NomadBSD: Persistent Live USB OS

[Music] welcome to another video for explaining computers comm this time we're going to look at the desktop operating system Nomad bsd this runs from a USB drive to which user data and system changes are persistently saved and offers a portable alternative to running Windows Mac OS or Linux so let's go and take a closer look right here we are on the Nomad vsd website at a nomad bsd dot org where it very succinctly describes itself as a persistent live system for USB flash drives based on free BSD and if you're wondering what FreeBSD is which is what Nomad BSD is based on FreeBSD is an operating system that was released in 1993 and which was developed from the Berkeley software distribution or BSD version of UNIX and FreeBSD a certain website ax over here there it is we can learn all about it on the about page and FreeBSD is an operating system with a particular focus on networking and security and stability and speed FreeBSD also provides binary compatibility with Linux which means that most Linux applications can be installed in FreeBSD but it's important to stress that FreeBSD is not a Linux distribution FreeBSD is also command line only it hasn't got a graphical desktop so what they don't over here was a Nomad BSD is to take FreeBSD to add a graphical desktop and to wrap everything up in an image which can run persistently from a USB drive so let's go to the download section over here and get hold of and don't bug the SD you'll see there instructions for installing it on a drive using all sorts of different operating systems but we're good we're in Windows here so we'll just download the file over there we'll click on download and in fact I'm not going to down though because I've downloaded file already there it is I won't waste their bandwidth by a downloading it again so I'll cancel from that and we go to the Windows desktop there you can see the file there it is about a two point three gigabytes now you might have noticed this isn't Eldad and they file this as a compressed file we need to extract it and i've actually installed here a 7-zip to do that so if I right-click I can go to 7-zip and extract here hopefully a little actually extract our file and you'll see it actually in to IMG an image file not an iso file which you'd normally have for an operating system and that's because we're going to be writing a persistent USB Drive which can actually be changed when you boot from it can actually keep it settings you can store data rights etc so we can't do that from an ISO file that's why this is an image file so let's set the extraction complete and there we are it's finished our image file is coming out of water just under four gigabytes and we now need to write this to our USB Drive which has to be at least four gigabytes in size or at least five gigabytes in size which effectively means eight gigabytes if you're going to use this with a Mac and the particular drive I'm using is a 32 gigabyte guerrilla drive in black remember I tested out the guerrilla drive in a group test few videos back Oh quite a lot of videos back very nice Drive got a fast drive and I've got this plugged into my test rig I'm going to write to it using a head Chevrolet that actually which is up there they'll go ahead ship running I think down here if you haven't got a G you can download it from there but lanús site i'll give you the link on-screen there you are fallible owner ed sure and so we just need to select the image which is sitting there you can see like that we've already selected i'll drive we could all I always check his onto the drive I expect the 32 gigabyte Drive that's fine and we now just click on flash and windows will check because it always does so and that will start off - it - right and again will speed on through because this will take quite a while and there we are it's now finished and validated whatever you do don't reformat the drive now windows is just confused by this live us drive city inside it so all you to do is to close down everything we've got here in a windows I think I left that Roland is now let's close down as well and we couldn't close down windows and boot up on you live USB Drive right here we are we booting our PC with the Nomad BSD light USB Drive in it and I should point out put on your system you might have to go into the BIOS to set up the computer to boot from the USB Drive you might also have to turn off or one second we're here let's press ENTER to continue anyway what was I saying you might also have to turn off secure boot in your BIOS to allow your computer to boot from a USB Drive and exactly how you do that will depend on your computer if you want more information look at my video all about PC BIOS settings anyway this is probably going to take a little bit of time so we'll skip on through until something more exciting occurs and this is what I'd call slightly more exciting we've got the light Mouse we have got a live mouse to Hardware detection has worked slightly strange a display resolution but I think we're still recording it is only set up after all so I need to pick my language go down to English there English United Kingdom will do all that won't it that'll be okay well next on that we need to answer a few questions that's fair enough this will only happen for the first boot as it sets up our persistent USB live drive UK keyboard is fine yes and no extra layouts needed that's fine with my timezone password very very nice