1 Ubuntu 7.10 live CD .ISO
1 Flash Drive 1Gb (2Gb recommended)
10-20 min (once you have the live cd in hand)
Guide:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/28 ... n-install/
About two weeks ago, a friend's laptop running windows vista exploded (not literally, mind you). A critical file had become corrupted. It was obviously an easy fix, all that was needed would be to boot from an Ubuntu live cd, and replace the file. I went home to create the live cd, and after I did I was disappointed. The CD takes _forever_ to boot from, and is annoyingly loud (thanks in part to my ancient dvd/rom drive). So I thought, hmm... why not boot from a flash drive, wouldn't that be awesome? I then spent the next week trying to get linux on my flash drive. By time I finally figured it out, my friend had fixed his computer on his own (huzzah for reinstalling windows).
The biggest problem I had was trying to do this from a windows environment. I'm not nerdy enough to have a pc dedicated to linux (yet), so I was having quite a bit of difficulty finding a way to partition a flash drive into two partitions while in windows. I'm pretty much convinced it's impossible to do for free. Then, I stumbled upon the guide above. The guide worked almost perfectly. In fact, everything except for step #20 worked perfectly. Step 20 threw me a curveball simply because I didn't realize there was a space inbetween ' /media/ubuntu710/' and 'U710fix.zip'.
I've been playing around with my new flash drive for about 20 minutes now. Here are some comments:
- Can not boot from drive IF plugged into a usb hub.
With my old motherboard, I have to change the first hard drive to my 2gb flash drive before it shows up in boot order options.
Boot time is pretty slow (slower than windows xp). Once booted though, runs like a dream (a nice dream).