I've got Knoppix booting fine from a 2Gb pendrive after following instructions here but before setting off up the learning curve am I better starting somewhere else? Same site has Ubuntu and other methods. I want a portable install that I can copy Win files to if necessary from the host machines, so is it useful/unnecessary to partition the pendrive? Also want to learn to use Linux from scratch. Finally (for now) I want to install Firefox and bring over user settings, bookmarks, etc, from my Win profile; how?
For linux from scratch there is always linux from scratch An alternative might be/will be simpler, to do a very basic install of debian (or whaterver you prefer) and build it exactly how you like. Then you can run the linux live scripts et viola a bootable cd from which you can install the exact same system to your thumb drives fat partition. Neither solution is 100% noob friendly but its a slightly lesser learning curve with the second option, or you could just cheat and use Knoppix. You should partition your pen drive to give you some extra flexibility ie one for the system and one for the files, since the sytem partition will be read only, but you could do that in windows if you weren't sure about the Linux alternatives, none of which are terribly taxing. As for firefox, no idea i'm affraid never been a big user of the bookmarks, not enough to worry about not wanting to replicate them.
Should you start somewhere else? You'll find the answer in The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. Seriously - go to part where Alice meets the Cheshire Cat and asks it which way she should go. IMO you're best practicing with as many USB installs as possible and looking for the differences in: Bootloader (syslinux or GRUB) Filesystem Init scripts Also, you'll soon see that the BIOS plays an important part in whether you also have to adjust the drive geometry of the USB stick in order for the BIOS to recognise it as a bootable device. As to copying win files, you will need a filesystem that windoze can read and write to (assuming you'll be reading/writing from windoze) so you will need a partition with either a FAT filesystem or (depending on the version of linux kernel you use) NTFS. As to your Firefox preferences, AFAIK all you need to do is copy over the preferences file to the same location/path on your new install. However, I've never paid too much attention to it, I'm afraid, as I don't use Firefox (it's a max free memory/shared libs thing).
There are lots of guides about making your own USB distro. Damn Small Linux is famous for it, but Gentoo handles it quite well too. For copying files from the original Windows partitions on the PC to the USB drive, about any recent kernel has great FAT32 and NTFS read abilities, so that won't be a problem. Just mount the partition to the Linux system, and copy things over (IE, hda mounted at /mnt/hda => cp /mnt/hda/<file> /home/) Easy as dandy, just copy the contents of the (hidden) ~Application Data/Mozzilla/firefox/<some random string>/* to ~.mozilla/firefox/<random string>
In a while, maybe. I'm trying Slax at the mo, Ubuntu it seemed I had to mount the system drives every time to see them, Knoppix and Slax just do it and Slax seems to have some write advantages for Flash use. Current problem is getting Firefox to connect to the net. I downloaded some module versions (.mo) of programs from Slax - Google Earth works fine, Firefox just sits there spinning. Built-in Konqueror works fine, I'm on it now, but it's a crap browser. Maybe I should use the proper tar.gz rather than a .mo designed for CD use? I can't even find a profile folder on the flash drive. edit: Firefox will connect to sites, but only by using their IP address. 216.239.59.147 gets Google, but links don't work.
Any joy yet mate? This project is certainly interesting, me being a former Linux user and all. I'm certainly thinking of going back to Linux ATM, but I'd need a working computer to ditch all my Win files on to... and most of mine either don't have NIC's, or have generally gone boom. Ah well... Joe
Solution I found through Google was to disable Firefox's default use of IPV6 in about:config. Worked a treat. network.dns.disableIPV6, true Also for some reason, Firefox menubar/menus font size was big by default, needed to change in userChrome.css Code: * { font-size: 9pt !important; font-family: Tahoma !important; }