password there we're not going to encrypt the drive that we could because freebsd can do all that kind of stuff we'll take all the defaults there that's all looks fine so we'll press commit and what it's now doing in creating a file system on the drive is giving us the space on the drive not used by the operating system giving it back so we can use it to store use of files which is clearly very useful this is all part of setting up the persistent USB Drive so we'll let this finish and there we are all is complete we now just need to click on finish and of course that's going to a reboot our PC and hopefully it'll come back up again in the Nomad BSD and here we are back at this screens here let's press the enter again and of course this boot will be more straightforward there's no other configuration stuff to do oh oh look we've arrived in a nomad bsd I feel we've gone to a Stargate territory I imagine that Daniel Jackson is just over that little sangeun over that so there we are this is the no bug bsd operating system but like most operating systems it's not ideally set up to show you on video out of the box so i'm going to make a few changes to assist matters with recording and i'll combat you after that so here we are booting back into nomadic BSD that's just to press a key there and as the last time this is a standard boot now there's none of that configuration stuff to do but since I spoke to you last I have made various visual changes to make the operating system read better on video I said I'd do that and I've also been testing out various programs saving a few files so I can prove to you that this alive USB Drive we're working from here is the system you can save files and configuration settings on it and come back to them when you boot a game having said we won't see all the configuration stuff we do get to this message which is to select the right graphics driver for the system I'm going to press ENTER just to work through on that and you can set things up to get rid of that the wrong instructions for that in the manual however is probably better to leave this check in place so you can use your life USB Drive most easily on lots of different computers anyway here we are now back on the UH Nomad BSD desktop I do like the look of this system I like to hear the background they've chosen the default backing of this beautiful Sun June and the clear sky and you'll see down the bottom of the screen you probably noticed we've got a launcher which is a very Mac like sort of launcher as you can see we'll try out these icons in a second and at the top of the screen we've got a panel which sadly I can't make any bigger this and very small fonts of a date and time over there and we've also got here a volume control which is rather a sophisticated volume control and we've also got here an icon to allow us to see all the drives on the system now in addition to be able to do that we can on this system also right-click the desktop to bring up the menus if I right click here you'll see a menu comes up we can access all sorts of things including the audio control we just looked at and there's quite a few things pre installed here in nomads BSD we've got for example there's audacity look let's run up audacity the audio editor remember everything here is running from that my the USB drive service speed will be cut back by that although that wasn't too bad well if this is perfectly usable even running from a live USB Drive what else have we got here we've got if you could see VLC media player is there we've got a guinea for development we'll look at that in a second under graphics we've got we've got mirage down there to view images what they call network I'd probably call it Internet we've got lots of useful stuff for FTP package email package web browser etc so that's that's all the rather good office is here we've got Libre Office installed and then below that we've got settings masses and masses of settings some of these are a bit difficult to get your hands around what effects what but I've been playing with a lot with these to get this looking as good as I can for you to watch on video there's lots of configurability here both graphically and I think also in terms of coding if you really want to sort things out yourself I haven't gone into that yet under system again quite a few things available not least you'll see there isn't installer here we're running from a live USB drive which is what Nomad BSD is intended for but you can run up an installer here if you wanted to obviously checks you put your password in first and you would install on your hard drive err no bug BSD I don't think I'm going to do that other than that under utilities is various bits and pieces here nice to see the HP device manager there so we can actually make sure we can link to HP printers and scanners and things like that so I could have run up it is there we are now HP devices found which is obviously is correct right now there's nothing connected but we could use that if we wanted to and it appeared up on the panel to show us it's er there so we've got lots of things available here from this a right-click menu also included you can see you can add different desktops we can figure things log out etc shall we also take a look at what's down here on this lovely a graphical little launcher it's just run up Ziya file browser here to show you what that looks like that will come up this far space here is file space which is on the