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.

  • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world
    12·
    2 years ago

    One piece of advice I want to throw in here: Use a proper file system! exFAT or F2FS are flash-aware and will ensure that you dom’t kill your drive by frequent writes to the same memory cells!

  • Hatch@lemmy.ml
    8·
    2 years ago

    Do you want it to be persistent(all your stuff is saved) or you dont mind it starting fresh everytime you plug in to devices?

  • SethranKada@lemmy.ca
    71·
    2 years ago

    You could try Tails, it’s specifically made for this purpose. It’s ui is a bit old looking though, and it’s not that user friendly. If you can stand xfce or kde though, you’ll feel right at home though.

      • warmaster@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 years ago

        I had the same need, and tried Tails thinking it would serve me well as a mobile workstation, but it ended up complicating things. Almost nothing is persistent.

        Tails is good for other use cases.

      • krimsonbun@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 years ago

        That’s what I use tails for. Persistent storage for files and software make it really convinient to travel around with.

  • jollyrogue@lemmy.ml
    5·
    2 years ago

    It’s more about your software requirements then anything else.

    Stable distros can be a pain when run as a desktop, so that might need to be rethought.

    OpenSuse Tumbleweed is a rolling distro which deserves a look.

    Endeavor OS for something Arch based.

    Debian Testing is rolling for something Debian.

    Fedora is semi-rolling for something in the red hat ecosystem.

    OpenSuse Leap is a stable distro which gets bumped once a year, so that might be an option.

  • Red1C3@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 years ago

    Mint works pretty well as a persistent flash drive distro, the packages are a bit outdated though if you’re going to do a lot of programming

  • terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    1·
    2 years ago

    Honestly I’d go with something that supports booting in secure boot mode like fedora or Ubuntu(direct derivatives maybe). And yes, install to am external drive if you plan on having persistence.

    • toothpaste_sandwich@feddit.nl
      0·
      2 years ago

      Interesting! But will changes made to the OS you’re using be persistent? If I’m reading this right, then probably not, right?

        • toothpaste_sandwich@feddit.nl
          0·
          2 years ago

          That’s interesting, I’d be interested in finding out more about that. Let’s see, I’ve always wanted to try this:

          @ChatGPT@lemmings.world, how do you set up Ventoy for persistent installs of distros? That is, to be able to make changes to the operating system and have them stick?

          • ChatGPT@lemmings.worldB
            1·
            2 years 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)