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I'm fairly new to Linux, and this may just be me not realizing how it works but I've got a 16GB USB drive that I installed Ubuntu onto very recently using rufus. I haven't actually installed Ubuntu to my computer yet, so I'm just using the boot drive to do basic work because it's faster.

However, when I try to install something (for example, Steam) an error pops up saying I have 0MB left of disk space. I've looked at the boot drive with df and it says I'm only using 10% of the hard drive.

Am I doing something wrong, or is my thinking of extra space on my USB drive flawed to begin with?

andrew.46
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Isaac Springe
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  • The live installer is just like a DVD when on flash drive. You cannot install to it. You can save some downloads, but would have to reinstall each reboot, if you use persistence. http://askubuntu.com/questions/295701/what-would-be-the-differences-between-a-persistent-usb-live-session-and-a-instal – oldfred Jun 04 '17 at 20:19

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When you boot into the LiveOS from a USB stick, your system is being "loaded into RAM" (it's actually a layering of RAM over USB with the USB being read-only and file system changes being reflected in RAM). The space that you have available to you is not dependent upon how large the USB stick is but rather how much RAM you have in your computer. All changes made to the LiveOS are made in RAM, not on the USB stick. It sounds like that by attempting to install applications, you're filling up the temporary file system (or rather the file system layer) that has been created for you in RAM.

b_laoshi
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