Install Feather Linux to a Flash Drive from Windows

The following walk-through will illustrate how we installed Feather Linux to a USB flash pen drive through Windows and then made Feather boot from the USB device. Feather is yet another very small (under 128MB) clean and simple Knoppix Linux remix (based on Debian) that is straight forward and easy to use. The following tutorial covers the process of installing Feather to a USB device using Windows to produce the USB version.

Feather Linux Desktop Screenshots:

Distribution Home Page: http://featherlinux.berlios.de

Minimum Flash Drive Capacity: 128MB

Persistent Feature: No

USB Feather Linux Prerequisites:

• 128MB or larger Fat32 formatted USB pen drive
• Feather Linux
• Syslinux

The Feather USB Installation Process:

1. Download the Feather Linux zip file
2. Extract the files from feather-0.7.4-usb.zip to your USB stick
3. Download and extract the syslinux.zip to a directory on your computer
4. From Windows, Click Start >Run, type cmd, and press Enter
5. Change Directory (CD) to the syslinux/win32 directory. Once there, type syslinux.exe -ma X: ( Replacing X: with the actual drive letter of your USB stick)
6. Reboot your PC, go into your system BIOS and set your boot order to boot from any selectable USB device. (example USB_ZIP or USB_HDD)
7. Save your BIOS settings. On the next reboot, you should have a sucessful launch of Feather Linux from USB

Notes: If your system cannot boot from a USB device, you can use a floppy disk to boot Feather. Simply download the USB Boot Floppy Disk image and copy the image to your floppy disk.

Posted under: Flash drive installs using Windows