USB Drive remember I used a 32 gigabyte Drive and we've got 22 gigabytes free just over in the Nomad home directory here with the usual sort of directions you to see on say a Linux system and I've put a few files and some of these we go to save pictures if I click on that should hopefully run up the mirage viewer it does it it's responsive for a life USB system isn't this really is rather impressive I do like this system let's go back to where we were leave things nice and tidy let's close that down what else is down here we've got a terminal for doing all the terminal stuff which you would expect we could do a less for list as we would in the looks and see where we are and we can resume the exit like that there we are all highlights in red to show us what we're doing the Firefox browser is pre-installed again let's run it up again running from the live USB Drive but seems to work and hopefully will take us to all a very good website that's good we can browse I've tested this out you can run video it all works very well browsing is very good and of course having a good web browser on a live USB Drive operating system is very handy it means you can go and browse the web in a completely safe environment which you've not no effect you main computer we've also got down here email package are not set add up we've got Libre Office after will apply office I think it's the law to show Libre Office in any test of any operating system got a test document there which I've saved on the drive you see persistence works on this system you can save your files and come back to it by just booting up again from the live USB Drive we've also got a calculator gotta have a calculator they get a thing council Lord have a calculator on the computer we've got a leaf pad for doing little bit server file based off there we've got Guinea which you saw earlier this is interactive development environment for writing stuff in all kinds of different code if you wish there were templates here for lots and lots of different languages and things you can use there we've got a media player which you'll obviously we use of play media I find this slightly strange because there isn't too many you can bring up here which actually allows you to just bring in recent files you have to drag and drop so to be honest it's easier to go to the file managers will do over there we've got back up again let's go to a videos and player the video which will come up in that media player I think in a second not in VLC yes it plays good videos as you can see that's a rather nice to find out let's close that down as well and then finally down here we just have a little look at a because is here as well you really get a lot don't you it's amazing we set up this live USB Drive very quickly you can plug it into a PC it runs up you've got all these applications available it really is it shows we're computing is gone doesn't know how much you can do on on low resources these days there's sister do something in to prove it works what should we do render run its renderer always to a spiral make us all feel really really strange yeah while the strange get rid of that it makes people putting tyranny this guard changes I can still see it can you very very strange and over here this is not the pac-man game this is the octo package manager just bring that up and hopefully that now it is and here we could search for programs I can search for God no kdenlive is kdenlive available most Linux programs can be installed in the FreeBSD 4 should be installed but here yes we can install kata life if we wanted to see you can install more software than what's already available we have a manual which is a rather good of a nomad bsd handbook which is of course a webpage which will take us out to the web and we can see all the information on setting things up and configuring things this is a very very good documentation and very impressed with noah bsd not just the operating system itself but how well it's presented the website the other documentation really is a very nice thing to it look at and then finally of course we can leave we've got down here something labeled leave I like that it's not shut down it's leave you could leave me now it says you can click on that and of course there's lots of different leave options and I think having lost all the things we've got here that's now the best thing for us to do so I'm going to a shutdown a system there we are and we'll come out of Nomad BSD if you want to run an on Linux operating system from the USB Drive then Nomad BSD is well worth considering in my test it's worked well in a number of different computers although the last machine I tried was my Zen book laptop where it wouldn't pick up the trackpad and so I had to plug in a mouse all those things like the Wi-Fi drivers worked absolutely fine but now that's it for another video if you enjoyed what you see there press best hard like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and I hope to talk to you again very soon [Music] you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 425,792

Rating: 4.9531837 out of 5

Keywords: NomadBSD, Nomad BSD, FreeBSD, Free BSD, live USB drive, USB operating system, portable operating system, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, NomadBSD demo, NomadBSD review, NomadBSD install, install NomadBSD, alternative operating system, BSD UNIX

Id: NM0oou1KYY8

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 15 2020