Guest post by Lifehacker reviews some of the popular Linux distributions that have provided tools to make Live USB keys, a easy task. These include Damn Small Linux, Fedora with it’s cross platform liveusb-creator , Puppy Linux and Xubuntu. All systems were tested with UNetbootin except for Fedora which was run using it’s own liveusb-creator. For every distribution, the minimum requirements, image size, boot time, features, things that need improvement and which users it is recommended for, is listed.
I’m disappointed by the lack of Mandriva Flash in the comparison. This product has been commercially available for quite a while, is well tested, and ‘simply works’ for almost every computer system I’m tested it on. I carry it around in my coat pocket compulsively.
I would have also liked to see the Debian-Live systms in there. It’s not like they are new.
http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/
Not much of a real roundup but it is a good overview of some of the distro’s available by the unetbootin project. USB boot is great providing support is there in the bios. Shame solaris cant boot this way as well with this project so I can run around with a key chain full of zfs drives although it has got bsd’s…
http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS mmm I hope to see those docs…
solaris can boot off a usb thumb drive. search for milax which is a tiny ~250mb opensolaris distro that can be installed to usb thumb drives.
I throw my vote in for Slax linux, great live OS. http://www.slax.org/
I use Xubuntu on my EeeBox and it was installed by live USB, and it works well.
Has anyone had experience with these type of VMs booting into VMs? I really like the idea of having a few appliance style VMs I could boot into VMware or other environment that I could carry around on USB keys, etc.
I’d like to extend this to light weight servers that I can move around between cloud servers. Is anyone doing this?
Not exactly pertaining to your statement, but
DSL has version they call “embedded” that comes with Q that can either be usb booted or booted in windows.
rakamaka,
I and some of my colleagues use the dsl embedded when we need to ssh from a windows cluster when there is not a program installed on the cluster to do so, though of course there are other ways to do that.
Funny how almost nobody ever talks about Mandriva (which in this case also has a thumb drive version !!!) thought it is one of the major Linux distro !!!
Ostracism ???
Many old computers dont have boot-from-usb options. So these distros are useless as travellers and those seeking public library, cafe, access.
Will be better if they run on top of existing MS windows.