OT: your desktop on a stick

[Phil Meyer]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Friday 12 December 2008 17:53:33 Phil Meyer wrote:
>   
>> Anne Wilson wrote:
>>     
>>> Much has been said about the ability for a linux distro to be carried
>>> around on a usb stick, making any computer into your familiar desktop. 
>>> Does anyone actually do this?
>>>
>>>       
> <snip>
>   
>> Yes, done this a lot.
>>
>> Current best method is to roll a livecd will my favorite apps, a package
>> containing my login (adds me to sudoers as well).
>>
>> Then convert the iso to a usb bootable livecd on a stick.  During this,
>> I add a system overlay, and a /home overlay.
>>
>> My current thumb drive is a 64GB DataTraveler.
>>
>>     
> <snip>
>   
>> The best part of all, is that its installable to disk, as well.  What
>> else could you ask for? :)
>>
>>     
> Wow! that sounds great :-)  However, mine is 8GB only.
>
> Anne
>   


8GB is fine, even for my outrageous custom build, which is over 7GB 
unpacked.

 -> ls -lh LiveOS
total 3.0G
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7.9G 2008-12-10 14:22 home.img
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root  20K 2008-12-10 14:19 osmin.img*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.0G 2008-12-10 14:19 
overlay-Fedora-x86_64-9d595a3a-4b1e-40c7-b16d-3da0f21f698e
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2.5G 2008-12-10 14:19 squashfs.img*


You can see, that with less agressive overlays, this would easily fit on 
8GB.  The stuff that makes it bootable is only 7.6MB.

If you would like to see the stuff I used to make that livecd, I would 
be happy to share.

Fun!