I have a bootable CD with Ubuntu 9.10 on it. If I place the disk in my CD/DVD drive and reboot my machine I get the option to run Ubuntu from the CD. All OK so far.

My neighbours have a note book with no CD/DVD drive. How do I create a bootable USB memory stick (flash drive) with Ubuntu on it so it will give the same option as I get from CD?

I've tried searching and all sorts of weird ideas appeared. None of them was simple!

Take a loot here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download, particularly step #2. When I select 'USB Stick' and 'Windows' It looks like a 3 step process to create the USB Stick.

If you don't want to go to the trouble of making your own, you can buy USB sticks with Linux pre-installed on them as well.

Unetbootin, simple and easy. Don't guess I've ever used it with Ubuntu, but I have made USB boot flash drives with several other Linux distros with no fuss at all.

You can also visit this page: click me and download the universal USB Installer. This program creates a persistant bootable stick, meaning that it will remember the changes you do. You can then install your own programs there and use it in every computer that boots from USB.

Thank you for the suggestions.

1. I tried the Ubuntu download step 2 bit. I had to install iLive which I found unuseable.

2. I tried UNetbootin. It looked straightforward and said it had created a bootable USB with Ubuntu Live. When I tried to boot from it I was told Boot Manager not found.

3. Pendrivelinux is iLive. See item 1 above.

So no luck so far.

Is the USB flash drive formatted to FAT32? If so, it should work, but I've found that with some systems FAT16 may work better. In either case, format the drive before running Unetbootin.

What is iLive? I never installed it and I'm using this USB installer for a long long while. Normally you just run the program and pick the ISO (which I normally download myself) you want to use and that's it!

@neil: The drive is formatted as ntfs because, I thought, the file is large. Perhaps I am wrong?

@Tasurinchi: Maybe I am confused ... which is normal at my age. However, before trying your suggestion I'll wait for opinion on the disk format.

Fairly certain it must be FAT32.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/unetbootin/wiki/guide

Cheers, Neil.

I am now trying Tasurinchi's suggestion. Await report.

@Tasurinchi: You are a star, mate.

The link you sent me was full of traps, although persistence paid off and I managed to find and download the PendriveLinux bit without cluttering my machine with idiotic nonsense.

Once installed, it was a breeze to create a bootable version of Ubuntu on my USB memory stick ... which now works.

Well done and thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

You're welcome! I'm glad I could help. Since I user this program since it was created I never realized that the site may be full of of other confusing links. Normally I just go straight to the Universal USB Installer.

Keep in mind that if in the future you want to install a new published distro (say Ubuntu 12.04 as example) into an USB stick you may need to download the latest version of the installer.