If you are on this site chances are you are “geeky” enough to own a laptop. While I love my iPhone I still am on the Internet too much to go without a laptop. Well this week my hard drive died. Caput, say good night, see you later, and I am never coming back! Usually that would mean I couldn’t use my computer until I got back home to replace the drive and restore from my backups. You do back up your data don’t you???

Anyway, you can now run the Linux operating system from a USB drive. All I needed to do was grab the small usb flash drive from my bag, plug it into my laptop and start. While all of my data was temporarily gone the USB drive allows me to get on the internet, check email, and even write a document if need be.

What’s Linux? Well it is a very popular alternative to Microsoft Windows and the Apple OS. Linux is free, it is compact, and it is fast. This allows you to spend less than $30 and a bit of your time to create a very viable emergency setup. Since the operating system runs on the usb drive you need NO hard drive!

What you will need:

1. A USB flash drive of at least 2GB in size. I would recommend 4gb. You should be able to purchase one for less than $30.
2. You need to go to pendrivelinux.com and learn how to create a install. This site offers many options with different version of the Linux operating system. I would recommend either the full Ubuntu OS or Xbuntu (This is a lite version). The operating systems come with Firefox browser and open-source games and applications like Open Office.
3. You need to figure out how to tell your computer to boot from something other than the hard drive. For my Thinkpad I push the F12 when the computer starts. Other computers will have you set up the boot options in the bios setup.

The instructions are really staight forward. Print them out and follow them. You will be up and running in no time. I would recommend the Ubuntu version of Linux. It works very well and I have had no driver issues with my laptop.

Other advantages to having a usb drive is security. You have the ability to run your own operating system on another persons computer without storing anything on their computer system. You can surf the internet, edit and save documents and just take it with you when you are done.

So check out pendrivelinux.com. Hopefully you will never has to use it.