OS for bootable USB drive?

B

Bob W

Joined
Dec 31, 2000
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I bought some inexpensive USB drives for the purpose of booting alternative operating systems. In the past I've used bootable floppies and CDs extensively, but floppies are limited by their small sizes and data can't be written to bootable CDs.

So what OSes are worth trying on the USB drive? I know there are several Linux versions made specifically for USB booting, but which one is the most 'fun'? Any non-Linux OSes work well from a USB?

Just wondering. Since the best OS resource forum is now closed (OSnews), it hard to know where to ask these sorts of questions...

-Bob
 
Portableapps has some really good tools that I strongly recommend for someone who works at multiple machines, and the forums will point you in various directions, but they don't do OSes per se.

Google "Bart PE" and you will find information on making a Windows-based portable OS. And if there are dozens of different Linux variants that are bootables. I've never run any of them off USB, but I've used Knoppix on a CD for years.
 
You can put a live ubuntu image on a usb. Both my desktop and laptop run on ubuntu, with the usb I can run my computer at work with it and remotely use my home computer. Works great for me since it allows me to view sites like these and watch movies from my home desktop hard drive.
 
You can also boot damn small linux (DSL) from a CD or USB drive. Its really easy to get working too. Its based on Debian if I remember correctly
 
I've been using DSL for a couple of years on the bootable CDs. I'll definitely try that one on the USB drive.

Those PortableApps seem like a good idea too - I have access to a lot of different computers and it would be nice to have the same programs available on each machine.

Thanks!
-Bob
 
You may take a look at pendrivelinux.

I have an old PC that I use with Puppy Linux, I tried others but this one is small enough to fit into 160 MB ram and recognizes my network card. I made a Puppy Linux bootable USB pendrive, but I have to boot from the CD because the PC does not have the option (ancient crappy BIOS as Dunhausen mentions). So I boot, load into ram and remove the CD, the flash drive keeps my configuration and has a swap file, it's workable and cool IMHO.

I think that Knoppix is a very good Linux live CD, worth trying in a USB drive

I am currently using Ubuntu 7.04 on my main PC and I like it much, It runs kind of slow as a Live CD in my machine but probably from a pendrive it would be fine.

Luis
 
Try Puppy Linux. I generally carry it on my USB drive to recover Winders machines or to do other maintenance stuff. And it's only about ~70 MB.

http://www.puppyos.com/

I run Ubuntu exclusively on my other machines, but Puppy is a great portable OS.

** Doh!! I didn't read the post above.
 
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