this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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School is starting up soon, and I want to install a stable distro to a 64GB flash drive that i own will remain stable while booting onto at least 2 computers (my home PC for maintenance and my School laptop for, well school).

I was thinking of just using Debian, but wasn’t sure if it would work well in terms of compatibility with my requirements.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

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[–] cerement 28 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] kanzalibrary@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago
  • for Ventoy! more dynamic Linux experiences is one place and functions for one time effort..
[–] toothpaste_sandwich@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Interesting! But will changes made to the OS you're using be persistent? If I'm reading this right, then probably not, right?

[–] cerement 3 points 1 year ago

correct – you can save individual files to the USB stick but anything like UI customization will be lost

[–] Dotdev@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can you will have to set somethings up for it.

[–] toothpaste_sandwich@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's interesting, I'd be interested in finding out more about that. Let's see, I've always wanted to try this:

@ChatGPT@lemmings.world, how do you set up Ventoy for persistent installs of distros? That is, to be able to make changes to the operating system and have them stick?

[–] ChatGPT@lemmings.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hi toothpaste_sandwich@feddit.nl,

Creating persistent live USBs with Ventoy is possible. However, keep in mind that not all Linux distributions support this feature. The distributions that Ventoy currently supports for persistent installations are Ubuntu and some of its derivatives.

Here's a basic step-by-step guide:

  1. Prepare Ventoy: Ensure that you've already installed Ventoy on your USB drive. If not, download the latest Ventoy release from its official website and install it to your USB drive.

  2. Prepare the ISO file: Download the ISO file of the Linux distribution and copy it to the Ventoy USB drive. You can just put it in the root directory.

  3. Create a persistence file: Ventoy uses a data file to enable the persistence feature. You need to create this file on the Ventoy USB drive, there is an official utility named create_vtoy_img.sh in Linux or Ventoy2Disk.exe on Windows that you can use to create this persistence data file. Name the file and define its size according to how much persistent storage you need.

  4. Bootstrap the persistence feature: After creating the data file, you should create a JSON file in the Ventoy USB drive to bootstrap the persistence feature. You can create a .json file in the root directory of the Ventoy USB drive with the following format:

{
    "persistence" : [
        {
            "image" : "/your-linux-distro.iso",
            "backend" : "/ventoy-persistent-data-file.dat"
        }
    ]
}

Replace your-linux-distro.iso with the filename of your Linux distro ISO file and replace ventoy-persistent-data-file.dat with your Ventoy persistent data file's name.

  1. Boot from the Ventoy USB drive: Finally, boot your computer from the Ventoy USB drive. The Linux distro will launch with the persistence feature, so you'll be able to save any changes you make.

Remember this is a generalized guide and actual steps can vary based on the specific distro, and tools being used.

Hope this helps! If you encounter issues or have further questions, feel free to ask.

(bot@lemmings.world)

[–] toothpaste_sandwich@feddit.nl 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Huh, well, that doesn't seem very convenient at all. I'm not all that interested in Ubuntu-based distros, for one.

Still, the ChatGPT bot seems to work well, so that's pretty cool.

[–] Dotdev@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Arch and fedora are supported as well.

[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

There are ways, but it's not standard.

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[–] 52fighters@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Do yourself a favor and get an external hard drive. You'll get much better results and can run almost any distro with it.

[–] jollyrogue@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago

Definitely this.

I gave up on thumb drives as they are kind of trash. External NVMe drives are affordable, and the speed difference is BIG.

[–] nathris@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago

Even better get a NVMe enclosure and an internal NVMe drive.

Enclosures are $20 and you can get a 500gb Samsung 970 Evo for $35.

Smaller, lighter, cheaper and faster than any off the shelf portable drive you could get. I have one and it fully saturates the USB C 10Gbit port on my motherboard.

[–] vsh@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Not really. If you only need to use a browser and some text editors you don't need anything better.

[–] Qkall@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

somehow no one said puppy linux. it's small, fast and functional. there is an compatible debian version here - https://vanilla-dpup.github.io/

[–] Beatlesandworms@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I use puppy Linux all the time. Works great, on a fairly crappy USB stick. It saves files to the stick and saves user preferences and everything. Very recommended from my end.

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

One piece of advice I want to throw in here: Use a proper file system! exFAT or F2FS are flash-aware and will ensure that you dom't kill your drive by frequent writes to the same memory cells!

[–] Junkdata@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

Do you want it to be persistent(all your stuff is saved) or you dont mind it starting fresh everytime you plug in to devices?

[–] SethranKada@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You could try Tails, it's specifically made for this purpose. It's ui is a bit old looking though, and it's not that user friendly. If you can stand xfce or kde though, you'll feel right at home though.

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[–] jollyrogue@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

It’s more about your software requirements then anything else.

Stable distros can be a pain when run as a desktop, so that might need to be rethought.

OpenSuse Tumbleweed is a rolling distro which deserves a look.

Endeavor OS for something Arch based.

Debian Testing is rolling for something Debian.

Fedora is semi-rolling for something in the red hat ecosystem.

OpenSuse Leap is a stable distro which gets bumped once a year, so that might be an option.

[–] TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Bunsenlabs is Debian-based, but doesn't have a classic desktop environment. Instead it uses super lightweight Openbox window manager and some other tricks to emulate one. It will run very well with 20gb disk space (you have triple that at your disposal). If you remove the programs you don't use (the office suite, etc etc) you can trim the install down even more.

[–] spacedancer@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wow Bunsenlabs. Now that’s a distro I haven’t heard in a while. lol. I used to have it on an old laptop many many years ago.

[–] buwho@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I loved Crunchbang was sad to see it go

[–] cerement 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] buwho@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago
[–] TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

I've tried so many others out and I keep going back to it! I put it on everything haha.

[–] abuttifulpigeon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Very helpful, thank you. I will definitely give this a try!

[–] TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No worries. It's been my daily driver for a very long time at this point across many different machines. If you do go with Bunsen, it's still on Debian 11. You can safely do an apt dist-upgrade to 12 and it will keep the Bunsenlabs flavor without issue. I often run Sid repo as well, no issues for me.

[–] Bleach7297@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Solid consumer advice

[–] Starfish@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Maybe MX linux or AntiX Linux. They are very thumb drive focused

[–] vsh@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I had Manjaro Linux on my 128GB pendrive and it worked completely fine. I guess you can install any distro because thumb drives are only (mobile) disks after all. Just remember that your USB lifespan will shorter because there's a lot of saving/reading in process

[–] KrimsonBun@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] OldFartPhil@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've always used Xubuntu. It's reasonably lightweight and the Ubuntu USB creator does the heavy lifting for creating persistence. The only downside is you have to have a running instance an Ubuntu flavor (bare metal, VM or USB) to use the tool.

[–] abuttifulpigeon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I'll probably just flash to one drive and install to the other. Thanks for the tip though!

[–] only0218@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Check out the Immutable Versions of Fedora (Kinonite and Silverblue especially)

[–] authed@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Almost any Linux distribution would fit that purpose

[–] jsnc@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you're using the flash drive as a block storage device with a root partition, I think just about any distribution would fit your requirements. Just try experimenting with it and make sure that both your machines can boot into the flash drive.

[–] abuttifulpigeon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ok, thanks. I just wasn't sure if there were compatibility or stability issues with certain distros from switching machines so much.

[–] jsnc@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only trade off here is that read/write operations are going to be throttled by the speed of your flash drive which will be very noticeable compared to NVME internal storage.

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