Custom LiveCD Challenges

Support & Help Requests
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#1

I created a Mate liveCD usb stick with the hopes of creating a custom LiveCD (usb) with all the updates and the software that I would want on it to basically use as an operating system on a stick.

The challenge is that when I use the stock “image” on the usb stick and boot in under “try linux” mode, I have no sound card and seemingly no way to even add one.

I use the Asus M5A99FX pro motherboard that has the realteck? integrated sound card. but there seems to be no mention of drivers anyway. I also have the AMD RX 480 graphics card and there is no AMDpro driver anywhere to be found. There is also no way to adjust the screen size so my desktop bleeds off the screen so I can’t see the entire desktop.

I basically want to create a Linux on stick that I can shove into my machine to use Facebook and do video editing, but I can’t get sound, or a properly sized screen.

Can anyone help me.

My installation on bootable USB?
#2

If you really want to use the stick in place of your regular boot disk, the easiest is to just install the system onto the USB drive.

You need two USB sticks:

  • One to flash the .iso that you will boot for the install
  • A target USB disk (I recommend 16GB space) to serve as your future pluggable system disk

When you’re at the partitioning step during the install, choose the “Something else” method.
Select your 16GB stick and hit “New Partition Table”.

Create three partitions:

  • Mount point “/” type “ext4” size 10GB
  • type “Linux Swap” size 512MB (I don’t recommend you use hibernate, like, ever)
  • Mount point “/home” type “ext4” size: what you have left available

Make sure you select the correct USB drive to install the bootloader on.

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#3

If your current Ubuntu-based (not Mint!) installation works fine, you can turn it into a Live ISO image with Systemback application from PPA.

This application is so good it should really be in Software Boutique. Using only open source drivers this application has never failed me. Proprietary drivers can become a problem if you use different computers.

Systemback uses its own sblive format to circumvent the 4 GB iso limit. But the program lets you convert sblive to iso if your file is less than 4 GB in size. (Remember to clean your installation from unnecessary files before making the Live system.)

Once you have your iso file you can write it to USB with Unetbootin. You can run your system live from USB or install it to another computer. It’s just like an original Ubuntu iso.:sunglasses::thumbsup:

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#4

I might add that I now remember that I had an issue with the sblive format. Once it didn’t work when writing to USB.

I converted the sblive file to iso and used Unetbootin and then everything worked. Since then I use the iso format and Unetbootin, because I don’t need the extra capacity of the sblive file format.

#5

If I could get amdgpu working, this would be the most perfect distro for me ever. (well, Gentoo is special) of the mainstream flavours.