Portable OS question

[jmachin]

To cut a long story short, I need to use a LaTeX compiler on the computers at my university, but theirs don't work, so I wanted to get a usb stick with my own OS on so I can avoid using their system altogether (I'm given 200mb of disk space so I can't install portable versions of LaTeX on there... ). So I've downloaded and installed Porteus onto an 8GB usb stick, and it's worked, as in I'm using the operating system on my home pc right now, but I have a few questions:

1) It boots in a mode where I can't make any changes, and I think it said that's because I formatted my USB in the wrong format. I used fat32 - what file structure should I be using?

2) There's a bunch of pre-installed programs, in particular, there's one called SpaceFM, which looks basically like my computer/finder window file managing software. The most fundamental directory on there seems to be a folder called "file system." I right click on this and go to properties to check the folder size and it's over 100GB! So my first thought was that it can't be installed on the USB drive which is only 8GB big. But then the only other place it could be is on one of my computers hard drives, which I don't see how it could be.

So what I'm asking is, what is this file system folder, and where is it physically? Is it possible to browse my hard drives from Porteus? Or is it just an incompatible file structure or something.

Edit: Under a folder called 'mnt' I managed to find all my hard drives and the USB stick, which is kind of worrying me: how can "file system' be some folder which is structurally above my hard drives?

3) Is it possible to install a LaTeX distribution which will run from the USB stick as well?

Sorry for the badly phrased questions, I'm competent with computers but that's about it - I have no expertise whatsoever.

 

[MrColin]

1 When you installed to the USB drive it made a LiveCD/DVD type of install, not one that supports persistent changes to the filesystem.

2 The OS sees the free space on all of the mounted volumes, not just the USB. The word filesystem refers to all of the storage on the computer that is actively mounted.

3 LaTeX is a markup language (like HTML), you write it in a text editor or perhaps a buggy WYSIWYG editor if I'm not mistaken.

 

[ArisVer]

According to their website you are allowed to save files on the stick. The format of the stick shouldn't be a problem. Do you have space left on the stick?

As described above. /mnt in Linux stands for mount(ed), and includes disks, dvds, or any other system or user defined /mnt/"etc" locations.
(Edit. Sometimes they are found under \media.)

Latex might not be included in the modules that particular OS has.

I recommend you install Xubuntu on another flash disk. A real installation and not a live system. Make sure you use a large enough USB stick (32-64 GB) for what you want.

 

[ArisVer]

I installed Porteus on a VM and I was able to save a file.
I was not able to make any changes in the system (like install software) since it asks for a root password which I do not know and was not asked during installation.

My opinion is still to use Xubuntu.

 

[paperwastage]

there are online LaTeX editors (and version management/backup via git)

I'd suggest you to look at those, unless you need some specific latex version/modifications