USB Friendly Distros

How come so many distros that claim to run 'out of the box' in the AAO are so difficult to put on a USB? I have downloaded no less than six distros claiming to work well on this netbook only to find out you have to have a PhD in linux to install them. WTF people, any distro that claims to work well in this machine has to go in it by way of USB so why all the 'live cd' crap? Here is a list of distros that I am trying to get on a stick. The latest releases of Mandriva, linux4one, sidux, oh and of course linpuslite which should BTW be easily available to anyone who has already bought an AAO already.

I, like many people are ready to walk away from windows but since the linux community can't give this shit away and beat Gates I wonder where to go next. I smell fruit...



x

 

Here are two very easy USB Live installer.

Unetbootin, is one of the best Ive come across. you pick your Disto, then it's version, were the ISO is on your computer, then you hit the create. Let it do it's thing, at times it looks like it's hanging, but it's just hit the big ISO file, and it's loading it. When it's finish, you hit the reboot button, and away you go. Oh, make sure you have your boot in the bios set to USB first, hitting F2 after the power button will get you there, if you didn't already know that. It supports allot of Linux OS's but not them all.
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

You quoted Sidux in your post. I tried it, and discovered that it was a KDE, which I am personally not fond of. It lacks out of the box programs, and you will have to go and get then ones you want. A good thing I found about it was it was very fast, and it found the WiFi card. I just had to go into networking an fire it up. Anyways, back to your LiveUSB. Sidux has it's own, and it looks like Unetbootin modded and you fill in the blanks in the same way. it's called,
liveusb-creator-sidux_010. I shopped around for their site, but at the time the site was down, but I did find this link to a 3rd party site that had it.
http://w3you.com/liveusb-creator/liveusb-creator.htm

NOTE: Format your USB stick to Fat32 before you creat, new or old.

There you go, USBLive Linux as easy as it gets.

 

4GibMe

Which out of the box programs are missing from sidux? remember you have the choice of installing the Full or Lite version of KDE, the Full version has to be the most complete loaded system I have ever seen it has an absolutely enormous amount of software included in the install, the lite version is there to enable you to add whichever programs you want without having a load of superflous crap that you dont want!

The Debian repositories are possibly the biggest linux ones out there, so simply by typing at the command line apt-get install you have access to huge volumes of software that can be installed very quickly.

There are also alternative desktop managers including xfce, openbox, fluxbox, and even lxde can be installed. The one blindingly fast thing about sidux is that even if you installed the Full KDE version, it only takes about 12-15 minutes to complete from the live usb stick! it is awesome, fast installing and fast running and is without doubt for me the best system for the aspire one that I have come across.

 

The one I looked at was the lite.

Nice form post BTW.

I've only gone as far as the Live with it. Your new info, has got me re-interested, and I shell go back and try your recommendations. Not being the big of a fan for KDE, I kinda looked at it very quickly. I shell go back with a more open mind. I have also noticed that right in the USB Live creater there is a down loader button. Should see if it works.

But the time I did spend on it, I quickly discovered that it was very snappy, with every human interface command I through at it.

In closing: Are last two posts, have kinda gone off track to the topic, and if we continue are chat we should start a new.

4GibMe.

 

Have you tried Zenwalk 6.0 with XFCE 4.6. It is very easy to install. Wifi works out of the box, SD card readers take less than a minute to get working, Fn keys were pretty easy to set up, and XFCE 4.6 now has power management. By default Zenwalk uses the XFS filesystem, but that can be changed during install to whatever you wish. I followed m4xr8d's how to and it went quickly.

 

OK everyone now that I've had my fit here is whats up. Managed to get the newest version of linux4one installed after using Unetbootin on a windows machine (how sad) So far I like the distro very well, and it fills the voids that UNR was missing, but there are a couple of things I am wondering about. In UNR you could add different websites to the favorites on the desktop, I have not found a way to do that yet on l4o. Other issues are while using Cheese I don't know where, or IF the video is being saved, you can find stills using the program, but not the video. Last but not least is when I am done with all this configuring where do I go to create a backup of this whole system up so I can reinstall it just as it is?

Sidux does sound interesting, but the install seems too complicated for a casual user like me. I am not a big fan of having to do a lot of stuff in terminal just to get a distro running.

Thanks to everyone for the help and suggestions