Hi. Recently got sent a laptop to install Linux on it. The customer wants opensuse 11.3 on it. Problem is, his built-in optical drive came DOA and when I tried to make a LiveUSB it threw an error message during boot about not finding the live image. Is there any special process that I would need to do to get around that error message and be able to boot off the USB stick.
P.d: Customer’s laptop comes with a very weird BIOS that won’t let me boot off an external DVD drive, but boots off USB sticks just fine.
To make the live 11.3 usb you need to do a dd from linux to copy it to the usb stick. Don’t use something like unetbootin. (Beware though, dd is destrucive and will overwrite your usb stick data.)
The other neat thing with the live 11.3 is that it automatically creates a new partition for the free space on the usb when you first boot. which gives you a prsistent install.
You can use this method - How to Install SUSE to a USB Flash Drive | USB Pen Drive Linux This worked for me with the Live Gnome CD and then I clicked the Install icon on the desktop to install to the local disk. Bonus is I have it running on my laptop and a USB version which I can carry around as well. Win-Win.