(SOLVED) Full install on a 2gb USB flash drive?

Question

So here's the deal, I am not sure if this is the best place to post this. I am a newbie so I am just thinking out of my %^& here.
I love Arch more than any other distro, and I want to bring it with me. As of now I use Arch on my laptop and desktop. However it's missing on my work computer. It would be best if I didn't mess with the work computers, so I am curious about installing Arch on a USB.
If I went with a minimal install, keeping things around 1.5gb with most applications and whatnot installed, would I be able to boot it and work with it and not have any problems?
How could this be done, would it be possible to:
- Partition the USB, one partition for the boot (ext 2, primary boot) and another partition for / and home etc.
If this does in fact work, would it be slow as death running completely off a USB? If that's the case how difficult would it be to copy the system to RAM but keep /usr running off the USB so configs and files could be saved?
I know there are other distros that work well off a USB like Puppy Linux (which supports saving configs and files etc.). I have been using lubuntu live because it is similar to my Arch setup, but doesn't support saving onto the USB. I would prefer to stick with Arch the whole way.
Last edited by Google (2010-06-24 14:34:06)

Answer 1

running from USB for me has been WAY worth the learning of grub2 and all the other things. I run a 16 gig stick and an 8 gig stick. standard installs and have grub 2 doing double duty to boot other ISOs when desired. The 8 gig stick has 2 partitions and arch boots sweetly off partition 2. I have gotten good enough at manually modifying the grub2 cfg file. I don't use any of the errr, clever stuff that's spread out in /etc for grub2. heck with that I thought!
Also: I just mount some other drive to save bigger files. Have a vbox file on the internal drive that can esily be moved around as well. Totally totally ARCH works fantastic as a stock install on USB. I figured why complicate/dilute my learning (as I'm only approaching advanced ability)  by even thinking about other distro. If there's wasn't ARCH I'd go BSD, which would be very challenging due to drivers, flash, vbox etc. Just My brief though here.
UPDATE: forgot the point somewhat. Thinking to add here: I get (regular install of) ARCH to run on a 1 gig flash stick which coincidentally I'm creating right now. In fact it has a vfat partition 1 and an 800 meg ext2 partition 2. Lots of ways to trim stuff out after install. There's a couple of threads about deleting locals and stuff here. Can save, I think it was 2 or 3 hundred meg quickly.
One thing is running a windows manager and not a desktop environment of course/obviously.
best wishes to all!
Last edited by yvonney (2010-06-27 18:32:20)