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How do i run linux off a usb thumb drive? Ever found yourself wondering that exact thing? Heard about linux but you’ve only ran windows and are scared to switch to something new? Got a 1GB or bigger usb thumb drives laying around? Yeah? Sweet. Then you can install a live copy of linux to a usb thumb drive from windows and all you have to do is lift a finger.

I constantly think to myself “Damnit, this would be so much faster in linux” typically when im wanting to do some sort of file copy or working on a website or server. There are a lot of thing linux is better at in my opinion. Also linux can make your old PC run like a champ again. In my opinion, linux is better at:

managing unix based webservers
File system jobs – such as copying files (yes linux can read your NTFS (windows) drive and files), creating mp3s, transcoding video
as a pure web browser

Not to say it cant do other things better but I’m bias and not here to preach.

Also just as a side note, that Mac OS X everyone loves so much these days? Yeah…its based off FreeBSD which is a unix/linux OS

Anyway, back to running linux off a thumb drive.

First thing to do is to format your USB thumb drive. You can use most USB Thumb drives as long as they do not have some sort of auto-running software associated with them such as the U3 software that comes with most SanDisk USB drives. I unfortunately have a u3 1G SanDisk Cruiser drive and had to use Google to find the U3remover.exe or whatever its called. Google

Now that i had the drive wiped of software and files, its time to download linux! Well sorta…

We’re going to download unetbootin which will download a linux distro for us and load it to the usb drive. Unetbootin

Once downloaded, go ahead and double click on the file.

Choose the linux distro you want to try out. My suggestion is to start with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the peoples linux. Easy to use out of the box and performs really well.
Make sure you have the right drive selected and click “OK”. The distro will download to a temp folder on your PC and then extract the files needed to your usb thumb drive.

And yer done! Well once it says so anyway. You can then reboot your PC and if your BIOS is set correctly, you can then boot off the drive. Most PC’s with USB can boot off USB, you just have to change the boot order in your Bios setup. Usually F2 or del when yer PC is starting.

This live version of linux you’ve downloaded can be installed to your hard drive if you like, typically there is an “Install to Hard drive” shortcut on the desktop once you’ve booted. Stay away from this if you dont want to lose all your information, but if this is an old pc and you’re ready to take the plunge…have fun.

Laters
G-fiz