Embracing Linux: Bootable USB Drive

welcome to another video from explaining computer's comm a few videos back I talked about the future for Windows 7 users and it became very clear when the extensive comments in that video but a lot of us are thinking of transitioning to Linux over the next few years in this video I'm ever going to show you how easy it is to create a bootable USB Drive but you can use to try out Linux without installing it on your computer now as you probably know Linux is a free open-source operating system that comes in lots of different versions or distributions what they call distros and for a long time on the most popular of these has been Ubuntu and I was therefore thinking of making my bootable Drive using Ubuntu but I've heard a lot of good things at least in the comments on the windows 7 video about Linux Mint which have not tried before until in this video I'm going to be working with Linux Mint with its latest desktop which is called cinnamon right the computer I'm going to use this video is this one Maya trusted Acer Aspire One netbook this runs Windows 7 and I guess that if you are going to be trying out a Linux usable USB key the chances are you're currently running Windows certainly who've gone to Windows 10 you probably less interested in Linux but you can do what I'm doing here with any version of Windows in addition to a computer I'm also going to need a USB Drive I've got this new one here as Sonia Voyager Vega which matches the color here quite nicely the reason I've got this I wanted a very small USB Drive that is also USB 3 so I try and get into this I can get through this packets is one of these this is not of the stration free package by any means at all I don't think hopefully we can that way yes we can we can get in there we are come out come out wherever you are oh it's got stuff on top as well has little Deary Deary Deary me getting into things is always a little bit there we are finally we're inside I can hopefully release it from that but the packaging as well and look there we are our tiny tiny USB drive and hopefully we can see in the end it has got some blue yet it's definitely a a USB 3 Drive and that should fit quite easily into the USB 3 port on the netbook but of course before we can start playing without putting something on the drive we need to download a copy of Linux right so with the machine booted up I'm now on a Windows 7 desktop I've got a folder in which to put my downloaded Linux files and we'll go to Google Chrome and here I'll go to the website already the licks mint.com to get a copy of linux mint so i'm sure your guests will now go to download and the latest version of mint is codenamed sarah as it includes what's called a cinnamon desktop now you can get it in both 32 and 64-bit versions I'm going to use a 64-bit version Hix now all my hardware is 64-bit if you're in any doubt about that with loads of computer users of your 2 bit version but most people these days 64-bit should be ok so I'll click on that and I need to find a site to download from as lots of different mirrors here and over keep going down because somewhere down here I know there is one in the United Kingdom I think at University of Kent there it is look so I'll click on university can mirror service it'll start downloading establish download that's fine click on save into my Linux folder and it'll start to download and the bottom of the screen down here this will take quite a while it's a er 1.6 gigabyte download so I'll let that fly through and then we'll get on with a next part and there we are it's finished we just go back and look at the desktop we can see our folder there now has our file with linux mint cinnamon sitting in there so what I'm going to do now is to go to another website which is called a pendrive Linux comm and this allows us to download a file for putting that ISO that image onto our USB Drive so all got to do here is to scroll down to the bottom of the page the link you want is fully Universal USB installer as easy as 1-2-3 easily to change a bit over time but that's basically what you want if I click on that it'll take you to the relevant page here we are just loading in the advert and if we go down here somewhere on this page or bottom other that's loading in there slowing us down there are some instructions of course but there is the basically need to download the installer this is a very fast download that shouldn't take very long we'll save that same place and that will start to download so it's just look and I think that's finished already that's a nice rapid down there there it is it's all finished off I was getting ahead of myself there so we can see everything is now sitting here in our folder let's just make that a bit longer as we can see the whole lot just to keep us happy and will now run the installer there we are that's come up do we want to make changes what computer of course yes we do and we want to accept the license agreement of course we do as well and we're now running the program there's no installation to do you just simply run the EXCI file so we now need to select the olynyk's distribution we're going to put on our key which is Linux Mint we need to find our ISO file we just downloaded we'll browse for that and because we came from that directory there it is already we'll put that in there we need to select our USB flash drive which is our Corsair drive which is drive e hello don't want to change works on my sandisk micro SD card no so it's definitely coarser Drive e be very careful picking up that and then finally there's set a persistent file size for storing changes in other words going to leave some space on this setup so I can actually all to my version of Linux after I've moved it I come back to it in that state next time I use it how much should we give it all I don't know quite a bit actually I'll give it maybe just over one them about one and a half gigglers plenty of space on this drive so we've done that now all I'm going to do is to press create to actually create the USB bootable Drive it's good just checking I like software checks with a create it there with a obviously it'll take stuff off the DRI that's all fine yes I really won't do it and yes and it'll get on with that process nearly there and it's just finishing off I think and we should fairly soon have our bootable USB Drive oh it's always you get right close to the end of it never oh there we are it's finished hopefully it's doing something else that's not fair is it nevermind it's almost finished and there we are it finally has finished installation done process complete and we can close the file so in theory all we have to do now to boot up into Linux on this netbook is to close down windows and to do a reboot so I'm going to do it well tidy things down get rid of that program first of course I think I'll do a full shot down and then we'll boot machine up again so