Creating a persistent USB

glent54

wouldn't it be great if this was available via Solus. It be easier for EVERYONE if the Solus team developed this feature themselves - saving us all time and effort trying to work our way through this maze of forums / youtube videos / tutorials that all offer well meaning but often conflicting advice - i believe there are enough people wanting this for it to be developed

yursan9

glent54 Even if there are enough people that want this feature, someone need to step up and implements it.

Justin

I've been about 3.

Brucehankins

Has there been any changes here? I've got a separate HDD that I hook up directly to install the iso file and get it up and running, then remove it and install it into an external HDD case. It would still be nice if I didn't have to crack everything open and could install directly over USB.

Harvey

Brucehankins
Why would there be a change? They've said repeatedly that its not something they have interest in supporting. If you can make it work for you that's great but you're on your own.

Brucehankins

Harvey I was doing some searching through the forum and online, this was an older post so I wasn't sure if that position had changed. I know it's possible with other distros, but I haven't found anything I enjoy as much as Solus so far.

DJSupertel

With a 64GB USB 3.0 Sandisk Ultra Flair I just pointed the installer at it from the live USB and it did a full install and I even set up trim and it still after 2 years with Updates regularly applied is working just as well. The only drawback is it will not work if I were to try to run it from my second Computer with an ASUS motherboard as it was installed using an HP Desktop and so the hardware is recognised for that USB install. What I did was basically use the USB as you would an SSD. If Solus had a tool such as the MX Linux "create a persistent USB" it would be nice I agree, but the Solus team probably have enough work to do just keeping Solus project running and it is the best Linux I have ever used in my humble opinion, so they are doing their job extremely well.

Brucehankins

DJSupertel how'd you get the installer to recognize a USB connected drive? I'm using an old 320gb HDD from a Dell laptop in an external case, but I have to swap it into my machine every time if I want to do a full install. I've had no issues taking it and running the OS via USB on any other computer yet though outside of some wireless card drivers.

brent

Brucehankins DJSupertel it is a crapshoot to get the live .iso to always recognize a usb. I honestly don't know the formula. But an observation. If I made the live .iso to solus specs AND it was a newer usb, it usually sees it. If I ever deviate from this formula (burn iso with an app solus does not recommend AND use a usb that's been around the block...then usually Fail.

more: just because they don't support it doesn't mean you can't do it successfully. I ran on USB sticks (solus) for years. Be aware that an Operating System will beat a USB to a pulp eventually. I simultaneously completely respected their position and ran it my way anyways, without problem except the dying usb or crap of my own making.
edit: blame it on the lager

DJSupertel

Hi Bruce! I forgot to mention in my original post that the computer I used to install Solus to the USB 3.0 was set to legacy boot. i don't know how if it would have worked with UEFI but with legacy I just had 2 USB 3.0's a 16gb Solus Mate live ISO and a 64GB 3.0 to install Solus to as a full install, Booted up the live ISO plugged in the second USB and from the installer pointed it at that USB the same as if you were installing to any HDD or SSD and the stick has a grub partition installed to boot from as if I boot the USB with the full Solus Mate install and run update grub it finds my other HDDs with no problems and adds them to the menu. The 64GB was brand news so should have been fat32 formatted although that is an assumption on my part as I never checked at the time but I did reformat a 32GB Sandisk Ultra USB to ext 4 and Solus budgie installed to it just fine.
That's all I can tell you from my experience although I did try it with a few other distro's but they did not see the USB from the installer. I did this with version 3.9999 but when the upgrade came out it all went smoothly so the USBs are running that now. I do realise that even good USB's will wear out quicker than installing to a decent SSD but surprisingly after two years they are still both working. The computer I set it all up on is my Linux test computer an old HP Pro 3125 MT AMD Athlon11 4GB Ram that used to run Windows 7. If your computer doesn't see the USB at first plug it in when you get to choose where to install and see if that works although with me it saw it first time with the USB plugged it when I booted the live bootable ISO version.

