I have an 8 gig cruzer thumb drive. Can I install linux on it and have the computer boot from there? If so, do this Linux install work with plug and play devices so I can plug in a device into a usb (like another thumb drive) and Linux will automatically setup the hardware? I had a problem setting up a thumb drive years ago and I gave up on Linux.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

I went to pendrivelinux.com and download the software and unzipped onto my cruzer thumb drive. They say you need to click on the makeboot.bat file to make the drive bootable. I did that and it tried to make my thumb drive bootable but it did not work, I think, because I am running Vista. I think the makeboot.bat file does not work with Vista. Does anyone know how to make the thumbdrive bootable using vista?

No, not sure how to do that. Another option to look into, however, is live usb creator. I've had very good luck with it. https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

Did you run makeboot.bat as the administrator? Also, there are other options. You might try Ubuntu: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2008/11/04/live-ubuntu-810-usb-persistent-install-windows/

I was logged in as the Administrator when I tried to run it but I did not realize that eventhough I was logged in as the admin it still does not run it as admin unless you right mouse click on the application and click on "RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR". It now works... I now just have to get my screen resolution up... This is cool stuff though!!!

If you really want simplicity run the Fedora Live USB creator, it kind of takes the fun out of it but is so easy!!! https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

[quote=Reed]http://www.pendrivelinux.com/[/quote] That is a wicked little app. Thank you for the link. Will give it a whirl.

Use the tutorials from pendrivelinux.com and its quite easy.

I am experimenting with UNetbootin which will install most Linux distributions to a thumb drive, with some success. I now have Fedora 10 and Ubuntu 8.10 running from 2GB micro-sd cards loaded into a USB reader to make a thumb drive. I'm doing this as part of a paper I am presenting to the IEEE Consultants Network in Chicago later this month. Download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/unetbootin/ - there are Linux and Windows executable files, so you can install to a thunb drive from any system. I've done it both from my CentOS (RedHat) and Windows systems without too much hassle.

Ubuntu can make a Live persistant USB, I've had it work everytime, with unetbootin I get mixed results, but generally it works, and the guides on pendrivelinux have never worked very well for me.

[quote=wolfgangmob]Ubuntu can make a Live persistant USB, I've had it work everytime, with unetbootin I get mixed results, but generally it works, and the guides on pendrivelinux have never worked very well for me.[/quote] Yes, well I found a bug in Unetbootin that affects installs from Windows. It terminates lines in text files with CR/LF instead of *nix LF terminators. Sometimes this isn't a problem, but other times it is. I have had consistently reasonable results installing Ubuntu on a thumb drive with Unetbootin from Linux. I've reported the bug to the Unetbootin tracker on SourceForge and downloaded the source to see if I can resolve it myself. It is a neat little tool, provided it does what it was intended for, and the source isn't too horrible (pretty good actually) except for the fact that there are virtually no in-line comments and no design document. Oh well, as they say, you get what you pay for... :-) [Modified by: Rubberman on January 12, 2009 07:10 PM]