I am 79 years young. I had a home invasion was beaten, had a heart attack, spent 5 days in St Lukes Hospital. My home was looted and vandalized. I was given a decent desk top running Windows XP, but if installed, it can run Windows 7. I wish to use Linux.

Several years ago, I tried to install a dual boot Linux on a new, top of the line HP laptop. It had the new Windows 7 OS already installed. I made a terrible mess of it, lost weeks, and had to pay to have my machine professionally fixed.

With a shrinking pension, I need a new OS at low cost; hence, Linux is a no-brainer. Because of past problems, I would like to run Linux from a stick until I become proficient with Linux.

All suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Is there a listing of local Linux Clubs? If not, starting a central listing would definitely help expand Linux usage; just a thought.

Thanx, nicholas1935.

try MX-14 (website in my signature below). The current 14.2 has persistence options for running a full system on a liveusb, and its pretty easy to set up.

Hi Nicholas
You might be interested in trying several flavors of Linux from a USB drive.
Check out this link http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-mu...t-usb-creator/
I have found that installing a modern versions of Linux with GRUB2 seem to find the Windows 7 okay and give you a multi-boot system easily.

Thank you very much for devoting time and effort to assist me. Your response was instantaneous and a pleasant surprise.

The MX Intro truly impressed me. Unfortunately, my simple mind was unable to retain the majority of the lengthy verbiage.

The installation tutorial stalled at 19:47. I was able to restart it, however, the audio was now imperceptible. I attribute these problems to my ancient computer. I only have a 20 inch screen, and with You Tube, expanded view and a three power magnifying glass, for my aged eyes the type was difficult to read.

In my old age, I was not able to retain much of the lengthy, unfamiliar verbal instructions. I guess I am spoiled with the Windows procedures, which are more directed to the pablum crowd, and are printed out step by step. Kindly forgive my limitations. As a retired Engineer, I am too imbued with the olden KISS ideology. This experience brought into focus an episode from my early career; an experienced test technician couldn't use a test set I designed and wrote the test procedure for. It was so simple, why didn't he understand? Ah, the foibles I committed as a young engineer are sad history.

Nonetheless, safe in the knowledge that any blunders would be confined to the flash drive, I attempted to download. After diddling around for too long and still couldn't download, I grew weary and gave up.

Thank you for the kindness shown me. n.

I have heard several people who had issues when trusting the installer to automagically do things correctly. I personally would always do the partitioning manually.

Use your favorite search engine to search for "linux user group <cityname>".

As far as live distro recommendations you could try puppy linux.

It has a lot of helpful information integrated in the GUI. And it also allows you to set up persistance.

The only USB install I've set up with persistence was Knoppix:
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

It's designed to be run in live mode from a CD/DVD/USB, and it can be set up with persistence (so any changes you make and files you save "persist" through a reboot, with most live installations all changes are lost when you reboot).

It worked well, good support for the machine and its hardware. I did run into some USB corruption issues before too long though, which I've heard can be a problem with persistent live installations. So if you decide to go this route, I recommend against performing operating system updates, as they will increase the likelihood of this occurring.

Unfortunately though, I was already a Linux "power user" (to use Windows terms), so I never really explored Knoppix's usability through the menus and graphical interfaces, and can't comment on them. For what I needed though, I was satisfied with it, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to others in the same situation.

To install it on a USB, you simply need to download the .iso file from their site. Here's just one link, but you can find many others from their website linked earlier in my post:
http://knoppix.hostingxtreme.com/KNO...2-12-21-EN.iso

Then follow the instructions here to load it onto a USB drive:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/install...ve-in-windows/

Hi, Nicolas.
You can try using Ubuntu on your USB memory stick. Ubuntu is very user-friendly, and has a giant community thanks to Canonical. The .iso file is also only 900 MB. If you are using Windows, you can use Universal USB Installer to make an installer USB, and then install Ubuntu to the USB with this guide:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/30780...on-a-usb-stick

If you want to keep using Windows, I'd recommend finding a different way to get your hands on Windows 7.
Good luck with your future endeavors into Linux.

Sorry to hear you had some issues. I'm not sure what video you watched, but the video lined below is only 10 minutes long. I also try to keep things simple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X90j...KlXW5uE9opXukQ

the direct download link for the version you want is probably:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/anti...e.iso/download

Good luck with whatever you choose. I've also had some good luck with ubuntu live media, but I would recommend the xubuntu or lubuntu variants for your older kit, as the base ubuntu can be a little hardware intensive on the video side.