New Linux Mint install on usb stick

[kiwipaul]

I've got Mint 20.2 installed on a 32GB USB stick.

It's partitioned 16GB root and 16GB data

The root is only using 50% of the available space but I have only the apps that came with the install and a few games.

I'm staggered how successful it is running off a cheap USB stick and it boots as fast as W10 on the ssd. I intend eventually to transfer Mint to a second SSD once I've gotten a better handle of how to use.

[Webtest]

Way to go kiwipaul!

So you did a regular "install Linux Mint" onto your drive, and have not written a LiveMedia (squash fs) image to the drive? What flavor of Mint are you running?

That's interesting. Is the drive bootable? And if so, how much memory is used in the boot partition? A LiveMedia image only takes about 2 GB on a drive.

I run LiveMedia Mint Mate systems from LOCKED Flash drives all the time for secure system ... NOTHING can be written to the ROM OS. Of course, the squashfs system actually runs in RAM and sections of the OS are loaded as needed.

You have piqued my curiosity! Thank you if you would please answer my many questions about your system!
Blessings in abundance, all the best,
Art in Carlisle, PA USA

[JerryF]

That's great!

Mint is wonderful, isn't it!?

[kiwipaul]

So you did a regular "install Linux Mint" onto your drive, and have not written a LiveMedia (squash fs) image to the drive? What flavor of Mint are you running?

I downloaded Mint 20.2 ISO and used rufus to create a bootable USB.

I then booted said USB (after disabling my W10 SSD in BIOS) and then sel the Install Icon on the desktop and pointed the install at a 32GB USB stick and it creates a bootable fully modifiable version of Mint without a problem. It is fully configurable and i can install other app (my lack of Linux knowledge is cramping my ability to fully exploit this o/s)

I've now re enabled my W10 SSD and I sel the operating system by using F12 during start. Not confident about using Grub yet.

I don't have a boot partition on the USB, but it takes up about 9GB (root) on the 16GB partition I created.

[SimonPeter]

You may want to disable swap when running off a USB.
Swap gives too much load and causes faster wear & tear of the USB.
sudo sed -i '/swap/d' /etc/fstab and reboot

Note: This assumes that you don't want to try using more volatile (RAM) memory than your system has.

[kiwipaul]

You may want to disable swap when running off a USB.
Swap gives too much load and causes faster wear & tear of the USB.
sudo sed -i '/swap/d' /etc/fstab and reboot

Thanks I'll do that. (I've 16gb mem, with swap as a file in root).

But wouldn't the same wear and tear occur on an SSD??

[SimonPeter]

But wouldn't the same wear and tear occur on an SSD??

Yes.
Flash memory gets too much wear and tear from swap
(Thumb drives are imapcted more than SSDs are, because of SSDs' better wear leveling)
You can do it on the SSD too.

(I disable swap on HDD, SSD, SD cards and USB thumdrives with installed OSes)
http://askubuntu.com/questions/652337/ddg#652355

BTW, /tmp on tmpfs also increases your system's speed and responsiveness (irrespective of HDD/SSD/SD/USB storage).

echo "tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0" | sudo tee --append /etc/fstab
sudo reboot

This puts /tmp on RAM (which is MUCH faster than ALL non-volatile storage media)
https://ubuntu.com/blog/data-driven-ana ... p-on-tmpfs