent USB image for a pendrive, there are distros I would look at instead of Ubuntu, which are better documented and 'designed' (for lack of a better word) around that use-case, like Puppy Linux or TAILS, or read through PC Linux OS' documentation for persistent USB booting (but as should be obvious: technically this can be done with any distro, as with Ubuntu, its just in some cases folks have worked out more details and automated more of it).

No. See yancek's post for more details. If your goal is to replace Windows then you can safely ignore concerns about dual-booting in a UEFI environment (assuming your system is UEFI, which is a safe guess if it's semi-recent), and just let the Ubuntu installer clobber the entire Windows install and its attendant partitions.

If your entire use-case is browser-based, this is probably the easier approach (versus dual-booting) as you can run Firefox or Chromium in linux just the same as in Windows, but if you have specific applications that run in Windows as well, you should consider if they: A) exist for linux or B) have linux alternatives or C) can be run in WINE or D) will run well enough (performance wise) in a VM. Only after exhausting all of those scenarios, would I consider dual-booting (and all of the additional administration and potential headaches that go along with it).

The kernel security thing and the browser update thing, from obobskivich, has satisfied my curiosity. Thanks to all who gave their time and energy to answer my gobbledygook. As for asking better questions: I cannot make any promises. To those who respond: may God give you strength.