I want to install Debian directly onto my USB drive. Is there an easy way to do this directly without having to reboot to run the installer?

    • bjornsno@lemm.ee
      0·
      8 months ago

      This doesn’t really install it, though, you can’t update or permanently edit and config, set up users, or anything like that. I would guess OP wants something more like booting the ISO in a VM, allocating a thumb drive to that VM, and then installing a full system to it with a boot loader.

  • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    8 months ago

    without having to reboot to run the installer?

    I’m not sure that I understand what you mean. Are you saying that you want to be able to load the OS without having to reboot your computer? Or are you saying that you just don’t want to have to click the equivalent of “try the OS” when booting a live USB? If it’s the latter, you should be able to just select the flash drive as the install point (though, tbc, I have never tried this, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work) (I think you’d need 2 USBs, though — you’d need 1 to be the installer source, and one to be the install point — I don’t think theres any installer that can run as a desktop application. Though, if it’s Arch Linux, you might actually be able to call pacstrap from the host OS — I’ve never tried this after having already installed the OS). There’s even OS’s that are specifically designed to be ephemeral on hardware in this way — eg Tails OS.

  • Pogogunner@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    8 months ago

    I installed from one flash drive with the image (on ventoy) to another flash drive that was plugged in to be the boot drive. On a cheap USB2 drive, it’s unusably slow - so make sure you use the fastest drive you can

    • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca
      0·
      8 months ago

      +1 for “it’s unusably slow!”

      I tried this last year with Linux Mint, and I learned that a normal USB drive just doesn’t have the read/write speed to even e.g. operate Firefox smoothly. There are different ways to address that, none of which really did the trick for me, so the best bet is to just get a drive with the fastest read/write rate possible. I’ve heard that it can run tolerably well on one of those more performant drives, but I didn’t try it myself.

  • BigDotNet@lemmy.mlEspañol
    0·
    8 months ago

    Boot from one USB then install into another USB, IDK exactly how the booting will work, I believe you will have to install the boot manager into the USB and then in the machine you want to use your OS you should boot from the same USB.

    Never did it but I believe that’s the way it should be.

  • sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    I used to have a SanDisk Extreme Portable running Ubuntu. If it was unplugged, my computer would boot Windows and when I plugged in the SSD to USB it would auto boot into Ubuntu. I have no idea how I did it though. It was my first time using Linux and I followed a guide online.

    Edit: found the video

  • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    Linux mint will install and run from a usb drive as long as you unmount it upon loading its live version. Then it will allow to install on it during the installation procedure. I have an old Mac Mini and an old Macbook Air running Mint 22 that way.

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    MX Linux and it’s predecessor (can’t recall the original version) is a Debian distro that will run with a persistence cache on a USB stick.

  • bizdelnick@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 months ago

    Yes. Just partition the drive manually, install packages with debootstrap, bind-mount /proc, /sys and /dev, chroot into it and install a bootloader. If you don’t understand what I say, you have to run an installer, possibly in a VM.

  • lattrommi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    directly onto my USB

    directly without having to reboot to run the installer?

    You use “directly” three times. Remove all instances of the word from your post and reread it. Does the post make sense to you still? Does it have the same meaning?

    I am not trying to be a dick, I want to make sure the word does not have a meaning I am not aware of in this context or if Linux is installable to a USB drive ‘indirectly’ but that does not make sense to me.

    Can you rephrase what you are trying to do?

    • john89@lemmy.caBannedOP
      0·
      8 months ago

      I want to install Debian on the USB drive from my currently running OS, Manjaro Linux.

      I don’t want to have to boot from Debian installation media to install it on the USB drive.