Ubuntu 9.04 on a usb stick

Update: I should point out that in order to boot from the usb stick, you have to remember to trigger the bios boot menu (which on most laptops I have handled is done by pressing F12).

I am about halfway into my 2-week holidays. I left my laptop at home because it is big and bulky: it does not qualify as a 'portable' to me (so I essentially do not have one). I'm left with my wife's laptop, which I would prefer to mess with as little as possible.

Enter Ubuntu 9.04 on a usb stick (I'm using x86_64). Simply a clean install, no special procedures, no fancy tricks. 1 partition, no swap, and make sure that grub is on the usb stick's MBR (click the advanced button at the right time).

Now, I have not seen 9.04 boot from a regular hd yet, but I can tell you that from this usb stick it boots pretty damn fast. User log on takes about 2 to 3 seconds and everything is there and loaded. I'm so satisfied with it. I get the occasional freeze during normal use, but it is rare and hence not terribly intrusive. It is, after all, still a usb stick and not a proper SSD, so in that respect, the user experience is excellent.

So after several days, I had the unfortunate need to boot back into windows vista. It was painful. Excessively painful. Honestly, I ended up staring at the screen for so long, while it just endlessly kept on loading crap. The worst part was the realisation that I simply forgot how much it used to bug me before.

Anyway, ain't going there again anytime soon.