I've come across many instances (mainly Ubuntu) of people installing
the OS to the usb and they are actually running the livecd OS. There
are many guides (like penlinux?) and including unetbootin that will
install the livecd at the usb drives.
There is nothing wrong with that, provided people understand it's the
livecd that's running and there are ways to help manually installed
appplications 'stick' like casper-rw and the adding of 'persistent' in
the kernel line. And puppy linux creates a small partition at the hd
to aid that.
However, there are obvious disadvantages; the more serious being newer
kernels will not be able to be installed and several booting issues as
well.
I would highly recommend that should you want Lubuntu be installed to
a usb stick, *and it's perfect for that*, install it like a normal
installation, just that the partition you install to is the usb
partition.
One important thing to watch out is that at the stage where the
installer ask where you want the grub to be installed, please specify
the usb drive and never the mbr. Take particular care of the
designation of that usb drive (sdb, sdc or sdd) before installation
and specify that when asked where grub is to be installed. Note there
may be a warning message that installing other to mbr 'is a BAD IDEA'.
Nevertheless, proceed. (I understand that this message has been
removed, but I cannot verify this). It is a 'BADDER IDEA' to install
grub to mbr when /boot is not in the hard drive.
To use Lubuntu at the usb drive after installation, at most computers,
the keys 'esc', F12', 'F8' will allow you to select the drive to boot
up. Older computers may require you to go to bios to do that. Keep
that in mind when you take your portable Lubuntu usb drive to other
computers.
And at your own desktop computer, update-grub of the desktop OS while
the Lubuntu usb drive is mounted will enable the desktop OS grub to
include your Lubuntu usb drive in the boot menu.
Of course running Lubuntu from a SATA hard drive is faster as usb
transfer speed is slower. But you may be surprised, as I was, how
Lubuntu performs. Ubuntu, Kubuntu ,even the netbook remix, crawls due
to the 'bulk' it must carry. Puppy linux, DSL linux do not have the
'polish' of good fonts, codecs, graphics and just plain 'usability'.
I brought this up as too many people are installing livecd to the usb
drives and I think it's good to set this right especially Lubuntu is
just perfect for this.
Also, I will appreciate any comment, feedback or disagreement.
Regards - Goh Lip
