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Old 08-14-2011, 07:39 PM   #1
TigerLinux
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Linux distros for USB drive


Now USB drive is cheap.
I plan to buy a 8 GB USB drive and install linux on it, to be bootable one.
Can you suggest to me which linux distro supports USB drive very well, and easy to install?
 
Old 08-14-2011, 07:44 PM   #2
TobiSGD
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All. Also depends on what you mean with easy to install, you can install any distro with its standard installer.
 
Old 08-14-2011, 08:56 PM   #3
qlue
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Ubuntu is a good bet as it tends to run 'out of the box' on most hardware! It's installer is also pretty good.
 
Old 08-14-2011, 10:08 PM   #4
TigerLinux
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The bootloader is also installed in the flash drive?
 
Old 08-14-2011, 10:10 PM   #5
TigerLinux
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A 16GB flash drive would be better.
 
Old 08-14-2011, 10:16 PM   #6
TobiSGD
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TigerLinux View Post
The bootloader is also installed in the flash drive?
Off course.
 
Old 08-15-2011, 02:57 AM   #7
EmaRsk
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If you choose a live distro you don't even really need to install it, you just put it on the USB with unetbootin.
 
Old 08-15-2011, 02:59 AM   #8
EmaRsk
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If you choose a live distro you don't even really need to install it, you just put it on the USB with unetbootin.

@qlue "Its installer"
@TobiSGD "Of course"
 
Old 08-15-2011, 05:58 AM   #9
nkd
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I would recommend ubuntu. I am personally using ubuntu 10.10 on a 8GB usb stick. I have installed
metasploit, nmap, postgresql, wireshark, conky, gimp, vlc and nessus, on it !
It's fabulous.

BTW after you have done the customization of your installation, donot forget to backup the usb using a
dd command and create a image. You never know when you get an error on your usb and have to do a reinstall.
So just doing it from the image will be better
and easy.

bye
nishith
 
Old 08-15-2011, 06:02 AM   #10
floppy_stuttgart
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TigerLinux View Post
Now USB drive is cheap.
I plan to buy a 8 GB USB drive and install linux on it, to be bootable one.
Can you suggest to me which linux distro supports USB drive very well, and easy to install?
I made a 8GB CFcard+USB-Adapter with
- Knoppix 6.2 (the USB-Install menue of Knoppix started with CDROM, made automatically the FAT32 format and installed the syslinux)
- Slitaz 3.0
- PuppyLinux
- TinyCoreLinux
- PartedMagic
- I adapted the syslinux.cfg for start of all distros above (see the knoppix forum).
- etc.

Next time, I will try to make following:
- TinyCoreLinux start with CD
- install TinyCoreLinux on USB with ext3 format
- and see if knoppix 6.2 and others distros works fine
(I was informed FAT32 will be corrupted one time; not ext3).
 
Old 08-15-2011, 07:49 AM   #11
thorkelljarl
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Mint...

Mint and the other derivatives of Ubuntu have an easy to use installer for formatting and making a persistent USB flash drive installation from a live CD/DVD.

The Mint live-DVD has the advantage of having many media player programs already configured, and is what I used to make my 8GB USB. It even finds and configures mobile broadband service connections.
 
Old 08-15-2011, 08:48 AM   #12
TigerLinux
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How fast the usb linux will boot? Much slower than booting from HDD?

 
Old 08-15-2011, 08:50 AM   #13
TobiSGD
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It depends. While the access time for single files is much faster on USB the transfer rate is significantly slower. So it depends on the distro.
 
Old 08-15-2011, 11:28 AM   #14
TigerLinux
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I hope in the future we will have USB 3.0 flash drive which is 10 times faster.
 
Old 08-15-2011, 11:29 AM   #15
TobiSGD
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Only on computers with USB 3.0 port, the flash drive alone is not sufficient.
 
  


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