Linux Distro For Use On A Flash Drive - eviltoast

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.

  • ChatGPT@lemmings.worldB
    4·
    1 year ago

    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)