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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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How to use a portable SSD for a travel OS with Linux? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello! The TL;DR is:

I have an m.2 drive that is in a sturdy enclosure that has 1 TB. I have Ventoy with Medicat on there, with some backups of important data.

I still have a lot of room left on there, so I was thinking what else I could do, and the idea of basically installing a Linux Distro to a chunk of free space on there. Maybe Debian/Fedora or Arch.

Is there anything I should be aware of to help not break that system or rapidly kill the drive? It's not a USB flash drive, it's a M.2 drive that's put on a small board that then allows it to talk via USB C/Thunderbolt.

EDIT: Just to be sure, if I use Ventoy's EFI, do I need to be worried about a conflict with the bootloader of the Linux install?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0bda:9210 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL9210 M.2 NVME Adapter

And I don't know if a live CD is the best method for this, due to the how I intend this to be something I can just keep files on for a while. While I do have small persistence .dat files for Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu, it seems like a bandaid for what would be easiest, an installed distro where I can run the package update commands for, without juggling iso files.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

That's a good chip. As a rule of thumb, Realtek = best, Asmedia = good, JMicron = garbage. JMicron adapters run super hot and draw a lot of power, leading to low speeds and dropped connections.

The reason I suggested a Live CD with persistence is that they are better at autodetecting stuff on the host machine. You can definitely install an actual system on the SSD but it will make assumptions about things like the GPU for example – won't expect to have to swap it at boot, you'll have to do it manually. Or you can run your desktop environment with a pure software driver but that may get a bit annoying at times, depending on what you want to do with it.