Go and make a cup of tea (perhaps) and let the installer run.īy the time you get back, you should have a boot-ready persistent USB. (I chose this much because that gives me a DVD's worth of persistent space to do a custom build). Select the volume of persistence you require from the drop-down list - the maximum available in FAT32 is 4GB, which is what I selected Without Persistence, any changes are made only in RAM, and are lost when the machine is switched off or rebooted, so it is worth selecting the 'Persistence' option if you do not want to reload software every time you boot from USB - e.g.: my printer drivers are now a permanent feature of what is now effectively a custom USB install)ĮDIT: Linux Live USB creator offers greater flexibility in the capacity of the persistent space, which is useful considering that pendrives rarely have the capacity they claim (e.g.: 4GB actually turning out to be 3.6GB). ('Persistence' means that any changes made to your USB install are as permanent as those installed to a hard-drive - e.g.: installation of printer drivers.

There is an option of 'Persistence?', which is not available for all distros, but IS for LinuxMint 10: Run the programme, following the instructions: it is probably best to select the 'Format' option, because the USB must be FAT32 formatted. Please note that LM10 is listed on the page.

I installed it to USB, using a Vista-powered machine (it also works in XP), thus:įirst get the Universal USB Installer from here: This was written on an 8yo AMD machine running LM10 from an 8GB USB key/pendrive:

All this effectively creates is a modifiable live distro, so it is valuable in that it can be used for a custom build.

Please note: this method is specifically for USB key/pendrives, not for USB external hard-drives.ĮDIT: Be aware that a 'persistent' install using this method is effectively the running of a distro as a 'Windows software' package, using a non-secure ext2 file system in a FAT32 'partition'.

Installing universal usb installer