How do I boot from a USB Flash Drive?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

My dad gave me a laptop a couple years ago and I left it at his place so I could use it when I was there and I would not have to bring a laptop between my mom's place and my dad's place. I come home this weekend with my school laptop to do some calculus homework and this morining it stopped recognizing the adapter and stopped charging. The laptop I am using right now is the old one my dad got me but my sister downloaded a ton of stuff on it and now it has a bunch of viruses and will only run programs if I right click them and say "Run as Administrator." I have had enough of this nonesense (the first laptop I ever got is broken, sitting in a drawer with an infected hard drive, buggy Windows XP, broken battery, and no adaptor (so it will not run, might as well turn it into the e-waste recycling centers).

I have decided to wipe the hard drive of this laptop clean and install Linux Mint. None of my sister's programs run on linux and there are virtually no viruses for linux either. I just want to know how to do that. I copied all my files from my 4 GB flash drive to my 32 GB flash drive and I am ready to reformat it but I need to know how to install Linux Mint from a flash drive. This is my second venture into using Linux and the first attempt was not successful.

So this is what I want to end up on my laptop: Linux Mint, Open Office, and Mozilla Firefox. Having VLC or dualboot would be a major bonus.

If I cannot do that, I could burn a CD though the DVD ISO is twice as big.

  Edited January 15, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[Alejandro24 575]

Boot from USB? Easy, configure the BIOS. Pressing F12, Del or the key indicated at the start of the computer. In my desktop computer is Supr -Del- and in my netbook is F12.

If not, use windows and the installer in the ISO for the assitant of booting.

Or read this articles:

Boot from USB

http://alt-tab.com.ar/bootear-desde-usb/

http://marismas-emtt.blogspot.com/2009/02/iniciar-un-pc-desde-un-dispositivo-usb.html

Installing Linux Mint

http://blog.sudobits.com/2011/11/30/how-to-install-linux-mint-12-using-live-usb-or-cd-dvd/

http://morfeox69.blogspot.com/2011/11/instalar-linux-mint-12-lisa.html

http://www.accella.net/create-a-linux-mint-12-bootable-usb/

http://www.linuxmint-hispano.com/foro/?/topic,6835.0.html

How is your computer?

  Edited January 15, 2012 by Alejandro24  

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Thank you! Now I have dual boot Windows 7 and Linux Mint! I will keep this thread for further help and troubleshooting (and tech support) as I go along.

There is now a new problem, my laptop's Wi-Fi card is disconnected and won't connect. I have to plug my laptop directly into my router. It is not too much of a problem at the moment because I can use my school laptop elsewhere.

I tried downloading the driver from Dell but that did not work.

Um, how do you install things? I need to install flash player.

  Edited January 15, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[Alejandro24 575]

Congratulations!!! Welcome to the unique experience of Linux. ¡Siente la libertad de ser tú mismo! Porque Linux es eso...

From my blog:

http://alejandro24blog.blogspot.com/search/label/Linux

Hope so this will help you.

The Wi-Fi card, well, I don't know how is in english, but in my system -in spanish- the installer for the Wi-Fi driver I found it as Controladores Adicionales. Try to found it with a possible translate searching it in your menu. Wich mint are you using, 11 or 12?

For a better looking of the dual boot, Grub, I recomend you instal Burg, look at this: http://www.unixmen.com/how-to-install-burg-in-ubuntu/

And there are topics of Linux here in ST: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/topic/46809-linux-mint-lisa-12-release-candidate-now-full-release/

  Edited January 15, 2012 by Alejandro24  

[Ocram's Razr 964]

My desktop is having overheating issues again so I think I need to get the power supply replaced with one that has a more powerful cooling system, not an identical one that is new. Can you recommend a power supply for a Gateway GT5628. Is the Coolmax M-500B compatible?

[hummer0328 6]

There is now a new problem, my laptop's Wi-Fi card is disconnected and won't connect. I have to plug my laptop directly into my router. It is not too much of a problem at the moment because I can use my school laptop elsewhere.

