by CoronaRabbit » Wed Sep 22, 2010 1:10 pm
Hi.
I'm very new to Linux, but I have a friend/ colleague who is somewhat knowledgeable (with openSUSE).
I'm looking to run SciLab (+ a few other things I'd like to look at), but the catch is that I want to do this on my work laptop. Installing other softs is a -highly- problematic issue, not to even think of an additional OS.
So. I was thinking USB-HDD, Live, with Persistence. That way, I can avoid the IT'ers.
(Right now I'm testing using a 32GB flash, but once done I've got a 500GB external-HDD waiting.)
Debian (live-rw, home-rw) and Ubuntu (casper-rw) seem to have the most convenient E-HDD + Live + Persistence things going for them.
However: Ubuntu is apparently less stable that Debian, but more up to date in general. But Ultimate Edition is apparently checked-out and corrected by you guys (to some degree, as is feasible all thing considered, yada yada.)
Also, Ultimate Edition seems to have all sorts of little apps that would seem to me to replicate what I use XP for at home...
So. Downloaded the Ultimate Edition 2.6 Gamers ISO. (4GB with additional fun, versus 2.8GB... decisions, decisions.)
And the UE-Unetbootin -- which gave me no joy (can't recall why, right now.)
So I downloaded Unetbootin from Pendrive, selected the ISO, and the flashdisk, and there it went.
Ok. So it boots up nicely. (Does not have graphic-card drivers (yet), but that is less important - should SciLab+etc run Ok, I won't care.)
I have a few, severe, problems, however.
a) I have no idea what the root password is (for the Live boot).
b) I cannot figure out how to get the persistent feature to 'turn on'. (made ext3(maybe ext2?) partition with 'casper-rw', and nothing.)
I've tried looking around this forum (and some Googling), but I would deduce that one would have to do a full install in order to be offered the chance to choose a root password - which helps me by a factor of a perfect zero. (openSUSE killed my laptop once already - of course, it would not have been a problem if XP Recovery did not promptly RAW my laptop HDD... glorious day of please-explain... Fortunately, in my paranoia, I had used Knoppix Live to first backup my data... you're not paranoid if M$-XP really IS crap.)
Ditto for the persistent feature (one post talked about 2.5 USB setup-util or somesuch, but menu-path does not exist for 2.6G.; other posts said it was easy, and it worked, etc... but I can't figure out what to do.)
(Something else that caught my eye was a way to be root in Gnome - or some app that runs selected apps as root?
But that's not critical right now... if I get stuck, I hope I can come back here and ask questions.)
Sigh. I hope I can get help on these things. Otherwise Debian seems to lie in my future.
Regards,
R.