RUN LINUX FROM A FLASH DRIVE
Most PCs can boot from an external device for recovery purposes – and there’s no reason why you need to stick with Windows. Set up a portable Linux installation on a flash drive and you can carry a complete free operating system wherever you go, along with your applications and files. It’s also a great way to test drive Linux without committing it to your hard drive, and without the hassle of virtualisation. Here’s how to set up a portable Ubuntu environment.
1 Download the installer
Ubuntu comes in several flavours, with native, Gnome or KDE desktops. You’ll find them at ubuntu.com/ download/flavours. We’ll stick with the regular distribution for now, which you can download from ubuntu. com/download/desktop. Select the appropriate ISO for your processor architecture and save it to your hard disk. 2
Make your USB drive bootable
The handy Rufus tool automates the process of making your USB flash drive bootable. Download it from
rufus.akeo.ie, then run it. Make sure the correct destination device is selected in the first drop-down menu, then click Select and point Rufus at the Ubuntu ISO you downloaded in step 1.
3 Partition and install
Make sure the Partition scheme and Target system drop-downs are set appropriately for your PC; on a modern system, you won’t need to change anything, but on older computers you might need to select the MBR scheme rather than GPT. Click Start, accept the option to Write in ISO Image mode and click OK.
4 Boot from USB
The final step is to boot from your flash drive. The process for doing this varies: on many systems you can press F2, F8, F10 or Del when starting up to either access a boot menu or the BIOS. If it’s the latter, you can edit the boot priority, so that if a USB flash drive is plugged in, the system will boot from that first.
If your PC won’t boot from your USB flash drive, it could be down to Secure Boot – this disables booting from unknown media. Check this by entering “Device Security” into the Windows 10 search box. If Secure Boot is enabled, you’ll need to go into the BIOS to change the setting (again, the process for accessing the BIOS will vary from machine to machine). When finished, make sure you re-enable Secure Boot to ensure you’re protected from malware.