Somewhat still confused on making a bootable usb stick(Solved)

[kensum71]

Having read the posts here, I think I'd better just list what I need to do and get the correct solution.

A friend of mine has a aspire netbook and wants to run pclinuxos without changing his HD. I don't want to go the dual boot route due to his level of computer understanding. Here is what I was thinking.

Can pclinux be installed on a 16gig usb stick ( thinking /boot partition of 8gig, and /home of 8gig) formated with  ext 3.

Can this be done booting a live cd and using the regular install or do I need to do it another way- such as the remaster.
The goal is to give him a bootable usb stick with an installed usable system that can be added to within the space avalible. Thanks ken.

[Was_Just19]

Yes it can be done with the standard installer.

You would be best to do it on the machine on which it is to be used.


Alternatively you could build a system that has all that he requires, remaster it, and make a LiveUSB on one partition of the USB stick. In that way the rest of the stick could be made available for storage.
That would of course be a 'live' system .......  nut it might meet at least the minimum needs of the user. It would also be more portable .......  set to run on most other PCs.

EDIT:
          You could do both on the one USB stick ......  the live install portable and unchanging, and the full install to allow it to behave like any other install.

regards.

[kensum71]

Thanks for the reply just19. I guess at this point I should ask if I run the live cd on my machine and do the install to the usb stick, will it upon boot on his machine reconfigure correctly for his computer? It would make things easier if these netbooks had a rom drive.

2nd thought: Is this correct thinking: I can use the live usb creator from the menu and make a bootable live usb stick from my iso file. Then he can boot his machine from this and then do an install to the bigger 16gig stick. Thanks ken

[kensum71]

Just a follow up. I have him running zen mini from a live usb stick now. Everything worked on his netbook. When he gets a bigger stick we'll see if we can get it installed so he can begin using it fully. thanks

[Was_Just19]

Just a follow up. I have him running zen mini from a live usb stick now. Everything worked on his netbook. When he gets a bigger stick we'll see if we can get it installed so he can begin using it fully. thanks

Good news 

The liveUSB stick should be good for use on any hardware, not just his present PC.
A full install is rather more tied to particular hardware, although it can be portable to a great extent, but the user may need to know how to overcome some difficulties that may arise.

Flash sticks are not really designed for full installs - although they have improved greatly in the last few years in this respect.
There are limitations on the numbers of writes to any particular location ......  but with a correct setup (ensuring there are no unnecessary writes to the device) I can see no reason such sticks would not last years. Unfortunately unbranded flash sticks may not be as good in this respect as those that are guaranteed to have passed some QC tests.

Nonetheless flash sticks are cheap these days ..... 

Glad you got sorted 

regards.