USB Installer

From a few of my posts previously, you would have known that I like portable apps a lot. In fact, not only apps, but I aim to ultimately avoid all the installation and set up processes, even for operating systems. After running through various counts of installation processes, from Windows variants (95, 98, ME, XP, 2000, 2003, 2008, Vista, 7) to Linux distros  (Redhat, Suse, OpenBSD, Ubuntu), I wanted to find a way to make installing new systems easier and less time consuming. In the quest to achieve that, I came across this - Universal USB Installer.

Mind you, it will not replace the installation process if you intend to install a new machine, but it allows you to create bootable USBs of selected Linux distros and boot from them. It is very useful for people who would like to do tests on brand new machines without needing to install or mess up the existing OS installations. It could also allow you to create bootable USBs of Vista or 7, though it will behave like the installation CD. You can't boot from them directly like what you could do with Linux. And of course, bear in mind that to create these USBs, you must have the installation disc or ISO images.

If you would like do something similar (bootable USB/CD) for Windows, you could look into something called Preinstalled Environment (example: BartPE). I used to create bootable CDs with antivirus and diagnostic tools for testing purposes with BartPE, but have not used it for quite some time. Maybe I'll revisit BartPE one of these days and write a post about it.

Stay tuned.