A question about multiple boot options and live boot iso images

[Liam Proven]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 at 17:44, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Will the installer allow one to install onto a USB stick?  If so then
> maybe you can install in the same way you would if it were an internal
> disk.

To be perfectly honest I did not understand Brett's huge multiline
sentence, so I am not sure what his question was.

No, AFAIK, the Ubuntu installer won't let you install directly onto
removable media.

However, you can attach a USB key directly to a virtual machine and
then *as far as that VM is concerned* it is a hard disk, the only one
in the computer, and you can install.

This is possible in VirtualBox but tricky.

However it is relatively easy in VMware Player, which is also freeware.

The advantage of this is that GRUB won't accidentally get installed to
your hard disk, and it won't pick up and add all the OSes on the hard
disk(s) to the USB key's GRUB menu.

Once you've installed it and updated, you can shut down the VM, unplug
the USB, turn off the PC, plug the USB back in and boot off it.

Notes:

* I recommend ext2 format, as it means fewer writes and won't wear out
the key so quickly

* don't allow a swap partition or swapfile; use ZRAM instead

* don't boot off the key and then update the OS on it, or it will add
all the HD's OSes to GRUB; update in the VM

* you can if you wish install VMware guest additions on the USB; they
just won't start up when you boot real metal with it. This is handy if
you want to use a 3D-composited desktop such as GNOME 3, KDE, Unity or
Cinnamon.

I've described it in detail in a blog post:
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/50416.html

-- 
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