Linux Distro For Use On A Flash Drive

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.

terminhell,

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.

GrumbleGrim,

YUMI is a great USB tool that can install multiple bootable ISO’s onto one multi system flash drive. Pendrivelinux.com

KrimsonBun,
@KrimsonBun@lemmy.ml avatar

Tails!

ilickfrogs,
@ilickfrogs@lemmy.world avatar

Although I think tails is great, this isn’t the ideal use case

signofzeta,

It can be done. Just don’t cheap out. A USB4-attached NVMe disk will be faster than a run-of-the-mill USB 3.0 flash drive, and that will run circles around some cheap $10 USB 2.0 drive.

Not all flash drives are rated for constant use, so be sure to have a backup plan.

Other than that, it’s a cool idea! Go for it!

only0218,

Check out the Immutable Versions of Fedora (Kinonite and Silverblue especially)

vsh,
@vsh@lemm.ee avatar

I had Manjaro Linux on my 128GB pendrive and it worked completely fine. I guess you can install any distro because thumb drives are only (mobile) disks after all. Just remember that your USB lifespan will shorter because there’s a lot of saving/reading in process

Meganium97,

Normally I’d advise you to not use manjaro with a link to the manjarno page but it appears their domain license lapsed so I cannot.

flashgnash,

Never really got manjaro, never got around to it on my distro hopping spree.

Isn’t it just arch underneath?

20gramsWrench,

it’s arch but they have their own repo and hold back most packages for a week to make sure they don’t break something before deploying them, with moderate success, their main particularity though is to have attracted the hatred of arch users since their creation and even mentioning the name will get you a full lecture about how they’re eating babies and selling their body parts

Meganium97,

I mean, on like 3 separate occasions they’ve accidentally ddosed the AUR, so tbh they have a right to be mad.

terminhell,

If they would just remove access to the AUR it would solve some things. I used it for years before just getting the itch to distro hop. It worked just fine for me, and I only used the AUR for a handful of things. Now, I’ll either compile myself or use flatpak if it’s not in any normal repo for any distro I land on.

Meganium97,

That’s the one thing I don’t understand. Manjaro fucked up pamac way more times than necessary and yet they still don’t just ban pamac from accessing the aur.

20gramsWrench, (edited )

there should be an authentication system certifying that your computer is using the right set of software before getting acess to the aur, it would be called the “os integrity api” and prevent the use of the aur from unapproved 3rd party software, all you would need to do is to log in to your verified arch user account and request a monthly aur usage token to be created and used by your registered system for the low price of 9.99

illectrility,

It is

cerement,
@cerement@slrpnk.net avatar

somebody snapshotted it on Github – Manjarno

20gramsWrench,

Would have been funny if they forgot to renew theyr ssl cert

jollyrogue,

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.

Starfish,

Maybe MX linux or AntiX Linux. They are very thumb drive focused

52fighters,
52fighters avatar

Do yourself a favor and get an external hard drive. You'll get much better results and can run almost any distro with it.

vsh,
@vsh@lemm.ee avatar

Not really. If you only need to use a browser and some text editors you don’t need anything better.

jollyrogue,

Definitely this.

I gave up on thumb drives as they are kind of trash. External NVMe drives are affordable, and the speed difference is BIG.

nathris,

Even better get a NVMe enclosure and an internal NVMe drive.

Enclosures are $20 and you can get a 500gb Samsung 970 Evo for $35.

Smaller, lighter, cheaper and faster than any off the shelf portable drive you could get. I have one and it fully saturates the USB C 10Gbit port on my motherboard.

Ew0,

Alpine works great off a usb, I run sway and quite a few other bits off it on a run-from-ram/encrypted config.

Red1C3,

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

UnfortunateShort,

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!

authed,

Almost any Linux distribution would fit that purpose

Qkall,
@Qkall@lemmy.ml avatar

somehow no one said puppy linux. it’s small, fast and functional. there is an compatible debian version here - vanilla-dpup.github.io

Beatlesandworms,

I use puppy Linux all the time. Works great, on a fairly crappy USB stick. It saves files to the stick and saves user preferences and everything. Very recommended from my end.

TerkErJerbs,

Bunsenlabs is Debian-based, but doesn’t have a classic desktop environment. Instead it uses super lightweight Openbox window manager and some other tricks to emulate one. It will run very well with 20gb disk space (you have triple that at your disposal). If you remove the programs you don’t use (the office suite, etc etc) you can trim the install down even more.

abuttifulpigeon,

Very helpful, thank you. I will definitely give this a try!

TerkErJerbs,

No worries. It’s been my daily driver for a very long time at this point across many different machines. If you do go with Bunsen, it’s still on Debian 11. You can safely do an apt dist-upgrade to 12 and it will keep the Bunsenlabs flavor without issue. I often run Sid repo as well, no issues for me.

Bleach7297,
@Bleach7297@lemmy.ca avatar

Solid consumer advice

spacedancer,

Wow Bunsenlabs. Now that’s a distro I haven’t heard in a while. lol. I used to have it on an old laptop many many years ago.

TerkErJerbs,

I’ve tried so many others out and I keep going back to it! I put it on everything haha.

buwho,

I loved Crunchbang was sad to see it go

cerement,
@cerement@slrpnk.net avatar
buwho,

😮

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