Okay, my system administrator is mean, and i cannot make live cd's, the disk drives don't burn. i have a 10.04 lts ubuntu ISO, and i have tried to make it live usb mode, using macintosh 10.5.8, intel , but you need a password for any and all Sudo commands, so no terminal, and disk utility won't burn to a usb drive. seeing as how the disk drives don't or won't burn, it cannot be helped. i can't download applications for mac, need an administrator password to do so, but i can download windows applications, except my windows machine has no internet, not to mention the most sophisticated thing it can handell is windows 98 second edition. i am stuck. help me!
(btw, the windows machine won't burn either, and it doesn't read dvd's, or burned cd-roms, it is a 1995 micron nbku375)

I think you need to work this out with your system administrator. If you don't have ownership of the machine, then running Ubuntu on it is probably a big no-no.

Also, it is unlikely that an older computer designed for Windows 98 will run Ubuntu well (if at all).

All that being said, you can get Linux Live CDs in magazines at your friendly neighborhood news stand, or purchase Linux Live CDs/USBs at a low cost from any number of reputable vendors.

1 members found this post helpful.

I would consider it hacking to help you with this topic. It is clearly not allowed to help you with something like that on this forum.
I don't know if your administrator is mean, but I think that he has a clear and reasonable concept of security. As snowpine already stated, tell your admin what you want to do, may be he will allow it to you. You can also ask him if he installs Virtualbox or something similar for you, so that you can use Linux in a VM, if you need to.

no no no, i am trying to install it on a 3rd computer, it is an hp MS235, basically, an Hp version of imac, everything is in the monitor, no tower, point in being, it has no OS on it, no windows, mac or linux, and i have no cd's, but it can boot from usb, which is what i am trying to do.

Ask your sys admin nicely if he would do you a favour. If he says no then you'll have to suck it up and look for another way to do it. You really cannot expect someone to compromise system security just so you can create a LiveUSb for personal use.

You can always use UNetBootin. It's an utility to burn Linux images in a removable drive such as a flash memory. You can download it from Sourceforge and I don't think that there's a need to explain how it works, it's really intuitive. It works on Windows, Linux and Macs. Good luck.

Unetbootin doesn't work on Win 98, and to use it on Linux or MacOS X you have to be root, so this will not work for the OP.

You can buy an Ubuntu CD from linuxcd.org for about $2 (plus shipping), surely a small price to pay vs. antagonizing your system administrator?

I must say, if you're not able to use UNetBootin or other method you should buy a CD, is quite a small price to pay for the magic of Linux :P

Plenty of places offer a hybrid iso or a usb image. Just get dd for windows and dd over the downloaded image to a usb flash.

I think rawrite may work but I'd be sure to use dd for windows just in case.

Support of old hardware is not an issue with Linux. However, running Gnome or KDE with this machine might be impossible. I expect that this Ubuntu would be badly crawling on that machine: check if you meet the minimum requirements. You might want to consider a lighter environment. Is it to put on your 1995 machine? Then how much memory you got? I guess less than 128mb, so check for a minimalist distribution, like Puppy Linux or Damn small linux, which are also live. But... are you sure you can boot from USB from this old machine? I doubt so. When you say that it cannot read burned discs, there could be a difference between CD-RW or CD-R. Drives of that era can't read CD-RW, but CD-R is such an old specification...

Surely some library or "Internet shop" got computers you can use to download stuff and then put that on your usb key. Or even burn a disc there if you can.

I think that for the UNetBootin on Windows you do not need to formally install it, just run the executable, so you should be fine to write your iso to usb on a machine where you are a limited user.

Thanks for the info, just hope it works.

The most recent response is 3 months old, so maybe the problem is solved, but ...

The CD rom format called CD+R, if written in a single session and finalized (meaning nothing else can be added to it) is the most compatable format for use with older equipment.

Also, the page http://www.ubuntu.com/download contains instructions for creating a bootable USB drive using linux, mac, or windoze. On the other hand, the older the equipment, the less likely that it will allow booting from a USB port.

YMMV