Saturday, August 11, 2012

Installing Linux Mint Maya on USB for a computer with Nviida GPU

          I have been a long term user of Linux. I had never tried installing persistent Linux on pen drive before, so gave it a try.

         I have listed below how I achieved this to help others who may want to try it. Before we start its essential to know your hardware,

My Hardware:

Core i7, NVIDIA GF108 [Quadro 1000M], 4 GB DDR3 RAM.

These are the things that matter  most.
Currently I am using Windows 7 OS.

Before we start, note that

Contents of this tutorial is valid only for Ubuntu ands its variants. (With little variations this can be applied for other flavors as well, googling will help you )

Things we need for this tutorial are

  1. Pen drive(at-least 2 GB). 
  2. Computer running Windows or Linux. Capable of booting from USB drive(thats basically anything thats manufactured in last 4 or 5 years). 
  3. Ubuntu or one of its variants.
  4.  UNetbootin software.

Steps!

         1. Download your favorite OS. I prefer Linux Mint. (Yes, Mint is based on Ubuntu)
You can find Mint here. I tried hands on KDE 64 bit version, but you can take your pick.There is one particular reason why prefer mint, it comes preloaded with many softwares, video and audio CODECS, which means you can play any music and movie out of the box and you don't miss out on the support of strong Ubuntu community.

        2.  Download UNetbootin. You can find it here.
Run it, you should be seeing window like this. 



           3.  Navigate to the downloaded OS, by choosing Diskimage and browse button,
           4.  Choose the amount of persistent storage you want in the space used to preserve files across reboots section.( I used 4096 MB, I am using 16 GB pen drive :) ).
         5.  Choose your USB Drive.

Hit OK,

It may look like UNetbootin has hung when it has finished about 80 to 90%, but don't worry its common, it takes about 10 min to finish. 
Once your done, reboot.

           6.  While rebooting(Before Windows logo appears!) hit Esc and choose boot from USB Drive,(this may be different for you, depending on your hardware, go through manual for you hardware to find ways to chose USB Drive as boot medium).

          7.  Navigate to "Try Linux Mint without installing" option and press TAB, add

              nouveau.modeset=0

after quiet splash. This is essential if you are using Nvidia GPU like me, otherwise Linux will not boot!. This step is to disable use of GPU. (Don't worry next step explains how to enable GPU).
              If you are not using nvidia GPU then you don't need this step and next step.

         8.  After booting has finished, open terminal( press Alt-F2 and choose Konsole) run following commands.

This adds repository for installing driver

               sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates

This will update the repository information

                sudo apt-get update 

 This installs nvidia dirvers.

               sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

This configures the drivers. 
 
               sudo nvidia-xconfig

Following command is for restarting X-server on KDE,

               sudo restart kdm

If you are using Gnome then

               sudo restart gdm

for information on how to restart other x-servers google it, you will find answers, or let me know I will help you out.


And you are done! These settings will be preserved across reboots.

If everything goes well you should be seeing something like this.


If you run into any trouble, feel free to contact me, do leave your feedback!



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