I'll shut down out of windows for now so here we are at the moment of truth we've got the netbook ready to boot up the keys in the side of it so I'll press the on button boot thing up and hopefully this will boot up boot from the USB Drive and boot into Linux cinnamon all that's not a good sign already we've got something on the screen suggesting it's actually going to do that and there we are it seems to be working obviously we went with a fastest boot in the world because this isn't the fastest computer in the world and also we are booting from a USB Drive so even though we're booting from a USB 3 driver won't be as fast as a boot from the internal SSD on this machine but it does look like things are working ok and here we are arriving on the Linux Mint cinnamon desktop we just have a quick look around you can see we've got a computer up here which shows us Thea the drives on this computer all all nicely organized we can see our cause her driveway booted from the disk reader for the stand disk mini SD card on this machine let's come up with the two partitions for the the SSD which we'd normally booted from that's all clearly working very well if we look down on the menu you will see lots of software's already pre-installed under graphics for example they've already pre-installed the image editor and an image viewer under a office with all that really got pre-installed libre office maybe I'll just launch Libre Office writer prove it's there which it certainly is that came up pretty quickly remember we're running off a USB key here this is this is pretty good isn't it there's also the Firefox web browser you might have seen it on the internet and we've also got a Thunderbird male but we can't of course get to those at the moment because we're not online or this we could launch so they wouldn't go anywhere I think just before we go down to the icon here I'm going to make this slightly bigger so I'll right-click on that taskbar undo panel settings and I'm going to use a customized panel size and then make that panel quite a lot bigger little scale everything else in proportion that's much easier to see at least for me and time I would change a lot of the fonts here but for the moment that will do and I can now go down to this icon which I can now see a bit better and double click on that to get to the network's potentially available cjb net is me I will put in my password and hopefully in a second down here it will show us yes we're now connected to my Wi-Fi network so if I go to a web browser just to prove the world is working as it should may take Firefox a little while to boot up first boot remember for all of these programs birthday it looks like things are working and hopefully we can prove we can go to oh dear world's favorite website and hopefully almost updated at some point yes we are working the Firefox web browser works as well so there we are we've got a working version of Linux which can boot from a USB key having said that there's one potential complication we do now have to explain right we've now seen how it's possible to create a bootable Philips USB key to put it into a computer and to boot from it however I must point out to you but not all machines will boot it easily as that from USB so for example here we've got a Microsoft Surface 2 pro not that modern machine with a fairly modern computer and here to boot from USB what I have to do is to hold down the volume button and to press the on button at the top and it will start to boot there we are look surface and I'm holding down the button so it should be booting from USB but in fact it's going to boot to Windows 8.1 or a bit of a disappointment that all this come out of this and the reason it's done that is that this thing has got what's called secure boot enabled and you'll find on a lot of modern tablets and laptops as I said so in this particular circumstance do a little bit more to actually boot from a Linux USB key now exactly what you have to do depends on your particular machine here what I have to do is to hold the up volume button and press the power on and off again and we will get through to a in a second hopefully a setup screen there we are and they'll be set up screwed up this on all modern laptops and tablets and things like that as you can see here we've got secure boot is enabled if I go down to secure boot control I can turn that to be secure boot disabled and I can then exit setup and save that yes and this will now reboot the machine because that's what it insists on doing you can't move the USB at this point you just have that it goes through so we'll whiz loo this but it will now be possible for me to boot from that Linux USB key so if I try that let's try I'll hold my down button to make sure we boot on USB press power on and down back again and then if we're lucky you'd like this little way it tells us that we've had an insecure boot there and there we are we can now select a Linux boot and if we're lucky we'll start to see Linux Mint running on a Microsoft Surface and I do find that Vista an extraordinary thing to do it just seems a very nice idea doesn't it - it sure Microsoft wouldn't like it very there we are Linux Mint is coming up on this Microsoft Surface tablet computer I bet Microsoft never ever thought the next would be running on their machines like this but it's a it's just about coming up isn't it come on there we are it's running so as you can see it is possible to go around secure boot and we've now got everything as we had before and it's all working pretty well and it's evening that picked the right resolution for this high-resolution screen and it works pretty well it's pretty amazing isn't it to go into say graphics and we'll go launch and is running in the legs on our Microsoft Surface everything is running there very well indeed a bootable USB Drive like this one which gets you straight into Linux on any computer it's a great way to start experimenting with the Linux operating system and it's got me so interested and I'm about to start out on a personal experiment over the next seven days I'm going to be using Linux as my only PC and laptop operating system I'm about to enter my Linux Mint week now for some of you that's not very exciting because of course you use Linux all the time but for me and for other people like make you use Windows all the time it'll be interesting to see what I can and can't achieve having seven days only using Linux so I look forward to reporting back on that but now that's it for another video if you like this video please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and I have to talk to you again all about Linux Mint very soon

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 326,425

Keywords: Linux, Mint, USB, drive, key, install, boot, Windows, bootable, cinnamon, operating, system, OS, try

Id: 3Vq_v0oGPH8

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2016