Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Linux On A Stick- Part 1


I have a bit of a dream. My dream is to have no operating system on my computer at all. I would have my pc the way it is setup now, and then I would have a usb jump drive with an os of my choice. I would then boot off of the usb stick and everything I download/create would be saved on the hard drives of the pc that I am on. Right now, I am attempting to accomplish this dream in small steps.

The first step is just finding out which os I want and which one will work with all of the things that reside my pc right now. This step is complete. I am going to be using the latest version of knoppix, a version of Linux. I found this one tutorial on how to do this on PenDriveLinux.com. They recently did an update to their older tutorial, making it more streamline with just 2 simple downloads and 1 executable.

However, this is just the first step. With any search of "Linux on a stick" on google you will only end up with results that show you how to make your usb jump drive a live cd of sorts. The way the PenDrive tutorial works, the usb drive that has the "live cd" on it and it is mounted as a cd drive that is read only. So all hopes of having your sessions saved is lost. But this is a good first step. I have mulled through different versions of Linux and pinpointed one that will work for me. The next step is making it with partitions that are static and will have my sessions saved every time i boot from it.

Another part of my dream is to also have my (2 gig) usb jump drive usable on other computers as an ordinary jump drive. Where i will be able to click and drag to my heart's content on an ordinary windows operating system.

I believe my dreams have come true and the final tutorial will be an a near future part 2. There is a bit more testing that must be done. But, until that is done, please try the PenDriveLinux way to see what is right for you. Stay tuned!

[Read part 2]

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