It would be great to have a bootable OS installed into portable apps.
So I can boot the stick on any machine into that OS.
I am thimking of UBUNTU SuSe Linux,Fedora, a mature distro aniway.
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Not all BIOS have USB boot support, and it is quite possible that an Administrator would disable USB boot in the BIOS. This would be done for obvious security reasons.
Searching for "portable ubuntu" shows a few other forums that list out other challenges with a Portable Ubuntu that runs PA.c apps.
And ZamolxisArt, welcome to PA.c.
Limits are for people with no imagination.
since on one side you want have a bootable os, on the other hand integrated into a windows apllication. So what now? Both of it is not possible at the same time. It is like asking unix to be part of the microsoft office...
But, almost any current linux distro has a feature to produce bootable device, incl usb sticks. You might have luck, and your computer is very new and will then support booting from usb stick, but as said above, only very recent computers do that reliably.
As for bootable linux on a stick, fun is puppy linux.
If you just want run linux from a stick in resource sharing, yes then look out for portable ubuntu , sometimes also called pubuntu. On forst view it runs like an windows app from the stick. But it shares the resources and needs number of drivers to be set up so is not really portable. The most recent version of it needs a stick with ntfs formating, since it uses files of more then 4gb in size.
And BTW: try to simply make one bootable usb stick with any of the mature distros as you call it, and test it and see if it is of any use at all. It will be so slow that you will probably not use it for anything but just fun.
Useful are only those miniature distros which will run completely from ram once loaded, like puppy, dsl etc.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
As ottosykora mentioned, Puppy Linux is great for having an operating system on the go. I haven't experimented much with bootable USB drives but I have used the "Live CD" version of Puppy Linux. If you burn Puppy Linux to a rewriteable CD, you can even burn your desktop configuration/settings to it, so that it's the same next you boot it up. You can save any documents/files you create to the Internet (plenty of free file storage solutions available), if you want to keep them for later.
Why didnt you do a search for this topic? There are multiple threads about this same request with explanations on why it wont be done or why it wont work well or the obsticals that prevent further development.
Awsome!
Finally I steered the pot a little.
Ok first question: The confusion
Should it be run embedded on the stick at bootup or from within portable apps like a Virtual Machine?
I think I placed a separate post about running it as a Virtual machine.
But why not both?
Now, about BIOS...
The capability to boot from USB became available about 3 years ago.
I am in the field, I fix PC's every day, I am the so called Admin that restricts BIOS functions, and invoking in 2009 issues like not all PC's have the capability, is irelevant. So do not bother to post such a thing.
However on another note, I can say that pbuntu is the flavor that I installed on the Stick succsesfully, on my EEE Laptop it runs at a decent speed for everiday operations. Write some documents, browse some web, format a HDD, decrypt a encrypted containter even. or, VNC into other machines in the network.
Granted I haven't tryied to play Quake live from the stick but hey, maybe I should try that just so I can say I crashed it in a respectable manner.
It is not so portable because of the drivers. True, here you have a point, and this point is very important.
You see I liked DSL(Damn Small Linux) better from this standpoint, because that one is running from it's own virtual enviroment, so less drivers hassle.
And here is an interesting discussion.
What if the platform for installation is virtual but a MBR loader exists to call the OS when the stick is booted on Bare Metal.
This design immediatelly make possible to have a GUI in place (I am thinking something like the VM Player) to boot it from within the Portable apps application as well.
This world is full of possibilities.
And Linux is not the only one that can be made portable.
For instance I was just creating some Live CD's at work the other day for server bare metal recovery, and the enviroment was a chopped down Windows CE, Of course I had to feed the drivers for SCSI and Network cards myself to create a live CD that would see correctly the RAID ARRAY on that server but that is not such a big deal.
It immediately struck me, the question: Why is it that There can not be a live portable apps environment based on something like Windows CE?
It is easyer to provide necessary drivers for, you can mold it as you want, and make it bootable of pretty much anything, including a USB stick.
I'm afraid that comment comes across as more than a little arrogant, and, also, incorrect.
I too am one of the dreaded admins, so, to put some numbers on machines that I encounter that can or cannot boot from USB.
Home: 5 PCs, only 2 can boot from USB.
Office: over 100 PCs, of which about 30 can boot from USB.
Family: 6 PCs, of which 4 can USB boot.
My Brother: 15 PCs, of which 3 can USB boot.
With the exception of my brother, who can be even geekier than me, and runs a linux cluster on reclaimed, salvaged and eBay'ed machines, I typically find that a little less than half the PCs I come across are able to boot from USB, and even some of those have issues doing it in some cases.
So, to tell us that it is totally irrelevant and should not be mentioned, since it wouldn't affect you is not really helpful.
There are a huge variety of sites around that discuss the intricacies of installing linux or a winPE environment onto USB drives, for people who want to go that way, but it is not the primary focus of this forum/site. Here, the focus is on portablizing applications that can be easily run on as wide an array of computers you encounter as possible.
>The capability to boot from USB became available about 3 years ago.
I am in the field, I fix PC's every day, I am the so called Admin that restricts BIOS functions, and invoking in 2009 issues like not all PC's have the capability, is irelevant. So do not bother to post such a thing.However on another note, I can say that pbuntu is the flavor that I installed on the Stick succsesfully, on my EEE Laptop it runs at a decent speed for everiday operations. Write some documents, browse some web, format a HDD, decrypt a encrypted containter even. or, VNC into other machines in the network.You see I liked DSL(Damn Small Linux) better from this standpoint, because that one is running from it's own virtual enviroment, so less drivers hassle.What if the platform for installation is virtual but a MBR loader exists to call the OS when the stick is booted on Bare Metal.This design immediatelly make possible to have a GUI in place (I am thinking something like the VM Player) to boot it from within the Portable apps application as well. Why is it that There can not be a live portable apps environment based on something like Windows CE?
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland