Distro Reviews

WetGeek

tomscharbach Persistence, the ability to save changes back to the USB. Live sessions are not persistent.

Ah, right. That should have occurred to me. I don't have a lot of experience with live sessions, I guess. Usually I just go for the [Install OS] button right away.

I'm serious enough about a portable Linux on a flash drive that I ordered such a drive a few minutes ago. I'm looking forward to an interesting experiment. What would be your best guess for the fastest Linux distro I could put on a 400 Mbps flash drive?

Since I had to order a 128GB drive in order to get that speed, distro size isn't very important -- just speed.

tomscharbach

WetGeek What would be your best guess for the fastest Linux distro I could put on a 400 Mbps flash drive?

I don't know. I'd start looking by looking for "linux portable distros" and reading the reviews.

murbert

WetGeek What would be your best guess for the fastest Linux distro I could put on a 400 Mbps flash drive?

I bought a UGreen NVME drive enclosure and a cheap 500GB NVME drive for portable OS installation and storage. I think it's rated around 500MB/s. I partitioned 350GB for storage in exfat and installed Solus on the remainder of the drive. I am typing this from Solus using the portable drive connected to my wife's little Windows laptop via USB C 3.whatever. It is fast enough. I do not pine for the speed of my own laptop. If the little drive you bought gives anything like the stated performance don't bother looking for a small distro that'll be fast enough. Go straight to your standard Solus configuration, that should suffice.

WetGeek

tomscharbach I think that it would be possible with a unbloated distro and 16 GB RAM, but I haven't figured out how to do it.

You might need to consider a bigger flash drive in order to get reasonable performance. I did. But I still would like a distro that will install without a lot of default applications that I don't want or need.

These are the two smallest VMs that I currently have, so maybe I should experiment first with Ultramarine. Its user experience is more familiar to me than Pop's. Persistence wouldn't be an issue, as it would be a working installation, not a "live" demo.

I just wish it were possible to find 32GB flash drives with a decent read speed. Here I am talking about a small distro, while I'm planning to install it on a 128GB disk. Seems like a nonsequitur.

tomscharbach

WetGeek You might need to consider a bigger flash drive in order to get reasonable performance. I did. But I still would like a distro that will install without a lot of default applications that I don't want or need.

Keep what you need and take out the rest. I'd experiment in a VM though, to get it right. Linux dependencies can be tricky and you might end up having to keep something you don't want to keep the dependencies you need for other things. I run into that once in a while.

WetGeek

tomscharbach Keep what you need and take out the rest.

Yep. Solus makes that easy to do safely with their eopkg rmo option. I'm not sure if the same service exists in, say, Aquamarine, for example, but it wouldn't surprise me.

It's also occurred to me that with a bigger flash drive than needed, it might make sense to create a 32GB partition to install the OS in, and partition the rest of it for a data partition that could be mounted in the OS as needed.

Or create 4 32GB partitions and install four distros on it? So many possibilities! I don't think I'll get bored again for days. And although flash drives don't last forever, the better ones do pretty well these days. If one scheme doesn't turn out to be interesting, it can be re-used to try different schemes.

kuki

I have tried many distros and i think that distro doesnt matter, but my choice of favorits is Mint, Pop, Endeaovur and Solus. Pop is great, I have Optimus laptop with nvidia and that is only distro that i have managed to run nvidia(hybrid), gnome and wayland together with out any issue and tinkering.I have to say first distro what I like most is linux Mint its is so stable and good and I think its only distro that you can run all with gui, so close to Win in good way.

WetGeek

murbert I bought a UGreen NVME drive enclosure and a cheap 500GB NVME drive for portable OS installation

Interesting. I happen to have an SSK NVMe enclosure that suports USB 3.1 and USB C. I've removed the NVMe Windows drives from her last couple of laptops and saved them, just in case we'd ever want to make them Windows machines again. We never have, so those drives became strictly surplus.

I put a 128GB NVMe in that SSK enclosure, and so far I've only formatted it as a data drive and not used it for anything yet. It's bigger than a flash drive, and came with two short cords to connect it to a USB 3 or USB C port. It could be carried around in a pocket, but the metal enclosure and cord is a lot heavier bulkier than a plastic flash drive.

So, I'm still fascinated by the idea of a working OS on a tiny flash drive. Maybe that idea will turn out to be less than practical, and I might fall back on that NVMe as an alternative. Thanks for reminding me of that!

murbert

murbert If the little drive you bought gives anything like the stated performance don't bother looking for a small distro that'll be fast enough

Of course, this is a thread about trying new OSes, so maybe go ahead and look. 😆

murbert

WetGeek It's bigger than a flash drive, and came with two short cords to connect it to a USB 3 or USB C port. It could be carried around in a pocket, but the metal enclosure and cord is a lot heavier bulkier than a plastic flash drive.

