Updated By - March 27, 2010

Make a bootable gOS USB flash drive from Live CD

Create a gOS USB flash drive. The following tutorial covers the process of installing gOS to a USB flash drive using an Active Live CD. In addition, the persistence option is being utilized for saving and restoring changes persistently on the fly. gOS is based on Ubuntu and features the enlightenment desktop environment. Enlightenment features a dock and stack that looks and functions much like "fan view" used in Mac OSX 10.5.

We prefer the Rocket release with also includes many useful google apps. This Linux Distribution was produced by the Good OS LLC corporation. It used to be included with Everex Computers, which could commonly be found at, and purchased from Walmart.

Distribution Home Page: www.thinkgos.com
(this distro is no longer being developed)

Minimum Flash Drive Capacity: 1GB

Persistent Feature: Yes

USB essentials:

  • Working CD Drive
  • Active Live CD
  • USB flash drive
  • Working internet connection

USB gOS Persistent install via Live CD

  1. Download the ISO and burn it to a CD
  2. Reboot your PC from the Live CD
  3. Insert your USB flash drive
  4. Left click on the desktop and select Run Command from the options. Then type xterm and press enter to launch the terminal
  5. Type sudo su (to become root)
  6. Type apt-get update
  7. Type apt-get install syslinux mtools
  8. Now type fdisk -l to list available drives/partitions (note which device is your flash drive Example: /dev/sdb). Throughout this tutorial, replace all instances of x with your flash drive letter. For example, if your flash drive is sdb, replace x with b.
  9. Type fdisk /dev/sdx
    • type p to show the existing partition and d to delete it
    • type p again to show any remaining partitions (if partitions exist, repeat the previous step)
    • type n to make a new partition
    • type p for primary partition
      • type 1 to make this the first partition
      • hit enter to use the default 1st cylinder
      • type +750M to set the partition size
      • type a to make this partition active
      • type 1 to select partition 1
      • type t to change the partition filesystem
      • type 6 to select the fat16 file system
    • type n to make another new partition
    • type p for primary partition
      • type 2 to make this the second partition
      • hit enter to use the default cylinder
      • hit enter again to use the default last cylinder
      • type w to write the new partition table
  10. Type mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n gOS /dev/sdx1 to format the first partition
  11. Type mkfs.ext2 -b 4096 -L casper-rw /dev/sdx2 to format the second partition
  12. Remove and re-insert your flash drive
  13. Type mkdir /media/gOS
  14. Type mount /dev/sdx1 /media/gOS
  15. Type syslinux -sf /dev/sdx1
  16. Type cd /cdrom
  17. Type cp -rfv casper dists install pics pool preseed .disk isolinux/* md5sum.txt README casper/vmlinuz /media/gOS
  18. Type cd /media/gOS
  19. Type wget pendrivelinux.com/downloads/gos2/syslinux.cfg
  20. Reboot your computer and set your BIOS boot priority or Boot Menu to boot from the USB device. Save your changes and proceed to boot from the USB device

If all goes well, you should be able to boot gOS from your flash drive using the persistence option saving and restoring your changes on each boot.