Which Ubuntu-like Linux OSs work well on a flash drive?

11
2013-09
  • Questioner

    I want a Linux OS that I can load on a flash drive, but I don't want to relearn an entire operating system. I want to know which tiny Linux installations are most like Ubuntu. For example, I'd like to use the apt-get package manager, the Gedit text editor, and the bash shell. I'd like to use something that's already popular, stable, and highly compatible, but it needs to fit comfortably in one gig of my four-gig flash drive (just the essentials; I'll use the remaining three gigs to store installed programs and files). I have no preference for window managers; I just want something small and fast that works like Ubuntu.

    What is the most popular Ubuntu-like OS that can be easily run on a thumb drive?

    Edit: I'm not sure I understand how this works. I don't to use a USB drive as a LiveCD; I want to plug in a USB stick and use the computer as if it was my own. In other words, I want to be able to install programs on the drive on one computer and use them on another. Do any of these OSs let me do that? Please forgive my ignorance.

    • Answers
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    There is a nice review of several thumb drive Linux distributions on Lifehacker. They compared Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, Xubuntu, and Fedora.

    On linux.com, you'll find another test of five Linux distributions -- Damn Small Linux (DSL), Puppy Linux, Pendrivelinux, Ubuntu, and Mandriva Flash.

    Both articles are IMHO useful, despite the overlapping parts.


    • Related Question

    Prevent a partition on a USB drive auto-mounting in Linux
  • Questioner

    On Linux (Gnome desktop) how do you prevent one of the partitions on an external USB drive auto-mounting when it attached to the machine?

    I don't just want to prevent the Nautilus window from popping up -- I want that partition not to mount.

    Fiddling with /etc/fstab is not acceptable, as this is a removable drive that is attached to different machines.

    I seem to remember that you create a hidden file in the root of the file system, but I can't remember what it's called. Something like:

    touch /media/usbdisk/.no-mount

    How do you actually make this work?


    • Related Answers
  • Andrew Koester

    To read that file, the partition would have to be mounted. The auto-mounting is a feature of the operating system (actually hotplug, or some other service monitoring USB) and has to be turned off per-machine.

  • nagul

    If you're specifically worried about auto-mounting in gnome, and would rather not touch /etc/fstab, try the following command to turn it off for a specific partition:

    gnome-mount --write-settings --mount-options noauto --device /dev/sda1

    If you no longer want this to happen, erase the settings:

    gnome-mount --erase-settings --device /dev/sda1

    I also think you can turn off auto-mount altogether through the gconf-editor utililty: *desktop > gnome > volume_manager > automount_media*

    I'm not aware of any way to have the auto-mount daemon look for a file on the drive and unmount the drive on finding it, though I can see the utility in having something like this.