Easy linux distro to put on external hard drive

Post Reply New Topic

I load mint onto usb with rufus and it says something like "massive failure" when I try and boot to it. Secure boot is on, I set up a password for admin on windows but the bios doesn't recognize the password. what other distros should I try to put on external hard drive?'

Thanks

Any linux distro should run off external disks, since it's still a disk.
You got to disable secure boot, since it'll block any attempt to run "untrusted" executables regardless of media it's on. Very likely only Windows ones are trusted by default
Anyway, "Secure" boot gives no actual security and in fact on a lot of boards it's badly implemented (will run anything but blacklisted, even unsigned). And for example MSI used to blacklist for some time Debian / Ubuntu signatures by default

Are you trying to create a 'live' Mint usb system? That is to say, the default setup which works like an operating system run from a dvd, and which cannot preserve for the next boot up any files you may have created (eg pictures) or programs you may have installed. You can create a so-called 'static persistent' Mint installation on a usb, on which these things can be preserved, but I've found that such installations are too slow to be usable, though they may work better on newer hardware with usb 3 connections.

A much better bet is a 'root persistent' set up (I think I've also seen it called 'dynamic persistent'), which can run on Antix Linux and MX Linux systems. Speed is not a problem with these at all, and they will run just like an operating system on your hard drive, with the limitation that they're restricted by the size of your RAM (ie around 4gb to 8gb on most machines). I've also found that these systems may not be very durable, as I've had at least three MX root persistent usbs become corrupted within a few months and unable to be booted as a consequence.

It's also worth noting that these systems take quite a bit of setting up and fine-tuning in order to work properly, so you'd need to be prepared for a fair amount of trial and error and 'learning on the job'.