Live USB

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

A live USB is a USB flash drive which can be booted from, often containing a Linux distribution. Live USBs are closely related to Live CDs, and are sometimes used interchangeably. Many of the smaller Linux distributions can also be used from a USB flash drive.

Contents

[edit] Benefits

  • Do not need to be installed on local hard drives, and are therefore a great way to try Linux distributions without commiting to a permanent installation.
  • Can be used for system administration and system recovery.
  • Personal Storage, allowing a user to carry his prefered operating system, applications, files and configuration with him to multiple places or allows multiple users to share a single system.
  • Enhanced Privacy, because the USB device is removable the user can carry it with him or store it in a secure location (i.e. a safe) reducing the opportunties for others to access the system.
  • Faster seek time owing to the lack of moving parts, meaning small programmes will start faster than from a hard drive or optical media.

[edit] Disadvantages

  • Some computers, particularly older ones, may not have a BIOS that supports USB booting. In this case a computer can often be "redirected" to boot from a USB device through use of a bootable CD or floppy disk.
  • Slower data transfer rate than internal hard drives, and booting from a computer lacking USB 2.0 support can be very slow.

[edit] History

  • Proposed by IBM in 2004, in the paper "Reincarnating PCs with Portable SoulPads" (PDF & Summary).

[edit] Types of Live-USB

[edit] 1. Live-CD Derived

The first type of Live-USB was created by simply taking the ISO image file from a Live-CD distribution and placing it on USB storage device and then making it bootable.

Advantages Disadvantages
  • Simple to install
  • Compressed format allows for many applications in a small storage container.
  • Updating whole image file is as easy as copying in a new one.
  • Base installation can be as small as 50mb.
  • Difficult to update individual applications or install applications not part of the original image.
  • Base install maximum size can be 700MB to 4GB for large installs.
  • Many Live-CDs are not set to write to their own filesystem as a CD is typically read only, thus it can sometimes be difficult to enable a Live USB OS to write to its flash drive.

[edit] 2. Full Install

The second type of Live-USB is closely related to a traditional operating system hard drive install with minor modifications like the elimination of swap partitions and files.

Advantages Disadvantages
  • Updating applications or the whole thing is as easy as the parent distribution used to create it.
  • Full system encryption possible.
  • Easier to customize with the users prefered Window Manager and applications.
  • Base install starts at approximately 200MB and grows as the user adds applications.
  • Makes more sense as larger USB Flash drives become more commonly available.
  • More complicated to install.
  • Filesystem is not compressed.

[edit] Examples

[edit] BSD Full Install

[edit] GNU/Linux Live-CD Derived

[edit] GNU/Linux Full Install

  • Feraga.com: Automated Installer and Howtos for installing Debian GNU/Linux onto a USB flash thumbdrive with support for full system encryption.
  • Flash Linux: Installation based on Gentoo packages optimized for smaller USB flash media.
  • Mandriva Flash 3D: 2GB USB flash thumbdrive with 1GB of applications pre-installed, including a 3D Desktop.

[edit] Microsoft DOS & Windows

[edit] OpenSolaris

  • Belenix: Customized OpenSolaris installs including Live-CD and Live-USB.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

This operating system-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../l/i/v/Live_USB_5229.html"