Preset Linux Install

[Havel]

Perhaps this is just mandela effect but I remember hearing a few years ago that there was a distro where you would boot up a live environment on an install iso, setup all your programs, login to everything, tinker with settings,etc. Then you could take that usb and install the exact system you just perfected for yourself onto any computer so everything is exactly where you want it immediately.

 

If there's anything out there even close to this I'd love some help in the right direction. 

 

I should also mention that I have absolutely no coding knowledge and likely wouldn't be able to create my own custom 1of1 distro as tempting as that is

 

EDIT: I know a bit about nixOS but I'd rather not bash my head against a wall of text that I don't understand, gui is vastly preferred

[g0ated]

You might be referring to usb persistence? If so you can set that up on rufus iirc. 

[Eigenvektor]

1 hour ago, Havel said:

Then you could take that usb and install the exact system you just perfected for yourself onto any computer so everything is exactly where you want it immediately.

Unless you install that exact system multiple times, I fail to see the advantage.

 

Instead of boot, install, setup it turns into boot, setup, install, which is the exact same amount of work.

 

Except running of off a USB stick tends to be way slower than running on an SSD.

[BoomerDutch]

Ehh you can simply install linux on usb..

It would be wise to get good quality USB stick and this is usually bad idea because usb sticks has short life.

 

Don't use it for important things just things that can be recovered etc.

 

Like samsung usb sticks with high read and write speeds and on usb3 instead of usb2 then yeah it could have a functional portable OS.

 

However seeing different gpus installs might cause issues except bazzite had basing which would solve this issue.

 

I'd recommend trying Bazzite and simply learn couple commands to switch to nvidia mode or to Amd mode or steamdeck mode you'll already learn about it on download page.

 

And I'm not recommending making iso yourself because you can't be bothered by nixos wall of text.

[CosmicEmotion]

The closest thing I can think to what you're describing is NixOS. Might be worth a look. You only need a config file and you reusability on any system.

[Kilrah]

You can set up any distro on a small partition/disk, image/compress that and restore it anywhere you want.

 

Or use automation tools like ansible to automate setting a fresh install up from scratch.

[Biggus Dickus]

MX Linux https://mxlinux.org/download-links/

 

You're thinking of "Remastering" feature of the MX Live USB Maker.

 

Here's the docs: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MX-Linux/mx-docs/master/mxum_en.pdf
section 6.6.3. and 6.6.4.

This is their linked video tutorial: