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usb.mdwn
Sometimes you find yourself in need to use a computer, but you’re surrounded by Losedows users and computers. Or some other proprietary OS. How to still have access to computing using free software? Suggestion: Boot from a USB memory stick!
I don’t know much about it, but it seems there are 3 options:
- Install a distro on a USB stick
- LiveUSB with persistence
- LiveUSB with writable data partition
Material:
- http://trisquel.info/en/forum/file-system-and-storage-space-live-persistent-trisquel
- http://trisquel.info/en/forum/does-making-persistent-liveusb-work-you
- [[!wikipedia Liveusb]]
- http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/how-create-liveusb
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD/Persistence
- http://debian.profijt.info/?page_id=54
- http://www.vleeuwen.net/2014/01/create-a-persistent-debian-live-usb-flash-drive
- http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/118965/how-to-create-a-debian-live-usb-with-persistence
- http://www.linux.com/community/blogs/133-general-linux/420179-creating-a-debian-live-usb-flash-drive-with-persistence-for-non-techies
- http://live.debian.net/manual/current/html/live-manual.en.html#the-basics
General idea: Regular installation eats the write cycles. Live USB with persistence allows to save things in the home folder, install packages, etc. but it’s better to not do too many changes because it will fill the drive. It seems good to prepare a custom live system, and use persistence just for data: things you write, application settings and so on. The strength of a separate data partition is that it works just like any partition and can be encrypted - I’m not sure the persistence partition can be encrypted. But persistence lets you not only store files but also application settings under the home folder.
The LiveUSB generally isn’t supposed to store documents - those should be sent to my computer. The persistence is good for 1) storing them there temporarily, 2) storing them for remotely-synchronized work, e.g. via git, 3) application settings and random useful files.
I can even ssh from the live system to my computer, but it still needs persistence to keep the ssh key.
The OS should be fully free. Trisquel Mini can be a good start, but later if needed I can optimize more by choosing even lighter tools. For example, use the JWM window manager. Use lynx/links/w3m for browsing, edit plain text files with markdown and TeX and so on.