Ubuntu live CD and installing new applications onto a USB drive

Solution 1:

It is absolutely possible.

The mechanism built into Ubuntu is available. Basically, use the usb-creator tool or LiveUSB Creator (available once you've booted the LiveCD) to create a LiveUSB system on the USB stick.

Here's an install-it-from-Windows tutorial.

There are lots of posts on the Ubuntu forums about persistence; you'll want to check there in your research. These posts seem particularly useful with 9.04:

• installing on a 16gb

• This post suggests (while using the LiveUSB Creator) just "created one without any persistence space, then manually created an EXT2 partition labelled 'casper-rw' and on boot-up I had a system with persistence"

If the system you're on can boot from USB, that's all you need. If not, then use the LiveCD or build yourself a boot floppy (ha! -- tho you can probably build a boot CD instead of a floppy...).

Hope that helps!