HOWTO: Fedora 9 on a USB Drive

So, I've been doing a bit of reading on Fedora 9, as it's been a few years since I've used fedora (Circa.. Core 2, and before that Red Hat 9) and it seems like there is a very easy, and interesting way to install what amounts to a persistent LiveCD version to a USB flash drive. I've done it, and it seems to work ok. Boot time is comparable with a vanilla hard-drive install, a bit slower, but really not noticeable on my AMD X2, 4gb RAM machine. I re purposed a 2gb stick I had lying around, but you can use as little as a 1gb if you like.

1. First step is to download the .iso file you want to use (from: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora). You need to choose the liveCD version that suites you needs (x86, or x64) - and the type you want. You can choose between the KDE and the Gnome version. The KDE version uses KDE4, which is nice if you want to try it out.

2. Go to https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator and download the liveusb-creator zip file, extract to your preferred location and run it. You should come with a screen like so:


3. Hit browse, find your .iso file, then set your target drive (your plugged in USB stick).

4. Next, set your overlay size. The full install should take about 700mb or so, and I set mine to 1gb to be on the safe side. You should be able to access the remainder of the data on the drive via fedora and windows without a problem.

5. Wait for it to complete.

6. Reboot! When your machine is booting, you will need to choose to have it boot from the USB drive. Some systems it's in the bios, others (like my dell), you need hit F12 and choose to boot from the usb drive.

It should boot up in to Fedora at this point! I'm going to spend a bit more time playing around with it (such as figuring out how to set up my ATI card in it) and then I'll post some more info.

As always, leave comments and let me know how it worked for you.

Lack of Updates

Sorry for the distinct lack of updates, those of you that check back in from time to time. I've been extremely busy with work - and thus have had very little time for tinkering with my various electronics. I'll try to start updating this again regularly, but it boils down to finding interesting things.