Do you remember the time when Linux was the system that everyone would have wanted (free, reliable, stable, virus-free) but if you wanted to install it at home you would need to spend considerable time understanding it, configuring it and, overall, making it work? There was a time when you could install Knoppix, a Debian based live CD, and you would have something that, more or less, worked. Otherwise you had to go via the mainstream distributions and do your best, this meant that, if you were a novice, you would manage to install a Mandrake Linux.
Well, for the good and the bad, those times are over. Now you can install very good and well equipped distributions from an ISO file onto a USB drive and off you go. You don’t believe me? Then read this: I needed a non-intrusive operating system to run from time to time on my work laptop (say for example when I travel) without writing or modifying data on the hard disk, so I just ran a search in Google. After a few clicks and some short reading in the Fedora page (one of the Linux distributions) I came across Linux Live USB Creator, a tool that helps you installing Linux on a USB memory stick from Windows (I use Windows 7 but I believe it runs more or less on anything). What’s more, there are dozens of different distributions and in a matter of a couple of hours I tested a number of them, probably four of five. Still not happy? You can test them even without rebooting the system from the stick, you can just use a kind of emulator from Oracle.
I now settled on Linux Mint, which is an Ubuntu based distribution coming complete with all the basic things you may need (from a Torrent client to audio and video players, to an Office suite), installed on a USB drive.
You are not yet convinced, so I will go as far as telling you that there is a new (well, new for me) feature called Persistence which allows the system to store some information on the USB drive, such as bookmarks, WiFi settings, and other details. This is really like having your own computer in your pocket and being able to fire it up on whatever hardware you can put your hands on.
Enough said, just go and try it. It’s so easy that anyone can do it!
