An Ubuntu Live CD has many useful purposes and is handy when installed on a USB flash drive. UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. It runs on both Windows and Linux.
You can use a Live Linux USB drive created with UNetbootin to manage partitions, repair, backup, and recover your system, remove malware from Windows installs, and recover or reset Windows passwords, among other tasks.
When creating a Live Linux USB Drive, you can either let UNetbootin download one of the many distributions it supports out-of-the-box or you can use your own Linux .iso file you have already downloaded. In this post, we are going to create an Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD on a USB flash drive using UNetbootin, using an .iso file we downloaded.
For more information about UNetbootin, see their website:
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/.
To install UNetbootin, first you need to add the source. To do this, select Administration | Software Sources from the System menu.
On the Software Sources dialog box, click the Other Software tab. Click the Add button.
Enter the following line in the APT line edit box on the dialog box that displays and click Add Source.
ppa:gezakovacs/ppa
A dialog box displays prompting you to reload the information about the software in the specified source. Click Reload.
Now, you need to install UNetbootin from the source you added. Select Ubuntu Software Center from the Applications menu.
On the Ubuntu Software Center dialog box, select the UNetbootin PPA option under Get Software. This option was added by adding the source.
Click the Install button on the right side of the dialog box.
You must provide authentication to install software. Enter your password in the Password edit box on the Authenticate dialog box and click Authenticate.
If the installation does not begin, click the Install button again to start it. The progress of the installation displays on the Ubuntu Software Center dialog box.
When the installation is finished, close the Ubuntu Software Center by selecting Close from the File menu.
To open UNetbootin, select System Tools | UNetbootin from the Applications menu. Enter your password when prompted.
The UNetbootin main window displays. If you want UNetbootin to download a Linux distribution for you and install it automatically, select the Distribution radio button and select a distribution and a version from the two drop-down lists.
We selected the Diskimage radio button because we had already downloaded the Ubuntu 10.04 .iso file. To save download time while installing the Ubuntu Live CD, we chose to use that. If you choose this method, select ISO from the drop-down list to the right of the Diskimage radio button.
Then, select the … button to the right of the edit box next to the drop-down list, navigate to the location of your .iso file, and select it. Make sure the Type selected is USB Drive. The Drive will most likely default to the location for the USB being used by your Ubuntu installation. Click OK to start the creation of the Ubuntu Live CD.
The progress of the Ubuntu Live CD creation displays.
When the installation is complete, click the Reboot Now button to reboot immediately, or click Exit if you do not want to reboot yet. To boot from your Ubuntu Live CD USB flash drive, you will have to change the boot order in the BIOS on your computer, moving the USB controller to the first position. For information about changing the boot order on your computer, see our previous post, How to change the boot sequence in the BIOS.
When you boot onto the Ubuntu Live CD USB flash drive, you will see the following UNetbootin screen. You do not need to select anything.
Ubuntu automatically starts and you see the familiar desktop. If you have booted into your Ubuntu Live CD on a computer without an operating system, or on a computer onto which you want to install Ubuntu 10.04, there is a link on the desktop providing an easy way to do this.
You can also boot from a Ubuntu Live CD on your Windows computer to recover or reset a Windows password or to remove malware if your computer will not operate correctly.
by Lori Kaufman
Hmm…Now why would anyone want to install UNetbootin when Ubuntu already ships with 'Startup Disk Creator' (package usb-creator-gtk) which is more than capable of writing Live CDs to USB drives? In fact, you could even make your Live CDs 'persistent' using it…
Unetbootin makes sense only if you are on a Windows-only machine.
[...] our post, Create an Ubuntu Live CD on a USB Flash Drive, for information on creating an Ubuntu Live CD using UNetbootin. Using a virtual machine is a good [...]