Re: [LUG] Running linux from a USB Pen Drive

I have used DSL quite a bit and find it to be a nifty little tool at times, especially on newer computers. Some older MBs (like my athlon 1400+ box) don't boot from usb nicely without a floppy, and that can defeat the purpose. Once you have DSL up and running, you can add on "mydsl" apps,themes,etc by plonking them in to the root directory. ***If they don't have a dsl extension though, make sure to rtfm ;-) On next boot, DSL will autoload those apps. The mydsl extensions in my opinion, are what make the distro so useful.

btw, the ftp mirror for mydsl apps at ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/damnsmall/mydsl/apps/ has ooo listed at 68 megs. Just be mindful if you are plugging in to USB 1.0/1.1 that it is not nearly as peppy as a 2.0 connection.

On 3/24/06, Rob Beard <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi folks,

I've recently taken the plunge and bought myself a USB pen drive.  It's starting to
be a handy addition to my toolkit.

A while ago I read up that there is a portable version of OpenOffice.org (for
Windows I think) that can be loaded and run from a USB pen drive.  I'm downloading
this at the moment and I'm hoping I can use it at work (we have Office XP) and I
use OOo at home and generally only save in Open file formats.

This got me thinking, how would I go about installing a basic Linux OS with say
Firefox, Thunderbird and OOo.org on it?

I see that there are distros like Damn Small Linux which are fairly small.  Having
not tried them I don't know if it'll fit what I'm looking for.  I did think of
Debian, but I haven't got the foggiest on how to get starting installing Debian on
a USB key.

Does anyone know of any How To's?

By the way, if it's any help, I have a 256MB USB2.0 pen drive at the moment.

Rob

--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the
message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html