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A write-locked SD card (known as a Live SD, the solid-state counterpart to a live CD) in a USB flash card reader adapter is an effective way to avoid any duty cycles on the flash medium from writes and circumvent this problem. This doesn't apply to systems particularly designed for live systems which keep all changes in RAM until the user logs off.

Due to the additional write cycles that occur on a full-blown installation, the life of the flash drive may be slightly reduced.

#Live usb ubuntu for mac and pc driver#

This limitation could be fixed by either changing the Apple firmware to include a USB driver in BIOS mode, or changing the operating systems to remove the dependency on the BIOS. However, programs like Mac Linux USB Loader can alleviate the difficulties of the task of booting a Linux-live USB on a Mac.

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Non-Macintosh systems, notably Windows and Linux, may not be typically booted in EFI mode and thus USB booting may be limited to supported hardware and software combinations that can easily be booted via EFI.

When the firmware switches to 'legacy' BIOS mode, it no longer recognizes USB drives. Some Intel-based Macintosh computers have limitations when booting from USB devices вЂ“ while the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) firmware can recognize and boot from USB drives, it can do this only in EFI mode.In these cases a computer can often be 'redirected' to boot from a USB device through use of an initial bootable CD or floppy disk.

Many which do support USB booting may still be unable to boot the device in question.

Some computers, particularly older ones, may not have a BIOS that supports USB booting.

such as older ones before USB) likely will be unable to boot from USB even when USB is enabled via such an add-in card. ISA, PCI, and PCI-E) are almost never capable of being booted from, so systems that do not have native USB controllers in their chipset (e.g.

#Live usb ubuntu for mac and pc full#

LiveUSB OSes like Ubuntu Linux apply all filesystem writes to a casper filesystem overlay (casper-rw) that, once full or out of flash drive space, becomes unusable and the OS ceases to boot.

However, as USB devices typically achieve lower data transfer rates than internal hard drives, booting from older computers that lack support for USB 2.0 or newer can be very slow.

The absence of moving parts in USB flash devices allows true random access, thereby avoiding the rotational latency and seek time (see also mechanical latency) of hard drives or optical media, meaning small programs will start faster from a USB flash drive than from a local hard disk or live CD.

On the other hand, a USB device is easily lost or stolen, so data encryption and backup is even more important than with a typical desktop system. a safe), reducing the opportunities for others to access their data.

Live USBs provide the additional benefit of enhanced privacy because users can easily carry the USB device with them or store it in a secure location (e.g.

A user can carry their preferred operating system, applications, configuration, and personal files with them, making it easy to share a single system between multiple users.

In contrast to live CDs, the data contained on the booting device can be changed and additional data stored on the same device.

Live USBs share many of the benefits and limitations of live CDs, and also incorporate their own.

#Live usb ubuntu for mac and pc portable#

Specialized USB-based booting was proposed by IBM in 2004 with Reincarnating PCs with Portable SoulPads and Boot Linux from a FireWire device. Intel-based Macs carried this functionality over with booting macOS from USB. Personal computers introduced USB booting in the early 2000s, with the Macintosh computers introducing the functionality in 1999 beginning with the Power Mac G4 with AGP graphics and the slot-loading iMac G3 models. Most Live CDs are Linux-based, and in addition to repairing computers, these would occasionally be used in their own right as operating systems. The development of the first live CDs with graphical user interface made it feasible for non-technicians to repair malfunctioning computers. To repair a computer with booting issues, technicians often use lightweight operating systems on bootable media and a command-line interface.