I have possibly the best weekly downloads of ArchBang for years. Still amazes me that ArchBang is popular, even in these difficult times. ;-)Am going to test if ArchBang will install to a usb device/drive. Initial attempts kind of failed as I think my usb drive seems a little flaky so am going to try a more odd route to install. Found a video on You Tube that uses qemu to load iso (live) then install to a real usb device.
Back in the days of Knoppix (my way into Linux many years ago) one of the downsides of live distros was the fact that you lost settings/configs/apps after powering off. There of course was a way to get around this and in Archiso you simply add cow_{device/label} to boot options and you have persistence put onto a given device. Now if you wanted to run that from a usb drive things get a little more interesting.
Given that you can have persistence you are still running the system from an iso image and a loop device. What if you could have a full normal installed system on a usb drive? I am not saying it will run as fast as a normal hard drive but certainly quicker than a loop mount iso. And any updates, configs, settings, files are always present. Add in to the mix uefi support and you could possibly boot into a host of systems…
Testing? I need to test if I can run from usb live.. .and install to usb. This might be more down to the system you are trying to do this from. Will try to test different options. Am trying to avoid the easy route of a network based installer, simply to allow anyone to install to usb even without a network connection.
Will update iso over weekend, please think about a small donation…. ten bucks would do it 😉
Mr Green