DJSupertel

You are of course quite right Brent! You know far more than I do about Linux as I can see from many of your other posts across this forum. I am in no way an expert but am still learning as I go along. As I stated USB's are not designed in exactly the same way as an SSD and will fail much quicker if we run a fully installed OS on them. I used balenaEtcher to burn the ISO to the live USB. My own reason for trying to run the Solus OS from USBs with a full install was because I was testing about 8 other Linux OS's on my stack of 4 HDDs in the spare test computer at that time and I didn't want to buy any new ones as I would have eventually moved on to try more OS's so they would just be erased and replaced. I had some spare Sandisk higher end USB's so just thought I would try them out in this manner and was really surprised when it worked. It certainly didn't with some OS's as stated before. I now use Solus Plasma as my main OS on an 500gb internal hdd (to me it's as good as it gets as an OS) but still have the two USB's with Solus Mate 4.1 on the 64gb USB and Solus Budgie 4.1 on the 32gb USB and regularly update them every Saturday via the terminal. What started out as an experiment is now a wait until one of them gives out from the constant rewrites and reads.

Walnut

DJSupertel (to me it's as good as it gets as an OS)

Couldn't agree more. Came over from Antergos when it folded and never been happier. I have it running on two desktops and two laptops, all different hardware and brands and it's rock solid across them all.
If only I could email a beer out to the Dev Team.

brent

DJSupertel You know far more than I do about Linux as I can see from many of your other posts across this forum. I am in no way an expert but am still learning as I go along

If you are dabbling in a dozen distros then you, kind sir, are ahead of me but thanks for the nice words. I only really know Solus and many would argue I don't even know that🙂

Keep experimenting with the MX tool, it's exciting what you are trying.

I did spend about a few days with MXLinux last year. Looks-wise it's still miles from this. It was easy to use. The package installation was easy to learn. But you know how you have a few ways of doing the same task in Linux? I thought there were 500 ways per task in MX and these built-in redundancies grated on me. Repos are scary. You want a program? Pick a repo? Why so many? I couldn't tell "official" or "safe" software repo(s?) from "install at your own risk" repos. I was lost. Performance-wise it was overall fine but I could never see eye-to-eye with a debian system, philosophically. I am in the huge minority, I know.

DJSupertel

For those who are still interested in looking into running Solus on a USB but unlike my full installs, this time with persistence, Dolphin Oracle has recently uploaded a new video on his runwiththedolphin youtube channel on using the MX usb maker tool, from other OS's, he did reply to a query that trying to create persistent USB's of OS's other than MX and AntiX that have Systemd could throw up many problems. Maybe those Solus users interested in USB's with persistence could ask him for more details!

DJSupertel

Hi Brent! I would probably run "only Solus" if it were not for the fact I have an old spare Compaq laptop with 2gb ram that I wanted to keep running. I found AntiX to be the best OS for that job. Runs superb with AntiX 19 installed. I tried MX Linux as full install on HDD on my test computer and as a persistent USB. But to cut a long story short, after installing and running Ubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, and most of the other mainstream Ubuntu's the only one I like is UbuntuDDE however that is still a bit in its early days "buggy" but looks better than standard Ubuntu's I have run Mint all versions. Manjaro which likes to fail on updates after a while. SuSe tumbleweed is similar in it likes to fail after updates. The list goes on with OS's I have tried. Anyway; the only OS I have installed that gave me an experience of just working and especially a tear free and smooth youtube video experience was Solus and that's why I love it! You install it and in the main it just works. All Distro's have minor problems and the odd freeze whilst downloading updates is the main bug I have found with Solus. However the main thing with Solus is it works well, Looks good straight out of the box and is a rolling release. If someone could get it to work problem free as a persistent USB install Like MX Linux, Solus would be the all round do anything with, Linux Distro! However that is hardly a priority but would be a sort of bonus feature!