Having a Linux live USB can save many headaches if your main PC has issues, but they’re also useful as portable OSes that you keep with you, and plug into whatever host machine is nearby. For them to work like this, you need a bootable USB that will run on a wide range of hardware, and that’s easier to do than you might think.

While you could run Windows 11 off a live USB, I wouldn’t suggest it for long-term use. It’s more of a “we can do” than a “we should do” thing, and Linux is much better suited to the task. If you’ve got a home lab, you probably know this already, but even Windows users can benefit from having a Linux live USB lying around where they can easily get to it if something goes weird with Windows.

What is UNetbootin, and why should you use it?

Let’s go oldskool on this one

UNetbootin is one of the oldest ways I can remember to make a live USB, other than using dd on the command line. It can download a wide range of ISO images for you, making it an Internet-based

But don’t worry, it’ll work with any ISO you’ve downloaded, whether that’s Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, or whatever else you’ve found while searching. It’ll make x86 or Arm live USBs, so fret not if you want to load Linux onto a Surface, and it doesn’t take that long to do it.

It’s no Ventoy, but sometimes that’s better

I’ve already got a “rainy day” USB made with Ventoy that has a ton of troubleshooting and reinstallation ISOs. Sometimes, I want one ISO installed on a live USB, not dozens, and I want a simple tool to create it. For example, if I’m using Tails, a security-focused image meant to be used as a live USB, I don’t want any other files on that drive, just in case something manages to get past the safeguards and other measures built into the distro.

Time to make a bootable USB

UNetbootin makes things so easy

UNetbootin has one requirement: your USB drive needs to be formatted as FAT32. And, of course, the usual disclaimer is that any data on the USB drive will be written over, so save anything elsewhere before you start. Open the program and look at your options for installing the distribution.

See, unlike Rufus and other live USB making tools, UNetbootin can download the ISOs for you, saving a little bit of time and pointing you in the right direction if you’re unsure which version of Linux to use. Puppy Linux is a good option for installing here, because it’ll run on almost anything as it has very low resource needs.

But you can pick anything from the drop-down, as modern PCs will all be powerful enough for them to boot. If you’re planning on using it on some older hardware, then Puppy, or maybe Damn Small Linux or SliTaz, could be a good alternative. Make sure your USB drive is selected and click OK. Sit back and wait as UNetbootin downloads the ISO and installs your live USB.

You must disable Secure Boot for your computer to allow the UNetbootin-created USB to boot from.

Once you’ve got your live USB, boot to your USB drive in your PC’s BIOS, and your Linux distro will boot up. You could extend this even further, and host a PXE server with a wide range of ISO files on it, and use iVentoy on the live USB, or netboot.xyz, and have your single live USB turned into dozens of options.

Ventoy

One CPU type is still a problem

Credit: Justin Duino / XDA-Developers

While the majority of processors use the x86 instruction set, one CPU type has been gaining traction. That’s Arm, which could well be the future of computing except for one thing. Software support has always been an issue for other instruction sets, and booting any Live USB on Arm machines can be annoying, even if it’s the same OS already installed.

Ventoy only has experimental support and only for a few OSes, so it isn’t a great choice. UNetbootin can create Live USBs from Arm-compatible Linux ISOs, which is excellent, but you can’t make a general-purpose Live USB that lets you boot on ARM-based and x86-based devices, because they’re too different.

You can make a Linux USB that will boot on most devices easily

It takes longer to download your Linux ISO of choice than it takes to turn it into a Live USB that you can boot from almost any computing device. If you only need one distro, there’s no point in going through the extra few steps to create a Ventoy drive, and other tools can accomplish what you want with fewer clicks.