can I install linux to

[todpod]

a memory stick. I used a utility to make a bootable memory stick and it worked fine but it is designed to install ubuntu not be the install. It didn't save the configuration. Is there a way to install it like on a hard drive?

On a side not I plug my external hard drive into my laptop, it was the boot drive on my desktop until it took a crap, loaded up ubuntu, wireless works great this is cool. Hope they get the desktop fixed soon I miss it. Should of built it.

 

[bobross419]

Short answer is yes. Never done it myself. If you don't want to wait for someone that has done this before just google it. There are a lot of good guides out there for doing exactly this.

 

[lxskllr]

Install it just as you would to a hd. You may have to use the advanced partitioner in Ubuntu, but the idea is to point it to the thumb drive you want, and not the internal drive.

 

[todpod]

I will try that. I was surprised how well it ran of the thumb drive. For a net surfing computer for the kids this would be ideal I think.

Next up getting the wife's new samsung laptop to boot of the external hard drive.

 

[Red Squirrel]

It works, but it will only work on newer machines that support USB boot. So it's not something good for carrying around to expect to work on any machine you run into.

 

[TheELF]

Using unetbootin there is an option saying "...preserve files across reboots" give it a gb(or two 😉 ) and it will happily store whatever changes you do, same thing as an install aslong as you don't need to install a heap-load of crap.

 

[todpod]

Ok thats helpful thanks. I am thinking a person can get rid most of the stuff. The kids are mainly on the internet and Chrome has flash built in. So if I have chrome libre office and VLC I can do 99% of what I need to do.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

I installed puppy linux to a USB stick and it works fine. Mostly did it for kicks so haven't used it much though. Also good for security checking email, banking etc on unknown computers while traveling for example.

Instructions here
http://puppylinux.com/flash-puppy.htm

 

[kornphlake]

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
everything you need, the universal usb installer makes it easy. I used a cheap 4gb thumbdrive and it works, but anything that requires reading from the drive takes a long time. I know Compact Flash cards have maximum read/write speeds advertised, but I've never seen cheap thumb drives advertise any read write speeds. If I were serious about running linux from a usb drive I'd get serious about finding the fastest drive I could.

 

[Jawadali]

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
everything you need, the universal usb installer makes it easy. I used a cheap 4gb thumbdrive and it works, but anything that requires reading from the drive takes a long time. I know Compact Flash cards have maximum read/write speeds advertised, but I've never seen cheap thumb drives advertise any read write speeds. If I were serious about running linux from a usb drive I'd get serious about finding the fastest drive I could.

I second using PenDriveLinux, or at least taking a look at it.

I have used it in the past with Lubuntu and Ubuntu, although this was over a year ago.

 

[lxskllr]

I just installed Bodhi to a 4gb thumb drive for my daughter, and it fits very comfortably. I have Firefox, LibreOffice, Gnome games, VLC, and a few small utilities installed, and there's still over 1gb left. For partitions I gave it 3.4gb to /, and the rest to /home, no swap. She has 4gb in the machine, and doesn't use anything big, so that should be more than enough. I also moved Firefox's cache to ram since the thumb drive I used is pretty slow.

Anyway, it was super easy once I figured out the best way to partition. The first time I did it, I didn't give / enough space. 400mb isn't much for /home, but it'll be enough for documents and stuff, and if she wants music or something, she can use another thumb drive.