Running Linux From Your USB Flash Drive
By Bryan Young
Expert Author
Article Date: 2010-07-28
One of the greatest features of Linux distributions is the ability to run a liveCD on your computer, without the need to install anything to your hard drive. There is no better way to test drive a piece of software available from any other OS. This also makes repairing systems easier, as you can simply pop in a liveCD and have access to the hardware, even if your primary system is crashed.
The one major problem that is apparent with liveCDs is speed. CD-ROMs are fast enough for what they are designed for, which is storage. Having your OS running from a hard drive is clearly superior as far as speed goes, but then you're tied down to the same machine, and you lose the benefits of portability. The USB option is the best of both worlds. You get the portability of the liveCD, while increasing the speed of your system exponentially.
Another great benefit of running Linux from a USB drive is the option to have persistent data. With flash memory so cheap, it is easy to get several GBs for a relatively low price. Anything not being used by the Linux kernel can be transformed into a storage partition for saving files and programs that you use on a regular basis.
The only downside to this method of computing is that not all motherboards support booting from USB. Most computers from the last few years should, but anything older will not have that option. To find out if your computer will support a flash drive OS, simply check the settings in your BIOS. You should be able to enable or disable booting from USB. If that option is not there, then chances are your motherboard is too old to have this functionality.
About the Author:
Bryan Young is a staff writer for WebProNews.
|
