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I'm a web developer of many years. I've grown tired on the Microsoft scene, so I'm moving on to other Operating Systems - Mac OS and Ubuntu/Linux. I have to stay marketable and that's where everything's headed.

In any case, I'm taking on Ubuntu. I am a complete newbie at it. I was surprised though that I was able to select the type of Linux Distribution I wanted and in this case it was Ubuntu 15.10. I am still using PCs. I don't want Windows in the way AT ALL. So I decided to download the Linux ISO and installed Ubuntu on a USB. I feel safer doing this until I get famliar with the OS. To get to Ubuntu, I simply changed the boot settings on one of my machines to boot from the USB first instead of the hard drive. I was surprised how little time it took to do this - just a little reading and voila, I was looking at the Ubuntu desktop.

Here's my question. I've been going through tutorials and some of these tutorials recommend downloading of softwares to help with Ubuntu configurations. One such utility suggested is "Unity Toolkit" - I believe that's the name.

My question is - If you have downloaded Ubuntu/Linux distribution to your USB, will ALL of the downloads you perform and install be installed on the USB. I don't want to mix anything I'm doing with Ubuntu onto Windows. So I want to make sure before I start downloading things and playing with it.

I recall that when I created the ISO, I was asked for an allocation of how much space to leave for soemthing?? Was this allocationn for downloads etc. on my USB?

I just want to verify everything is targeted to the USB if I have Ubuntu pulled up on my Windows machine.

Thanks in advance for your help.

scriptermf
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3 Answers3

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With live USB creators that use Syslinux bootloaders, like UNetbootin and Universal USB Installer, the FAT32 filesystem imposes a limit of 4GB on the maximum size of the space used for persistent storage. If you have allocated space on the USB for persistent storage, then any package that you install from the Ubuntu Software Center while running the Ubuntu live USB will be saved persistently on the same Ubuntu live USB device, and settings and stored files will also be persistent. The persistence feature is not supported in Ubuntu 16.04-19.04, but persistent storage is supported again in 19.10 and later.

You can also use the same persistent storage space for storing files downloaded from the internet or locally created files. Because you're a web developer, you are going to have to exercise self-discipline in order to not waste the limited amount of available persistent storage space on the USB drive. Since the persistent storage space is limited, you will very quickly fill up the available disk space if you install too many applications or you update the software using the Software Updater.

I believe that "having to stay marketable" as a web developer is going to force you into to having a full installation of Ubuntu on a normal hard drive or in a virtual machine in the long run because of the available disk space issue.

karel
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    I agree, that "having to stay marketable" as a web developer is going to force the original poster into to having a full installation of Ubuntu. But it could also be on an external SSD with USB 3 or eSATA connection. (By the way, persistence is supported under the hood on all the current Ubuntu desktop versions and flavours including Artful. It can be set up for example via mkusb to boot via grub and to use a partition for persistence, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/persistent ) – sudodus May 09 '17 at 18:33
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This depends on the way you created the USB stick.

  1. Copy the ISO image directly by one of the tools like WinImager - NO.
  2. Used "USB Creator" and did not create persistent storage - NO.
  3. Used "USB Creator" and created persistent storage - YES.

You can only start "USB Creator" from within Ubuntu, but, I think, you can create first USB stick with WinImager, boot into it and then run USB Creator to create second USB stick with persistent storage.

Barafu Albino
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There are two main methods of having things persist on a flash drive with Ubuntu:

  1. Create an Ubuntu install disk with persistent storage space
  2. Install Ubuntu to the flash drive like you would any other hard drive. You can find some decent directions here: How do I install Ubuntu to a USB key? (without using Startup Disk Creator)

If you're careful about not ripping the drive out mid-use I'd suggest the second option. I have several flash drives running Ubuntu/Debian/Arch that all work great on multiple computers. Linux is a pretty portable OS.

Community
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Ian
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