Applications and Linux on a USB drive?
Saturday, November 14th, 2009 at
12:15
Is it possible to put applications and an OS together on the same flash drive and run the OS from the Drive and still be able to access the applications/files.
Tagged with: flash drive
Filed under: Linux Applications
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I would partition the USB drive and keep my data in a separate partition.
I’d also use Puppy Linux.
Review:
http://www.pcmech.com/article/podcast-07-23-2007-puppyos-the-better-and-easier-small-linux-distro/
Yes, it is possible, but a complete answer *may* depend on what specific applications you want to run.
Take a look at: http://www.mcnlive.org/ …you will see a link to download a LiveCD ISO that you can use to easily create a custom USB flash drive with additional applications you may need.
MCNLive is based on Mandriva 2007 ‘Spring’ and comes with many common applications. It is based on KDE/KOffice, but you can include many other applications from the MCNLive/Mandriva repositoiries. It includes wizards to 1) remaster the LiveCD while running live in memory if you have sufficient RAM {768MB or more} and 2) generate a bootable USB drive, and 3) set up a persistent loop so that configurations and changes from a session are preserved.
I created my own custom USB drive using MCNLive ‘Toronto’ and a Memorex 4GB travel drive, with a 2GB partition for the OS and applications and set up the second 2GB for data. It works great.
Well, once it’s running, it should be able to access files, or what would be the point of having an operating system?
Yes it is entirely possible. A flash drive is just another drive, it doesn’t really matter what it’s made of. The trend is always to trim down the OS to make it fit on a small drive but with flash drives now at 4 GB and bigger, there’s hardly any need. THe search link below should get you started