So, I'm still fascinated by the idea of a working OS on a tiny flash drive.

Indeed, a flash drive OS is what I would consider to be the best option. I might have to buy one of the thumb drives you pointed out earlier as I had no idea they were so fast for so little money these days.
edit for clarity

tomscharbach

WetGeek I happen to have an SSK NVMe enclosure that suports USB 3.1 and USB C. ... I'm still fascinated by the idea of a working OS on a tiny flash drive. Maybe that idea will turn out to be less than practical, and I might fall back on that NVMe as an alternative.

Either way, keep in mind that you are setting up a dual-drive, dual-boot (or maybe multi-drive, multi-boot) and you are going to have to pay attention to what you are doing when you set up the external drive lest you tangle the bootloaders. I do my usual ID-10-T avoidance routine, and install on the USB with all other drives unplugged.

I use Windows on my laptops, but I have a Solus install on an external 64 GB USB 3 "thumbnail" drive.

It isn't quick (200 mbs) and like all "thumbnails" it runs too hot for my taste, but it works when I need it. I keep it in my laptop travel case, and update it every month or so.

I've also used a spare NVMe M.2 drive in a case for that purpose, but it was clumsy for a laptop, so I don't do that any more.

brent

tomscharbach WetGeek
what's missing from this great conversation is the fact there are no usbs born to be hard drive operating systems. there are distros like Zephix born to be on a USB, but there is no inverse to this. Truth still remains an operating system on a USB is stll a finite, short-term thing. That's the nature of a tiny piece of plastic with a little micro soldering on it.

murbert

tomscharbach I keep it in my laptop case, and update it every month or so.

This was my stumbling block, updates take so long.
edit to add: I think a very stable point release is the way to go with a thumb drive, less updates

tomscharbach

murbert I think a very stable point release is the way to go with a thumb drive, less updates

It get you. It hasn't been a big deal for me because I don't update it often. When I do, I just stick it into one of the desktops, boot it, sudo eopkg up and do something else on the other desktop until it wheezes to the finish line.

tomscharbach

murbert I think a very stable point release is the way to go with a thumb drive, less updates.

I was thinking about the stable versus rolling update difference the other day, wondering if there is a significant difference in the number of files updated over the course of a year.

The only stable point release I'm running right now is Zorin 16 (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS), and it updates frequently, just as Solus does. The kernel, of course, doesn't migrate, but between security updates, application updates (browsers et al) and so on, Zorin 16 seems to update 25-50 or so files every week.

I did a bit of internet searching on the topic last week, and couldn't find a decent explanation of what updates and what doesn't update in a stable point release.

tomscharbach

brent There are distros like Zephix born to be on a USB, but there is no inverse to this. Truth still remains an operating system on a USB is stll a finite, short-term thing. That's the nature of a tiny piece of plastic with a little micro soldering on it.

That's absolutely right. A USB isn't designed for use as an OS drive, and will wear out before its time from all the reads/writes. NVMe and SATA drives are designed for OS installation, and are the better choice for a permanent external installation.

The USB design issue doesn't concern me personally, because the only USB installation I have is for emergency use should I absolutely, positively, without question need to boot Solus on my laptop rather than Windows. It hasn't happened yet.

WetGeek

brent there are no usbs born to be hard drive operating systems

For sure. I'm more curious about whether it can actually be made to work, not whether it could be used full-time as an OS. You make a good point.

brent

tomscharbach that said, I downloaded the Zephix zip ISO and those 2 .zx files on their .zx page. I have a new 16GB PNY and ready to have some fun🙂

PS: Project Ventoy journey...feels like Capt Willard pulled down the river to meet Col. Kurtz🙂

tomscharbach

brent Project Ventoy journey...feels like Capt Willard pulled down the river to meet Col. Kurtz🙂

ROTFLMAO 😀

zmaint

I've got Endeavor and Tumbleweed in VM's currently. Both are decent, but I've never found anything as good as Solus. The history, rollback, and check/repair features make it way better than any other distro when things go wrong. The team also does a fantastic job of making sure things work before pushing packages to the repo.... so I've almost never needed to even use those tools. Lastly, the documentation here is easier for me to understand (good hand holding🙂)

I hope Solus never goes away, and I hope the new package manager builds on what I already consider the best (and keeps all those nice easy to use tools).

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