Linux on usb stick

Hello,

since you are telling people to install linux in a second partition I hereby publish a guide on how to install linux nice and easy on a usb stick, not touching the system of the internal hard drive, so that you can be able to try playing on sk using linux.

Pardon me if is the wrong section but I really did not know where to put it, maybe "All thing alice", I leave that to forum admins/mods to decide if they want to move the thread or ban me again for spam.

First of all you should get a formatted usb stick, it has to be at least 6 giga to start with, 4 giga are going to be for the system and 2 giga are going to be to save the modification of the system or else you will loose all your changes ( and possibly the sklauncher ) upon reboot.

Then you should get a free software ( as in free beer! ) that runs on windows, mac and linux named Unetbootin.
Once is downloaded you can run it by clicking it, it does not require to be installed, is a executable binary, but remember to plug in a formatted usb stick first, it need to be windows formatted ( fat filesystem ) and with the bootable flag on, you can select the booting option from the windows formatting tool.
A window will pop up that will look like this:




If your computer is 32bit and low on resources I would recommend you to try Xubuntu/Linux down in the menu, Xubuntu is a ubuntu version that runs a very light desktop software named Xfce, it is very lightweight.
Choose the latest version that ends with .04, if you do not know all ubuntu versions ending with .04 are the stable version also named LTS, long term support, while the .10 ( for example 12.10 ) are the testing version and if you are not familiar with linux you should not got with that version.
Then below where it say "Space used to preserve files across reboots" you should put 1 and a half or 2 giga, if the usb stick is formatted properly and was inserted before starting this software there should be the drive name already in the bottom part, it recognize the stick by itself, if not close Unetbootin, plug the stick, reopen unetbootin.

Once that is done hit "Ok" and wait for it to finish. Once the deed is done reboot your computer and select to boot from usb stick, this can be trivial, some computers have the option that if you press F12 or F8 it will automatically boot from the key, some have other keys to press, some require you to enter your BIOS menu and enable the usb stick booting, this is up to you to find out, I'm sorry but all computers do it in different way and I can help very little with that.

Once you have managed to boot your live ubuntu system ( linux on usb sticks are named live systems ) and you got at the desktop, if your wireless/network card is recognized and you realize you can go on the internet by opening a page in firefox then is time to install java.

You have 2 options, install the openjre or installing the closed source java.

Lets start with the first:

- open the ubuntu menu with the mouse logo on the left upper corner ( if you have choosen Xubuntu ) and click on "Ubuntu Software Center"
- type "java" in the right upper corner search form of the software center application, the first to hit will be OpenJDK Java 7 Runtime
- click and install
- once is finished you should be ready to launch the sklauncher and to play
- you can also find TeamSpeak in the software center application if you'd want to install it

Second method, installing the closed source java:

- download java jre-7u51-linux-i586.tar.gz from here, you have to agree to oracle licence before you can download it
- now the _really_ difficult part, open the ubuntu menu, go in accessories and click "Terminal Emulator"
- you have to figure out what directory is holding the java package, most probably is going to be /home/ubuntu/Downloads/ , type ls /home to be sure that the user directory is named ubuntu, it can be named also "user", I do not remember but I think you are smart enough to find that out
- now type in the terminal tar xvzf jre-7u51-linux-i586.tar.gz , it will unpack java, give it a moment
- type sudo cp -a jre1.7.0_51 /usr/local/ , this command might take a moment and will give no output, when the terminal prompt will be given back to you it will be when the copying is over
- type sudo leafpad and in the leafpad ( xfce notepad version ) type in the next code and save it as /etc/profile.d/java.sh:

Code:

JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/java/jre1.7.0_51
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:$JAVA_HOME/bin
JRE_HOME=/usr/local/java/jre1.7.0_51
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:$JRE_HOME/bin
export JAVA_HOME
export JRE_HOME
export PATH

- when you have done that do this command without the sudo command: source /etc/profile.d/java.sh
- next very hard step, again still in the terminal type in this command one followed by the next:

Code:

update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/local/java/jre1.7.0_51/bin/java 1
update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javac" "javac" "/usr/local/java/jre1.7.0_51/bin/javac" 1
update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javaws" "javaws" "/usr/local/java/jre1.7.0_51/bin/javaws" 1
update-alternatives --set java /usr/local/java/jre1.7.0_51/bin/java
update-alternatives --set javac /usr/local/java/jre1.7.0_51/bin/javac
update-alternatives --set javaws /usr/local/java/jre1.7.0_51/bin/javaws

You should now be ready to play!

Please somebody from the sk staff that know enough of computer try it out because I did not do this steps my self, is just what I would do in case I would need a live stick.
I will be in teamspeak if you need anyhelp with the steps and to correct this topic.
This time I'm making a copy and a screenshot of the post so that if I get again banned for spam I can prove I AM NOT A SPAMMER.

Ciao belli!!! And I hope this can be any good for all of you.

PS: if the mod who banned me before here on the forum for sharing my skygalaxy modpack discussion mind to come and play in the server we can settle the issue good old fashion way, death match xD, just kiddin, or maybe not

q9c9p aka the too much coffe face.

 

Pardon for the double post but I forgot to say that while it might not be a perfect setup for a long run this can be usefull to test out if your computer is supported, if the network adapter drivers works out of the box and the same goes for the graphical drivers.
So for you can test out for a while that there are no drivers bugs or overheating and such.

You're welcome

 

I'm having issue with firefox page rendering ( linux is not better than windows, is just that is free and more customizable if you know what you are doing ) and when I edit the post the edit form become empty, is firefox fault but since this I will update the informations by adding to the thread, apologies.

You need to format the key fat32 if you try to use a drive you'll have to install a tirth party tool because windows will not allow you to do fat32 format on a drive and will format it NTFS, exFAT is not good, or you will have to do it manually using DOS:

Open a command window by going to Start, then
Run and typing in CMD

Once you have the DOS prompt and you know the name of the drive ( probably D: or E: or F: ) do:

format /FS:FAT32 F:

DO NOT USE C: OR YOU WILL DELETE YOUR COMPUTER!!!BE SURE 100% 5 TIMES YOU ARE USING THE RIGHT DRIVE NAME.

Another thing that you have to be aware by using minecraft on linux, there is a bug that is plaguing the linux client since always ( at least to me, anyone else? ), every now and then you will log in, open your inventory or open a chest or an inventory of a machine, try to move items and the items will be dropped on the floor, you will not be able to move them in the inventory, if that happen you must restart the whole client.

Another thing I like to stress out: ubuntu, xubuntu N.04 is the stable release, N.10 is the unstable-testing, do not install 13.10, install 13.04, do not do it you will be looking for troubles if you will install N.10 and if you find me on teamspeak I will not help you ( not because I don't want but because it changes so much and so quickly that is going to be difficult to know what you have installed, versions, patches and whatnot, i hope you understand that )

Pardon again the forum intrusion xD and thanks to JTHR for being my guineapig xD

q9c9p