Usb Key Linux Distro

[Dromede]

capn_fish, maybe www.puppylinux.com will suit your needs. it was my first linux experience and i think that it's a great and feature packed distro...

[Capn_Fish]

I tried Puppy, and it was pretty good, especially at hardware detection. A couple things annoyed me, though:

-The mount points in a USB install
-Can't remove packages without doing it manually or rolling your own distro, which failed for me.

So that drove me to look at other things...I'm not using my Linux-on-a-stick much ATM, though, so I may give other thins a shot.

[Capn_Fish]

Sadly, I only just got to try booting Debian off of a USB key on a different computer from the one I installed it on, only to discovver that networking doesn't work. I'm assuming that the card driver isn't being loaded. So my questions are:

-How do I tell what network card the computer has? (lspci? What package would that be in?)

-On the LCD, the edges of the screen both outside of and inside X are cut off. Why is that, and how do I fix it?

Thanks.

[adf]

Sadly, I only just got to try booting Debian off of a USB key on a different computer from the one I installed it on, only to discovver that networking doesn't work. I'm assuming that the card driver isn't being loaded. So my questions are:

-How do I tell what network card the computer has? (lspci? What package would that be in?)

-On the LCD, the edges of the screen both outside of and inside X are cut off. Why is that, and how do I fix it?

Thanks.
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Surely there are debtools?  dpkg-reconfigure Xorg, maybe will help with the screen?

[Capn_Fish]

It has nothing to do with Xorg AFAICT, as it happens even in the console before starting X. It happened on a different computer with a different monitor as well (both LCD. CRTs work fine).

[T3_slider]

It has nothing to do with Xorg AFAICT, as it happens even in the console before starting X. It happened on a different computer with a different monitor as well (both LCD. CRTs work fine).

Is a framebuffer being used for the console though? That could possibly mess things up -- there should be a way to boot it to the normal VGA console mode (maybe I don't know what I'm talking about here, but at least on Slackware you can boot to a normal VGA console or to a framebuffer console depending on LILO settings -- and I'm sure there must be a way to enable a console mode without LILO).

In any event, if the console is running a framebuffer and you can't get it to work in normal VGA mode, playing with xorg.conf MAY have an effect anyway in X sessions since its configuration would override that of the framebuffer.

If a penguin appears upon booting up, you're probably in a framebuffer console -- try playing with xorg.conf anyway (make a backup just in case). I'm not entirely sure if Debian includes xorgsetup/xorgconfig/xorgcfg or a similar tool, but manually editing the xorg.conf file should work anyway.

Good luck!

[Capn_Fish]

It has nothing to do with Xorg AFAICT, as it happens even in the console before starting X. It happened on a different computer with a different monitor as well (both LCD. CRTs work fine).

Is a framebuffer being used for the console though? That could possibly mess things up -- there should be a way to boot it to the normal VGA console mode (maybe I don't know what I'm talking about here, but at least on Slackware you can boot to a normal VGA console or to a framebuffer console depending on LILO settings -- and I'm sure there must be a way to enable a console mode without LILO).

In any event, if the console is running a framebuffer and you can't get it to work in normal VGA mode, playing with xorg.conf MAY have an effect anyway in X sessions since its configuration would override that of the framebuffer.

If a penguin appears upon booting up, you're probably in a framebuffer console -- try playing with xorg.conf anyway (make a backup just in case). I'm not entirely sure if Debian includes xorgsetup/xorgconfig/xorgcfg or a similar tool, but manually editing the xorg.conf file should work anyway.

Good luck!
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No framebuffer, and the xorg.conf file looks fine to me, but I've only done minimal work with it, so I may be off. Nobody else has this issue?

[T3_slider]

I would try it out, but I don't have any LCD screens (I'm just using old-school CRT monitors for now). Slax seems to work fine on my CRT (haven't tried the Debian LiveCD though).

[Capn_Fish]

I would try it out, but I don't have any LCD screens (I'm just using old-school CRT monitors for now). Slax seems to work fine on my CRT (haven't tried the Debian LiveCD though).
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That's the funny thing...It works fine on CRTs, so I don't know what gives. It's probably some little thing that I haven' changed.

[Capn_Fish]

On a slightly different topic (No need to start a new thread, even if this is the off-topic section), XUbuntu is freezing when trying to shut down or suspend on my laptop sometimes (not all the time). It gives a black screen and hangs (no disk activity or LCD backlight). So what distro do people recommend trying? I'd like something that does at least some hardware detection/setup (eg, so I don't need to edit EVERYTHING) and is lightweight/fast booting. Distros I've tried:

-Vector (I found it too complicated/cluttered)
-Debian (My fallback, some packages are too old for my taste, about my convenience limit for needing tweaking)
-Gentoo (Stuff got broken/didn't work, otherwise nice, lousy initial setup)
-Slackware (Never did get a working install)
-(Xu|Ku|U)buntu (Now freezing while shutting down (  ), non-Xubuntu *buntus are too heavy for my taste)

Any ideas? So far I've been prefering .deb systems, but I haven't tried an RPM system in a year or two.

Thanks.

[adf]

On a slightly different topic (No need to start a new thread, even if this is the off-topic section), XUbuntu is freezing when trying to shut down or suspend on my laptop sometimes (not all the time). It gives a black screen and hangs (no disk activity or LCD backlight). So what distro do people recommend trying? I'd like something that does at least some hardware detection/setup (eg, so I don't need to edit EVERYTHING) and is lightweight/fast booting. Distros I've tried:

-Vector (I found it too complicated/cluttered)
-Debian (My fallback, some packages are too old for my taste, about my convenience limit for needing tweaking)
-Gentoo (Stuff got broken/didn't work, otherwise nice, lousy initial setup)
-Slackware (Never did get a working install)
-(Xu|Ku|U)buntu (Now freezing while shutting down (  ), non-Xubuntu *buntus are too heavy for my taste)

Any ideas? So far I've been prefering .deb systems, but I haven't tried an RPM system in a year or two.

Thanks.

Those would have been my ideas. You could try fedora (haven't used it in a while, but had issues with it- won't use again if I can avoid it) or one of the rhel clones like enterprise or centos....

Or some other deb derivate?

[Capn_Fish]

Thanks. I didn't feel like going all the way to RPMs yet, so I tried Mepis, didn't like it, and went back to Debian. I decided to try Testing, and it's awesome. Up-to-date, stable (so far), and lightweight (fewer daemons than the *buntus).

[EnderNightLord-Chromebook]

I'm looking to run Linux off of a USB drive (512MB). I would like to have:

-A 2.6.x kernel
-Hardware detection so I can use it on any machine
-The ability to uninstall whatever came with the distro
-GCC readily available
-Some space left over so I can actually use it as a USB drive

Any suggestions?
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damn small linux not (DSL-n)?  looks like it might suit
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Can you uninstall whatever you want? It looks good otherwise.
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It is so small I never bothered, But I think there is a roll-your-own method (not sure, though)

tinycore for sure