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In particular I would like to have a dynamically installed GPU driver based on the target system. NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel.

So I know I can make a persistent LiveUSB whereby there would be anywhere up to 4GB (I think that's the max) of persistent storage for downloads, etc.

I'd like to configure a USB install to have the platform adaptability that a Live OS offers while fully utilizing the 120GB of space I have.

In essence I'm hoping to have a boot up install that reconfigures most/all the hardware/drivers as necessary every boot as I'd like to be able to boot off of it on nearly any machine. (Within reason - they will all be 64-bit)

The biggest gripe with doing multi-platform booting is the video driver stuff. Sometimes the system I'm booting off of is AMD, sometimes NVIDIA, sometimes Intel.

Sort of related question: Can I use a USB stick for a normal install? (to get platform adaptability)

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  • I was answering your question when the edit came in: that's not impossible, but too broad to answer here: What you want is an install with all possible proprietary drivers, custom scripts that enable/disable, ... You'd need a 15+ years of experience Linux guru to answer that question (not me). I estimate the above about a week of work for such a veteran...
    – Fabby
    Sep 3, 2015 at 19:39
  • Oh jeez I was afraid of that -.- I thought it maybe wouldn't be too hard to perhaps automate a gpu driver uninstall on shut down and then just detect and install whatever gpu driver is necessary on boot-up.
    – Enigma
    Sep 3, 2015 at 19:42

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4G is the persistence limit only when you use a casper-rw file (since that is the filesize max on a FAT32 filesystem). Use a partition labeled casper-rw with an ext2-4 filesystem for more storage. home-rw is a documented filename for your home directory, but I've never used it.
Use the "toram" keyword on the kernel boot line and the live-media's compressed filesystem will be copied to ram for much better runtime performance (at the expense of some additional boot time for the copy).


The "toram" is not a flag but a word like "persistent" which goes on the kernel boot lines. For legacy boots, "toram" goes on the "append" line after the "kernel" line in the /syslinux/txt.cfg file. For UEFI boots, "toram" goes on the "linux" line in /boot/grub/grub.cfg. You can switch from the casper-rw file to the partition anytime, but if you wait, be sure and remember to copy over what has been created in the file to the partition. I tend to set up the partition before the install, then just have to delete the file before I boot for the first time.

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  • So just to be clear, I'd set up a typical LiveUSB install on the USB with the persistent 4gb FAT32 filesystem to start. Then I'd delete that casper-rw partition using GParted and make my own casper-rw partition with ext4? And presumably there is a partition flag labeled toram?
    – Enigma
    Sep 3, 2015 at 20:27

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