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    May Run linux on a flash drive....

    Discussion in 'Linux Compatibility and Software' started by Thomas, May 10, 2008.

  1. Thomas

    Thomas McLovin

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    Hello all, I just bought a 2GB Flash Drive and want to install a linux distro on it. I'd like to be able to use it as a regular Pendrive in Windows, so I think I need two partitions. OK, how should I go about doing this?
    I'd like to test a light weight distro(but not Puppy, or DSL, maybe Slax).
    I'm thinking
    1.25GBs Data(Fat32)
    .75GBs Linux.
     
  2. Patrick

    Patrick Formerly beat spamers with stiks

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    Try backtrack. Its was very easy for me to set up my partitions using it.
     
  3. Thomas

    Thomas McLovin

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    How did you set up the partitions, in the Backtrack installer?
     
  4. Patrick

    Patrick Formerly beat spamers with stiks

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    99 percent sure it was through a bat file in the download itself. There is a usb version to download that has all the stuff you need.
     
  5. Thomas

    Thomas McLovin

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    Cool, thanks.
    Question: Will Grub be able to boot it?
     
  6. wearetheborg

    wearetheborg Notebook Virtuoso

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  7. Thomas

    Thomas McLovin

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    I know, I've got 10+ tabs open to that website..
    Will GRUB boot the Pendrive? or do I always need to choice my pen drive as the boot device?
     
  8. jisaac

    jisaac Notebook Deity

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    firstly if u want to boot from a pendrive the only drives worth considering are the 30mb/s + ones, if u want an exact model try the jumpdrive lightning 4gb. I'd really want to try a 'fully' functional os, perhaps u shud try xubuntu 8.04. In the isntall process it does not matter which drive u specify to install grub to, however if you install it to your internal drive your internal drive won't be able to boot up without the usb plugged in. I don't really recommend pendrive linux, everything runs in ram which defies the whole purpose of having a pendrive/hd, and if u dont have enough ram it could be a problem. I installed xubuntu on a cf card using an expresscard to cf adapter and it works perfectly, quick quiet and cool lool
     
  9. prol91

    prol91 Notebook Consultant

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    You could try virtuabox.Make a virtual machine without a harddrive and then insert the usb and a live cd and use something like gparted to edit the partitions and install the os.
     
  10. millermagic

    millermagic Rockin the pinktop

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    I may be completely out of line with this and it may not be helping this at all, but there is an HP utility that will make the flash drive bootable and from my understanding, you can have GRUB right on the flash drive.

    I started experimenting with this back in February, but never followed through. I wanted to go with something like Ubuntu or Open SUSE on an gig thumb drive.
     
  11. Thomas

    Thomas McLovin

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    I have it with backtrack and I have it bootable.....
    I might try xubuntu though...
     
  12. Thomas

    Thomas McLovin

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    Just booted it up(backtrack), pure awesomeness, fast, I was using the Fluxbox version.
     
  13. jisaac

    jisaac Notebook Deity

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    u don't need to do that to install grub
     
  14. richarddd

    richarddd Notebook Consultant

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