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Ubuntu Live CD + USB thumb drive = cool

Started by H_o_p_s Apr 9, 2005 at 12:16 AM 7 replies 1.9k views

Original Post

Apr 9, 2005 at 12:16 AM

I decided that I would see what the whole Live CD thing was all about. I can truly say that I am amazed. I put the cd in, reboot my computer and there I am looking at a perfect install of Ubuntu. Wow. There are only a couple things that are missing from this Live CD however. There is no Java support. So, to solve this problem I took one of my old USB thumb drives and made it my new Linux hd (yes, all 512mb of it). But the coolest thing about this setup is that now I can go to any computer at school, reboot the machine into the Live CD, connect my USB drive, and its like I haven't changed a thing! I am by no means a stranger to Linux, but to have everything go so smoothly was something that was kind of scary. The video display was even recognized right! I mean come on, there should have been at least something that wasn't configured right.... but I can't find it. I also have two different versions of the ubuntu live cds: the x86 and PPC versions. This way I can literally take my stuff, and in fact my entire operating system, with me no matter which computer I hook up to. There were some problems about having the Java development binaries in PPC, but a simple redownload for the x86 versions solved that problem. Anyway, thought I'd share my experiences with you about the LiveCDs and a USB thumbdrive... [smile] [edit] The 'who's online' page here on gdnet is listing my Firefox/Ubuntu as a Firefox/winNT4.... hmmmm....

_Sigma

Apr 9, 2005 at 1:48 AM

whoa....ok what? you installed Linux to a usb drive and so you can run linux on any comp you want....:O

Can you explain some detail for a noobie? ;)

Raduprv

Apr 9, 2005 at 1:55 AM

No, he installs it from the LiveCD. He has a file system on his USB drive, where he can put the programs that don't come with the live CD.

flukus

Apr 9, 2005 at 2:24 AM

Quote:
Original post by Raduprv
No, he installs it from the LiveCD. He has a file system on his USB drive, where he can put the programs that don't come with the live CD.

You mean he runs it from a live cd!

Anyway, if the computers your using can boot from usb then you could remove the CD from the equation too, although that wouldnt work with the mac.

Ainokea

Apr 9, 2005 at 2:28 AM

Quote:
Original post by flukus
Quote:
Original post by Raduprv
No, he installs it from the LiveCD. He has a file system on his USB drive, where he can put the programs that don't come with the live CD.

You mean he runs it from a live cd!

Anyway, if the computers your using can boot from usb then you could remove the CD from the equation too, although that wouldnt work with the mac.

But then he might not have enough space on the usb to contain Linux and everything Linux comes with along with whats on the usb..

_Sigma

Apr 9, 2005 at 2:58 AM

i don't get it....
can someone explain in black and white? :P

kanzler

Apr 9, 2005 at 3:18 AM

If I understand correctly he is booting Linux from the Live cd and mounting his USB drive as /home.

Sander

Apr 9, 2005 at 3:18 AM

That's pretty cool [smile] Ubuntu is one of the best distro's I have ever toyed around with (not that I used that many though... Knoppix, Suse, RedHat, Slackware, and a couple of BSD variants. That's about it). I have it installed on my hoe computer now and I *love* it. Everything just works out of the box. The only thing I had a problem with was the totem movie player, so I installed mplayer with the firefox embedded plugin. Works great.

@_Sigma:
He is booting a PC from a Linux Live CD (that is a bootable CD containing Linux. No need to install anything). Then he uses his USB stick as a removable hard drive, containing all his applications that are not preïnstalled on the CD and for his personal files. That means he can use any computer and always have his full OS, apps and files with him.

nagromo

Apr 9, 2005 at 3:37 PM

That's really cool!

I would be interested in doing something similar with my 20GB USB HDD. I tried a while ago to install Linux on the it, but I couldn't get it to boot. This sounds like a much better way to go.

Where do you mount your flash drive? Is it your home directory or some static location (like /mnt/flash) that other places refer to?

Did you reformat your flash drive to a Linux FS, or are you using something like uvfat for permissions?

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