Live distro and Full Linux Install/Live distro

There are various ways to get hold of the distro (see i.e. http://puredyne.goto10.org/download.html). You can buy a special USB stick, or you can download the ISO (disk image) and put that onto a CD/DVD/USB stick yourself. Then you're ready to get started:

Booting your live system (USB/CD/DVD)

 * 1) Insert the disk/stick into your computer.
 * 2) Turn on the computer.
 * 3) Many computers will automatically boot from the disk/stick. (On a Mac you may need to hold the "c" key while the Mac starts up, to boot from drive.)
 * If your computer doesn't automatically boot from CD, you need to change a setting in your computer's BIOS. Most PCs allow you to enter the BIOS settings quickly after you start your computer. You are usually prompted to press F12 or F2 to enter the BIOS (check your computers manual if no information is displayed at boot). Once you entered the BIOS settings, look for the Boot Sequence. You should change the sequence so that the CD drive is first in the list, the hard drive later. It differs per computer how this is done, please check the manual of your computer if you are unsure how to change these settings.

Preparing the distro on a live-bootable USB stick
1. Burn the .iso disk image as a bootable CD or DVD -- e.g., on my Mac, I had to go to disk utility and "burn image."

2. Make sure the .iso file you downloaded is available on the file system of the machine where you're going to prepare the USB stick. It's OK if it's a Mac or NTFS partition -- the distro can mount them.

3. Boot from the disk. (Or, if you have a virtual-machine app, you could boot right from the iso.)

4. Open an xterm window (terminal icon near lower left), then mount the location of the iso. It might take some trial and error to find out which device to mount. Hard disks and USB drives attached to the system are under /dev/sd(a,b,c...), with a number suffix for partitions. The partition editor gparted can help you find the device ID by size (but note, DON'T make any changes with gparted!):

Then use the drop-down menu at top right to look for the volume that's the same size as the iso location. For instance, on a machine with a 120GB hard drive, /dev/sda shows 111.79 GB and /dev/sdb shows 3.77 GB -- so obviously sda is the built-in hard drive and sdb is the memory stick. sda1 is the HD's first partition; sda2 is the second and so on.

Also, while in gparted, look for the device ID for the USB stick that you're going to prepare.

Once you know that, do this, including the partition number.

e.g.,

If it's a Windows partition, you might need to specify filesystem type:

5. The rest is easy. Use "CD" or "DVD" depending on which you downloaded and replace "path/to" with the real iso location.

(where # is the letter of the target USB stick -- don't include the partition suffix! Write sdc rather than sdc1.)

It'll take a few minutes, but then you'll have a persistent live bootable stick. It will make a smaller partition at the beginning for the iso contents and then use the rest of the stick to save any files that you changed or added later. So it's a good idea to get a stick with more space than you will actually need for the iso.