community.linuxmint.com

Hi, Folks

I am not generally favorable to ideas suggesting to add this or add that package to mint iso, but yesterday I found an utility that really ROCKS regarding LiveUSB creation, and it is MultiBoot

http dotbars liveusbinfo slash dotclear

It is basically some sort of smart bootloader that points to images and filesystem created in the usb stick by dragging-and-dropping live-cd iso images to a front-end GUI installed on the PC.

The main distinctive features are the ability to boot a lot of different distros or releases from a single usb stick, the auto-creation and deletion of persistence space, the ability to boot directly to virtual machine (via qemu or vbox), and the ability to use the flash unity for file storage normally. And it has memtest and super grub disk preinstalled.

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The suggestion is: the Mint Team could support or cooperate with this project, and include it (or a mod, as seamlessly as possible) in the main edition as the standard USB-stick-creation-tool, instead of the current usb disk creator.
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Just to remind, it has been argued that, due to the relatively short release cycle (6 months), burning LiveCDs may be unefficient and environmentally unfriendly, because any LiveCD tends to quickly become obsolete as new releases appear. Distro-hoppers, also, may need to burn them a lot more than less involved users.

A feature I have found VERY useful is the possibility to install a Linux System anywhere, anytime. At work, many times I only solved some problem because I always carry with me a bootable thumb drive with Mint.

Also, I strongly suggest everyone of you interested in LiveUSB stuff to give it a try, and most probably you will become as positively impressed as I am.

P.S.: I superficially read something about MultiBoot not being totally mature, perhaps needing some enhancements or such. To me, it worked fine, but any observation or comment regarding some issue or limitation is most welcome.

Thanks for reading!