Load up Win7, find the model# of your wi-fi card, do a google search for "model # linux" or "model # ubuntu" (only cause ubuntu's user base is so large). That's the beauty of linux, if you're having problems you're probably not alone. I would be willing to bet there's a simple fix with step by step instructions somewhere on ubuntu's forums.

And as far as how to install flash player, I don't use mint so can't help you with that, sorry.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Thank you. My laptop is fixed.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

It was not the temperature. I think my laptop infected my desktop when I hooked them up together or when browsing the internet.

My laptop would not run any .exe files and my desktop was slowing down and getting stop errors.

I ran the malware check but it turned up negative so I had to go find all the errors that Sophos infected.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Linux+desktop+wine is rather small. Ubuntu is smaller than Mint as a default operating system. I don't see the point of using a flash drive because it will be used as the swap device as well, and this will reduce its lifetime. Do you not have a big enough hard disk to have both operating environments? You need about 50GB for a comfortable Linux installation, and you can have full access to all your NTFS files as well. I'd expect your disks to be on the order of at least half a terabyte these days. My smallest drive which is quite old is 300GB.

I suggest it is not worth the handsprings to set up a boot for a flash drive.

Ubuntu without my files occupies 29GB on my main hard drive of 500GB. And I have a large suite of development software and the Linux source for all my programs. My total system residency including backups is 40GB.

  Edited March 18, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I was going to shrink the Windows Partition, install Linux, and use a flash drive with 8 GB and high amount of write cycle (that would only be used for booting Windows 7 quicker and avoid writing as much as possible), if your computer reads a flash drive multiple times a day and writes less than a gigabyte a week, and does the same thing with a hard drive, your hard drive will break before your flash drive. I know it is hard for an experienced programmer like yourself to believe that Flash Memory has exceeded Magnetic Storage (hard drives) but that is the truth. Many flash storage (replacing hard drives, so internal 100GB to 1 TB) have more write cycles than hard drives have spin up/down cycles. By the way what are your 2 favorite Linux platforms?

  Edited March 25, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, chacun a son gout on storage. I just can't be bothered with flash drives because i don't run portable systems. Disks are cheaper in the end.

Linux decors I have used:

Ubuntu 7.04 through 12.04 (beta). Added desktops KFCE, GNOME. Prefer Gnome Classic. I think I am going to drop KFCE.

Linux Mint Katia and Lisa. Too much extra baggage and not enough themes

Debian. Too skinny.

freeSUSE. Too skinny. (SUSE wants a license fee to Oracle. Foo.)

Some people prefer Mint. I used it for about six months, but since it is a Ubuntu clone with fleas, I eventually went back to Ubuntu. I currently run 11.10 for production and am playing with 12.04 LTS. Will probably wind up on 12.04 soon after the official release because I have it doing pretty much what I want now. Just a few more things to sort out, and wait until the end of April.

If you like the MAC decor, try Ubuntu 11.10 unsavaged. I don't like all the pop out things, and prefer menus in lists, so I use GNOME classic desktop. You just have to download it, then select it at login time (once, it remembers). Maybe I am just stuck to the XP decor. Naked Ubuntu is aimed at the Internet/Chat/Social Networking user who also wants an office suite and e-mail. To use wine with it, you pretty much have to run the wine related apps from a console or make a set of scripts. Also true with Linux Mint.

To do what you want with flash drives, I think you have to monkey with your BIOS each time you want to boot from flash (acts like a secondary disk). I don't want to bother with this. I can boot from any of the five partitions I have on my USB connected 1 TB drive, but it means fooling with the BIOS again, so I don't. My main disk (500 GB) has three partitions but in MFT format only two are bootable. If I ever have occasion to reformat this disk, it will be different. I do not need compatibility with NTFS because I don't use it.

I have added my extra five partitions on the 1TB drive to my /etc/fstab, so they are automatically mounted and can be used as part of my default file system. Gives me 1.2 TB of storage on line at all times in either decor that I am running. My swap space is on the main disk and is 20GB.

Remember, you can test any version of these systems from a CD or DVD without impacting your system's storage since the test version runs all in memory. Look around and pick the one you like. It costs some download and burn time and some cd/dvd media to do this.