Booting from a USB drive

[Beef Boss]

I have put Linux mint on a USB drive, and I'd like to boot from that. My question is, this won't actually install Linux on my laptop correct? I can't really find any answers to this... See I've never used Linux before and I don't want to switch my laptop to Linux. So how can I get back from Linux to windows just boot from hard drive I guess? I really don't want to mess this up lol.. 

[iamdarkyoshi]

With ubuntu at least, you should be able to "try ububtu without installing"

 

It won't keep any changes you make after a reboot though.

[ProjectBox153]

When you choose the USB drive as an option, you'll get the option on the Linux Mint start page to boot a live environment. You don't have to install Linux Mint on your laptop to try it. 

[Beef Boss]

15 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

With ubuntu at least, you should be able to "try ububtu without installing"

 

It won't keep any changes you make after a reboot though.

So I can't use the USB drive to switch from windows to Linux? I basically just want the drive to have mint not my laptop. So whatever I do on the drive saves it to the drive so I can switch it throughout computers but still have the computers OS on that computer. 

 

Edit: the reason I don't want anything deleted from windows side is there are very important files that are not transferable. And each computer I can use has these, so Im now just thinking maybe I should just dual boot Linux and windows

[ProjectBox153]

14 minutes ago, BadluckBrian said:

So I can't use the USB drive to switch from windows to Linux? I basically just want the drive to have mint not my laptop. So whatever I do on the drive saves it to the drive so I can switch it throughout computers but still have the computers OS on that computer. 

 

Edit: the reason I don't want anything deleted from windows side is there are very important files that are not transferable. And each computer I can use has these, so Im now just thinking maybe I should just dual boot Linux and windows

If you want your Windows installation to remain completely intact, just partition the drive (from within Windows) and install Linux Mint on the new partition. 

[iamdarkyoshi]

Just now, Jamiec1130 said:

If you want your Windows installation to remain completely intact, just partition the drive (from within Windows) and install Linux Mint on the new partition. 

This, or, create a LIVE linux USB by using UUI's persistent mode and then linux will keep its changes

[ProjectBox153]

16 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

This, or, create a LIVE linux USB by using UUI's persistent mode and then linux will keep its changes

Ah, forgot about that. I haven’t messed with it yet.