When it comes to the most recent generation of computers, there is an option to start an operating system right from a USB stick, without an actual installation process. This may be an option to use or test a different operating system without affecting in any way the one that is already installed.

Starting from version 8.10, Ubuntu can be installed on a USB stick in a more easy way by every single user, regardless of their knowledge in Linux. To perform the installation, the user must have a version of 8.10 or later on CD and a USB stick with a capacity of at least 700 MB free space available, but this can vary according to the version of Ubuntu that you want to use for this process.

To install Ubuntu on the USB stick, you can simply boot the Live CD mode of Ubuntu or alternatively, if already installed on your on your system, you can follow the following simple procedure to do this, which is described in some basic steps below.

First of all, you need to access the Ubuntu menu bar, via System> Administration, choose Create a USB startup disk.

At this point, you will be asked to specify the source disk image of Ubuntu. If you have the Ubuntu CD in optical drive, it should appear in the list and will be selected. Otherwise, click Other and specify the location of the image. The .iso format will do it, but other versions may work as well.

When completed, you can use the stick on any computer that can boot from such units. Just tell the computer’s BIOS to use this option and restart the respective machine. The same procedure can be applied for the any distribution of Linux, so this is a helpful tutorial for everyone.