Ubuntu

Live USB and full installation

Asked by KKevin901

Just wonder what is the difference between creating a persistent Live USB thumb drive and actually install the full Ubuntu into an USB thumb drive?

And, what is the upside and downside of each approach?

Thanks

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Vu Do Quynh
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Appiah (appiah) said : 		#1

USB's thumb drives are not meant to run a OS from in the long run.

Installing/Using Ubuntu live from USB is faster and in my opinion easier then to deal with then optical media.
If you're just gonna try ubuntu , Run the live from the USB.
There are other cases where having a ubuntu live comes in handy , but if you're gonna run ubuntu on that machine , install it!

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Best Vu Do Quynh (vu-do-quynh) said : 		#2

Persistent live USB (minimum 1 GB) are like live CD but instead of booting from the CD drive, you boot from the USB drive. This is obligatory with computers, like netbooks, that do not have CD drives. You can install Ubuntu from live USB as from live CD.

Live USB may also work faster than live CD as Appiah said.
Persistent means that you can customize your live desktop, install softwares and keep all these settings when shutting down the system, i.e. after booting again, you will find back the settings that you had configured to your needs. You can't do that with a live CD nor with a live USB without place for persistent data.

Installing to an USB drive (needs at least 4 GB) is like installing to a computer hard drive, but here whenever you insert your Ubuntu on USB in a computer, you can boot to your own mobile desktop. So you can just travel with your mobile desktop in your pocket and just borrow a compatible USB bootable computer to run your desktop. You cannot install Ubuntu from an Ubuntu system installed on an USB like you can do from a live USB.

I think these are the main differences.

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KKevin901 (kkevin901) said : 		#3

Thanks Vu Do Quynh, that solved my question.