Can I install Mageia on a USB Flash Drive?

[markw10]

I have a high speed OCZ 4 GB USB Flash Drive. I'd like to install Mageia on it so that I can use it on my Acer laptop to boot into KDE Mageia OS. I prefer to go this route instead of making a dual boot system. Is it possible to install Mageia on a USB Flash drive and if so how do I go about doing it? Thanks!

[marja]

I have a high speed OCZ 4 GB USB Flash Drive. I'd like to install Mageia on it so that I can use it on my Acer laptop to boot into KDE Mageia OS. I prefer to go this route instead of making a dual boot system. Is it possible to install Mageia on a USB Flash drive and if so how do I go about doing it? Thanks!

You mean you want to install Mageia with KDE on only 4GB of space? The root partition of the KDE Mageia install I use at this very moment, already uses almost 6 GB of the available space.

[markw10]

I didn't realize Mageia would take that much space. I'm more familiar with Ubuntu so haven't use KDE as much. I'd still like to use it on a flash drive though but will obviously need a large flash drive. Would 8GB work comfortably or should I go for 16GB? Is it even possible to install Mageia on a flash drive?

[marja]

Yes it is possible. If you want to partition the drive, it is better to do that before you start installing Mageia on it, and use, for instance, a tool like gparted, and choose for
"Align to" "MiB" and for
"Free space preceding (MiB)" "2", unless you're sure that for your drive "1" is enough.
I would go for 16 GB, but of course it also depends on what you do with it. On this machine, my /home/marja/ is already larger than 8 GB.
Of course your laptop must support booting from USB (the system I'm on now doesn't support that).