Testing out a Live USB with persistence of Linux Mint 19.3. People seemed to be having issues with USB's so I decided to give it a test.
I downloaded UNetbootin from their downloads page and ran it from the Terminal.
I had to change the name to match what the command was (./unetbootin-linux).
The application looked very Windows 95ish on my desktop PC running Linux Mint 19.3.
After some poking and prodding I got the correct info loaded. I had an .iso of Linux Mint 19.3 already in my Downloads folder so I used that.
One issue which appeared right away was the USB drive already had MX 19.1 on it and UNetbootin was seeing only the second partition on the USB drive. It did not appear as UNetbootin would format the USB drive for me. So I simply used the Linux Mint USB disk formatter to re-format the drive as FAT32 and the restarted the UNetbootin app.
After that it was pretty straight forward. There were a couple of times where I thought the installation had 'stalled' but even though I was somewhat impatient I LEFT IT ALONE and it finished its' tasks.
The USB was created with an .iso of Linux Mint 19.3 in Live mode with 4 gigabytes of persistent storage.
I then plugged the USB into my 'test' machine - a Dell workstation - and booted it.
Booted up fine
Then to test the persistence I installed a couple programs from the Software Manager, made a few text files, downloaded and saved an .mp3 (Jazz), downloaded some images (wallpapers), installed some Firefox extensions and customized Firefox, tweaked my desktop and panel, and rebooted.
All files and changes were saved! Yippee!
Then I did a complete shutdown and start-up - just to check. All worked fine. Changes saved.
Then I tried the USB drive in my laptop to see if everything worked.
Yup - it works! I am using it right now to post this.
Wi-fi, bluetooth, touch-pad, everything is working and all files and changes have been preserved.
This is just a really long way of saying - For a bootable Linux USB with persistence - try UNetbootin!
I downloaded UNetbootin from their downloads page and ran it from the Terminal.
UNetbootin - Linux Downloads
unetbootin.github.io
The application looked very Windows 95ish on my desktop PC running Linux Mint 19.3.
After some poking and prodding I got the correct info loaded. I had an .iso of Linux Mint 19.3 already in my Downloads folder so I used that.
One issue which appeared right away was the USB drive already had MX 19.1 on it and UNetbootin was seeing only the second partition on the USB drive. It did not appear as UNetbootin would format the USB drive for me. So I simply used the Linux Mint USB disk formatter to re-format the drive as FAT32 and the restarted the UNetbootin app.
After that it was pretty straight forward. There were a couple of times where I thought the installation had 'stalled' but even though I was somewhat impatient I LEFT IT ALONE and it finished its' tasks.
The USB was created with an .iso of Linux Mint 19.3 in Live mode with 4 gigabytes of persistent storage.
I then plugged the USB into my 'test' machine - a Dell workstation - and booted it.
Booted up fine
Then to test the persistence I installed a couple programs from the Software Manager, made a few text files, downloaded and saved an .mp3 (Jazz), downloaded some images (wallpapers), installed some Firefox extensions and customized Firefox, tweaked my desktop and panel, and rebooted.
All files and changes were saved! Yippee!
Then I did a complete shutdown and start-up - just to check. All worked fine. Changes saved.
Then I tried the USB drive in my laptop to see if everything worked.
Yup - it works! I am using it right now to post this.
Wi-fi, bluetooth, touch-pad, everything is working and all files and changes have been preserved.
This is just a really long way of saying - For a bootable Linux USB with persistence - try UNetbootin!