P.O.S Pocket Operating System

I am going to show you how to Install SLAX on your flash drive(from a windows computer). Slax is a small USB portable Linux distribution. Its a great way to get started in linux, because nothing gets installed to your hard drive. Its built on the KDE desktop environment, which is much like windows, so it should be easy for most windows users to use.

What you will need.

-A Flashdrive 256mb will do the trick but I would recommend 1gb or more.
-A copy of SLAX. You Can download it here
-About 20 mins
-And a file extractor capable of extracting .tar files. You can use 7 zip

Note: This is more of a desktop operating system, it is compatible with little to no wireless cards.

Step 1: Preaparing Your Flashdrive

FIrst we have to format your flash drive as FAT. You can do this by opening my computer, right clicking on your drive and selecting the format option. Make sure the file system is FAT.

Step 2: Instalation

If you have 7-Zip installed, right click on the slax archive and select extract, browse for the root of your flash drive. Extract, and were almost done.

Step 3: Making the Drive Bootable

Now that we have all the files on our drive, we can make the drive bootable. This means that a hidden file will be installed into your flashdrives MBR (master boot record).

To do this, navigate to x:\boot\ in windows explorer, you should see a file called makeboot.bat, double click on it and it will pop-up in Command Prompt. Make sure the batch file is displaying the correct drive letter, and proceed with the installation of the MBR.


Now restart your computer and enter Bios usually the DEL key on the P.O.S.T Screen (sometimes its F8,F10,F2)

You should see a blue screen use the arrow keys to select BIOS FEATURES SETUP press enter.
Then move the button to Boot Order, set usb flash drive, usb zip disk, and usb hdd near the top, just make sure that your master hard drive is still somewhere on the list.

Step 4: Programs

Now that you are running slax you can go to the slax repositories and download some programs. When they are done downloading, install them by dubble clicking on the .lzm file.

Congratulations you linux user you. Now we can slowly PWN windows and the BSOD

Comments

[MANinYOURhouse]

so when we boot from flash drive it doesn't do anything to the hard drive right? I won't have to worry about losing anything on the hard drive correct?

[zygote90]

when i chose to make the bootdrive it selects the L: drive (which is my usb drive) and it says:

setting up boot record for L:, wait please...
accessing physical drive: access is denied.
did not successfully update the MBR: continuing...
disk L: should now be bootable. installation finished.

read the information above and then press any key to exit...


when i try to boot off of the usb it says that the boot file is non-existant

help??

[account3r2]

Does Dial-up interwebz work?

[reid0147]

i downed and excracted to usb drive i open boot and there is no makeboot.bat
HELP?

[account3r2]

boot\bootinst.bat

[helloworld1]

i can only format it to FAT32 and exFAT, will that do?

[geoslim13]

he says FAT or FAT32 will do

[account3r2]

uhh... he said make sure its FAT not FAT32

[account3r2]

you can download drivers for wireless cards

[account3r2]

My BIOS only says "USB ZIP, USB FDD, and USB Legacy" or something like that. what should I select?

[Mario1]

I have a 256mb Medion mp3 player
when i open the makeboot.bat file it says Setting up boot record for G:, wait please...
Reading boot sector: The parameter is incorrect.
Disk G: should be bootable now. Installation finished.

Read the information above and then press any key to exit...

[Se1f_Destruct]

To boot from usb on a bios that doesn't support it:

www.instructables.com/id/Boot-from-USB-on-a-bios-that-doesnt-support-it/

I thought that might be helpful.  :  )

[baken411]

does the portable system access facts off the flahdrive or the actual computer you booted from?

[aerhahedhe]

I think now the file you have to open is bootinst.bat

[aerhahedhe]

Maybe you should change the name of the instructable because it looks like Peice of sh** pocket operating system

[aerhahedhe]

i think this is a cool idea, and i want to do it, but i don't think i will because i see no practical use for this. Can someone give me an idea of why i should do this? all i really need is a 256mb flash drive and i have an unused 512mb one, since i dont want to use my main 2 GB drive

[aerhahedhe]

also, when you say it is compatible with little to no wireless cards, i have a laptop, will it be compatible? and if you change any settings, will it be saved onto the flash drive or the hard drive on the computer's hard drive? and also i found a practical use for it so i will probably do it

[nedfunnell]

Doesn't running an OS from the flash drive use up your otherwise plentiful number of rewrites due to swap files?

[littlechef37]

WHA ? It works for me and its pretty fast to.

[nedfunnell]

Flash drives have a limited number of writes/rewrites before they die. Normally not a problem, but operating systems use swap files, which will burn through these limited number of requires fairly quickly, killing your drive. How quickly, I don't know.