Linux on a Stick!

So I’ve been using Linux Ubuntu for a while now on my desktop and I’m loving it. I recently stumbled back onto their homepage to download a newer version. It is here where I came across a easy to use tool being promoted that aims to install a version of Ubuntu (or other versions of Linux) onto your USB thumb drive and make it bootable. The good news: you don’t need to learn how to manually make your thumb drive bootable and there are no complicated commands to type in! The entire process is easy to perform and extremely fast as well!

Why Would I Want to Do This?

Let’s get this out of the way: it is way cooler to load a live version of Linux from a USB thumb drive than from a CD/DVD! Honestly speaking, it is much more convenient to carry around a USB thumb stick than a CD disc. With a USB stick, it is much easier to carry it around in your pocket. Personally, I have a 8GB USB thumb drive on my key chain. That way, I’ll always have it with me no matter where I go. I doubt you’ve ever met someone that carried a CD/DVD disc with them no matter where they went! To put it in more simpler terms, creating a bootable USB thumb stick is much, much more convenient than using a CD or DVD disc (although not as flexible since some computers don’t support booting from USB devices). Also don’t forget that reading data off of USB storage is much more faster than compared to disc media.
Alright, so armed with this information, you may still be wondering why would you want a bootable version of Linux on a USB thumb stick? The answer to that question, surprisingly, is that it depends. You’ve most likely have never used, let alone heard of, a Live Linux CD before so why start now?
In a previous article, I talked about how to safely bank online. In it, I’ve talked about how booting into a Live Linux CD can give you the safest operating system environment to work with. By using a Live CD, you bypass your (possibly malware infected) Windows partition and load the content of Linux directly to your system’s memory. Once you are done using it, simply restart or shut down the computer and your entire session will be erased, leaving no trace of what you did while in it. If you want to learn a little more about Live CD’s from a security standpoint, I highly suggest you read that article as well.
From a computer technician’s standpoint, booting to a Linux Live CD is one of the easiest methods to recover data from a un-bootable Windows hard drive. I’ve used Puppy Linux as an example in this article to show how the simple process is done. However, Puppy Linux is just one of the many different Linux distributions out there that you can use as your Live CD operating system of choice. By having a version of this live operating system on your USB stick and bootable as well, you can be sure that you’ll be able to recover data from crashed computers wherever you go (assuming the computers themselves are able to boot from a USB storage).

The Process

OK, so you have an extra thumb drive on hand and want to try this out. Perfect. You’ll see how easy it is to get this up and running.

What You’ll Need
- FAT32 formatted USB thumb drive
- Universal USB Installer
- Linux ISO of your choice
- Computer capable of booting from a USB drive

The first thing you’ll need obviously is a USB thumb drive! You’ll need to format the drive to FAT32 if it isn’t already. You can either perform this process manually in Windows explorer (right click drive icon, Format option) or let the Universal USB Installer do it for you in the next step. Remember to back up any files on the thumb drive as a reformat will erase them all!

Next, proceed to download the Universal USB Installer utility. This is a self-executable so no installation is necessary. Simply double-click and the utility should start automatically. In the first drop-down menu, you’ll see a long list of the different Linux distributions you can use. In my example, I’ll be using Ubuntu 10.4, which is the newest version as of this writing of the popular operating system. If you have already downloaded the ISO file manually in the past, Universal USB Installer should automatically detect it if the file was placed in the same directory as the tool itself. If not, then, hit the Browse button and select the ISO file. If you haven’t downloaded the ISO yet, simply check the “Opted to Download the ISO” option checkbox and you’ll immediately be taken to the download site.

Once the file has completed downloading and is selected in the utility (Step 2), then it’s now time to select our USB thumb drive. In the drop-down menu, select the drive letter of your plugged in USB stick. If you’re not sure which letter it is, head over to Computer in Windows explorer to browse for it. If you want to format your thumb drive at this time, then select the option to do so. Remember, back up all of the data, if any, that is currently on the drive because it will be deleted! Under Step 4, you are allowed to select whether you want any Persistence option or not. When booting to a live version of Linux via USB drive or CD/DVD, the session is usually not saved and anything that you do save while in that session will be deleted once you exit. By creating a Persistence Option, you’ll be able to save and reload changes made in one session to another. For more info on this, read here.

Once you are finished with the selections, hit the Create button and let the utility go to work. That’s it! All you have to do now is just wait until all the files have been extracted and placed on your USB thumb drive.

When that finishes, you will now have a fully bootable USB thumb drive with a live version of Ubuntu (or whatever version you chose)! Our last step is to actually test it by booting from it. To do so, you’ll need a computer capable of actually booting from a USB disk. Head over to your computer’s BIOS and look under the Startup/Boot Up options or something similar. You should be able to configure the boot order. You’ll want to set it so that the USB HDD option (or similar) is set *before* your main hard disk. Simplest thing to do is to set this option as priority number one. Once done so, obviously your next step is to make sure your USB thumb drive is actually plugged in! Restart your computer and if everything went according to plan, your computer should detect your live Linux distribution and boot to it.

As you can see from the picture below, I have successfully booted into a live version of Ubuntu. I can now do whatever I want without having to worry about leaving a trace on the host computer. In a way, it’s like being able to work with a full version of Ubuntu installed on the hard drive, but in the background, it’s actually running off of system memory and your USB thumb drive.

You’re probably now wondering if your entire USB thumb drive is now solely dedicated to just running your live version of Linux. The answer is no, it is not! You can still use your USB thumb drive as your primary means of portable storage. Simply create a folder within the root of your thumb drive and you can now store your other data to it without affecting Linux.

In the End…

Whether you are booting a live version of Linux from a CD/DVD or a removable USB storage device, you have to admit it’s a great idea. Being able to boot into a clean operating system environment goes a long way, especially if you take my advice and use it to perform all of your your online transactions. If you are a small cafe shop owner or whatever, what’s a better way to instantly attract more customers than by providing them with computers to use? Also, because you most likely don’t have a budget to spend on IT, you can simply load your bare-bone computers with a live version of Ubuntu and never have to worry about malware infections and whatnot (even if they are infected, a simple reboot is all that is needed to remedy it). Linux is also very flexible and doesn’t require a lot of resources. Therefore, it is perfect to use on older machines with low specs. Once again, this will be ideal for your little shop as most customers will most likely perform just minimal tasks on it like browsing their email, updating their social media status, catch up on the local news and casual browsing in general. These tasks don’t require your computer to be blazing fast and so Linux fits perfect in this scenario. Oh and if you didn’t already know, Linux is completely free! No matter what angle you view this from, having a bootable Linux USB stick on hand is very handy!