I am new to this forum and to the subject at hand. Please excuse my basic understanding of the deployment of a portable app vs. an OS.
1. Can you have both a linux OS and portable apps on a USB?
2. Can a USB be partitioned to carry both an OS and portable apps and able to boot or access one or the other?
As a traveler, I sometimes do not have access to a pc where I have admin rights to run an OS, i.e. linux w/apps installed that boots USB at startup. Would portable apps solve this problem?
Is there something I am missing that I would be able to have my apps and OS for use on a hotel pc, friends pc, or business associates pc?
Thank you.
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USB drives can't be partitioned so Windows can see it without special controller support. A bootable flash drive won't work on many public PCs as many have USB boot disabled to prevent hacking. If you can install a bootable Linux to a FAT32 partition alongside your apps, that will work.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
It can be done if you put the Portable Apps on the first partition and put the Linux distro on the second partition. You'll need to make the second partition bootable. Windows can only see the first partition.
Some distros, like Puppy Linux, can use what is called a frugal install to a flash drive. In that case, the Linux files can be on the same partition as the Portable Apps. As John said, it has to be done to FAT or FAT32 partition so that Windows can see it.
Thank you for your responses. How can you partition a USB drive to create a 1st and 2nd FAT partition?
I don't know of a way to do it in Windows. I used a partitioning program named GParted, which is included a lot of Linux distros, including Puppy.
The best way is probably to make a Live-CD of whatever distro you want to run, boot from it, and use GParted or whatever partitioning tool is included. Make the first partition Fat or Fat32. The second partition can be any format your Linux supports, and needs to have the 'bootable' flag set. Then install your Linux to the second partition. Only one partition can be bootable on a flash drive.
To boot from the flash drive, you'll probably need to change the settings of your computer's bios.