| Ubuntu hitches a ride on USB drives |
Jan. 24, 2006
Pertec Inc. last week introduced UbuntUSB, touted as an easy way to install Ubuntu Linux on a portable USB hard drive, letting any PC boot Ubuntu Linux without requiring either BIOS or system reconfiguration.
UbuntUSB installs a bootable version of Ubuntu on any USB hard drive with a capacity of 10 GB or greater in less than 15 minutes, spokesman Guillaume Darbonne said.
For systems that aren't able to boot from USB, or when it is desired to not adjust any BIOS boot settings, users can insert the supplied installation CD in the PC's CD-ROM drive and connect the USB hard drive to the PC's USB port, and they will then be able to boot the PC from the USB hard drive, according to Darbonne.
"It's also a great product to try out a real Ubuntu Linux without changing anything on their current operating system," according to Darbonne. "New users will be surprised of the speed and ease of use under Linux."
Key features of UbuntUSB, according to IT products and services distributor Zinside.com:- Easy to boot up
- Installable on any USB2 hard drive with a minimum capacity of 10GB
- No BIOS configuration needed
- Contains a normal FAT32 partition for easy files transfer
- Ubuntu is installed with a substantial software package and the Open Office suite compatible with MS Office files
Required configuration:- Compatible I386 PC with a CD reader and an available USB port (USB 2.0 recommended).
- External USB 2.0 hard drive of any format with a minimum capacity of 10GB
Is UbuntuUSB sanctioned by the Ubuntu team?
"We are in a co-marketing position, to promote the operating system with the licensing staff of Ubuntu," Darbonne told DesktopLinux.com in an email. "We do have the right to bundle Ubuntu with our closed source software and/or hardware as long as we give a way to get the source code of Ubuntu. We didn't modify the source of Ubuntu to create UbuntUSB. We just added a loading software to make all this possible."
What's UbuntUSB good for?
"UbuntUSB has many different uses," he said. "This is easily movable and lets people run a fully configured system on any PC. It can be very useful for IT staff and developers; for schools and universities in administrating computers (cleaning, cloning, restoring); for computers in public use; for Windows users who want to try out a real OS without changing their config; and those who want to fine tune their Linux (unlike a live CD). It's also a very secure way to use any computer."
The UbuntUSB installation CD ISO image is available for download now, here, plus a roughly $30 charge for a "license key." Ready-to-use UbuntUSB CDs can also be ordered.
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