Making a flashdrive bootable and loading Linux

[Lt Dan]

As from the title, I'm very new to Linux and would like to play around with it more before fully converting. I want to set my computer to boot from a flash drive and run Linux. I've already played with a bootable CD with Mint. Would like either that or Ubuntu to run on my 8Gb U3 flash drive as an independent OS.

Has anyone done this? If so, what steps do I have to take?

I've been using Firefox for a long time, also started to use windows versions of OpenOffice. I'm thinking along the lines of building a computer just to run Linux on, (saying no to windows).

[topdog]

You could you a usb distro like slax which gives you a full kde desktop, But it is definitely possible to run ubuntu from a flash (i have done it atleast the installer) disk but it is not suited for it because flash media can only with stand a certain number of writes. Flash distros like slax use mechanisms like unionfs to limit or eliminate writing to the flash repeatedly.

[Lt Dan]

Thanks Topdog, I didn't know that about flash drives. Looks more like I better try to go with a duel boot for a test drive. I've heard a few horror stories about trying that too. Wife keeps telling me I don't need another computer in the house. Anyone else doing that?

[falko]

You can set up a dual-boot system with Unetbootin: http://www.howtoforge.com/unetbootin_windows_ubuntu_fedora