[wplug] USB OS

[Vanco, Donald]

Arnaud wrote:
> Has anyone heard anything or seen anything about running a full OS
> from a portable USB Flash drive? I'm not sure that this is possible
> considering the filesystem structure (not sure what file system is
> running on a flash drive) but it seems that if I can boot from an
> external USB floppy perhaps the same is possible of a flash drive.
> This is just a thought I had after playing around with Knoppix a bit.
> Maybe it would just be easier to run knoppix and save any files to a
> flash drive from there? Any thoughts?
	One would think that there would need to be a BIOS capable of
booting from USB.  After that, it's just another flash device.  We have a
customer that has a Linux appliance which boots from a 128MB flash device -
well within the size limitations of USB flash devices.
	As far as Knoppix, that's actually a neat idea.  A Knoppix CD and a
USB fob and you'd have the ultimate "roaming" system.  I can see it now -
"Hey buddy - can you spare 10 minutes of your wireless laptop?"

	I just saw that there are now 4GB flash devices in CF size.
Amazing.

Don