How to boot linux from USB flash drive

If you need to install or just to try out some linux distribution and you don't have free CD/DVD or you don't want to burn it, this article is for you.

First I'll show you how to create bootable flash key from openSuSE 11.2+ (this should work also for Ubuntu 10.04+)

Theprocedure is simple as typing one command do the konsole and waiting few minutes for copying the files.
Here's the command:

#dd if=/path/to/the/LIVE_Image.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4k
NOTE: this command will delete all files from your USB flash drive /dev/sdb.


dd this command is for file copying (for more information see man dd)
if defines input file
of defines output file
/dev/sdb is the USB flash drive device connected to the system
bs defines block size to be written on the flash drive

For other distributions there is an utility called UNETBOOTIN. It has a GUI and servers for creating bootable flash drives from linux system images. You can use image from the internet or stored on the local disk..You can also specify your own attributes.

Launching this utility: before starting, insert and mount your flash drive. Then you can start unetbootin with root privileges (e.g. sudo unetbootin or kdesu/gnomesu unetbootin)

UNETBOOTIN           

Choose your distribution (it will be downloaded from the internet) or pick your iso image from computer.
Choose the drive partition and confirm with OK.
Note: In this case all data will stay on the drive (it won't be formatted). Before copying check if there's enough free space on the flash drive.