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The ubuntu documentation gives instructions on how to install lubuntu minimal.

Is there any documentation on Adding Persistence to a Lubuntu Minimal "Live" USB Drive? Just like this for Kali Linux?

Nilesh
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    Good things happen, not bad things because minimal is good for installing Ubuntu on a USB drive. – karel May 30 '20 at 14:54
  • Will it have compatibility issues with hardware, if we plug the same USB to different machine? – Nilesh May 30 '20 at 14:58
  • It's a known fact that live Linux USB drives have problems booting on some Windows XP era computers because of hardware issues, but aside from that they can run on different machines. – karel May 30 '20 at 15:04
  • With full install on USB, OS may assume that hardware may not change and try to install drivers. Whereas with persistence, OS will consider host machine may change, lets not download any hardware specific drivers.. this is just my assumption. I would like to know if this is really true. – Nilesh May 30 '20 at 15:12
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    In any Ubuntu installation only the built-in drivers are installed automatically. All other device drivers are installed optionally by the user, not automatically by the operating system. – karel May 30 '20 at 15:28
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    Thats Great! So the solution is- minimal install on USB, rather than trying to add persistence to live usb. :) – Nilesh May 30 '20 at 15:32
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – karel May 30 '20 at 15:34
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    Thank you so much for helping me to improve the question. Feel free to edit the question if it lacks something. – Nilesh May 31 '20 at 00:58

2 Answers2

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A netboot (minimal) .iso lacks the live "Try Ubuntu" environment that you would change and save. It's simply a bare-bones installer.

If you wish to customize the netboot .iso, that's very different. It involves preseeding or unpacking/repacking the .iso, and has nothing to do with persistence.

user535733
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  • Hey thanks for pointing out mistake of considering Netboot iso as Try Ubuntu iso. It will be very helpful if you could add Instructions for creating Live USB for Lubuntu minimal. So that this answer can be marked correct. – Nilesh May 30 '20 at 16:52
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    @Nilesh, I am afraid that such instructions would be too complicated for this kind of answer. Instead I suggest that you get a light live system. The lightest Ubuntu family desktop system is Xubuntu Core. There are text-only Debian 'standard' live systems. There are also some very small systems, that can run persistent live or 'frugal', for example Puppy Linux and Tiny Core. – sudodus May 30 '20 at 17:11
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    I understand from the comments, The solution to the question is not available for now because its infeasible. Hence no documentation is available. Instead we can try alternatives as you suggested. About installing lubuntu on USB just as HDD is okay. – Nilesh May 30 '20 at 17:41
  • @Nilesh: Stepwise instructions and

    Full Install to USB - BIOS/UEFI - Instructions to install in an external drive

     – sudodus May 30 '20 at 17:54
  • The links you posted are definitely useful. I'm sorry if my question doesn't highlights persistence and lubuntu minimal install. The idea behind the question was how to do something similar to this with lubuntu minimal – Nilesh May 30 '20 at 18:07
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    @Nilesh, It is easy to add persistence to a live system of any of the Ubuntu desktop flavours and Debian (from the iso files with live capability). Use mkusb. It is much more difficult to make an encrypted live system, that is shown in your link about Kali, but certainly possible, if you want to spend the time for it. That means that you 'create your own linux distros' :-) -- It is much more straight-forward to create an installed system from the Ubuntu mini.iso file and during that installation make it encrypted (LVM with LUKS encryption is an option of the installer). – sudodus May 30 '20 at 18:57
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    @Nilesh: Step by step Instructions for Full install that will work on BIOS or UEFI mode with optional /home, data and swap partitions: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1217832/how-to-create-a-full-install-of-ubuntu-20-04-to-usb-device-step-by-step – C.S.Cameron May 31 '20 at 04:51
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The ubuntu documentation gives instructions on how to install lubuntu minimal.

This is completely unrelated to the Live USB persistence. The instructions on that page are for installing ubuntu from mini.iso. This mini.iso contains only installer and not Live (Try Ubuntu) option. Hence it is not possible to run minimal lubuntu.

Adding Persistence to a Lubuntu Minimal "Live" USB Drive, just like Kali.

In case of Kali, it was possible to build minimal live USB with persistence using kali-linux-light-2019.1-amd64.iso. The light version has far fewer packages. The idea is to run a lighter resource demanding environment whereby you can download the tools individually or by groups at a time as you need them. Of course, you could go right ahead and download them all and convert light to full.

In case of lubuntu it is not possible because Ubuntu light ISO builds are not available. Probably because there's no much advantage of maintaining such builds. The kali project also discontinued maintaining such separate light ISO builds.

The solution to build live USB with Minimal Lubuntu and persistence can be found here - Linux From Scratch. It will involve building custom build of ubuntu ISO then putting it on USB using Rufus with persistence enabled. Here's the step-by-step article to follow after we build light ISO.

PS: Answer is extracted from the discussion on comment thread with @user535733 and @karel

Nilesh
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