(Catchup: Part I. Part II.) Not interested in Linux? Check out this awesome video clip instead.

The nice thing about the SimplyMepis boot CD is that you can save your work and your preferences without having to install LInux. All you need is a USB flash drive.

When you first plug the USB drive in it'll show up on the desktop with an icon and the device name...

Single-click the icon to open the Konqueror file manager or just drag and drop files onto the icon to write the to the drive. But that's just the beginning. You may have noticed a user named "onthego" when you first booted Mepis. If you add an "onthego" file to your USB drive, you can automatically save not only your work but all your prefered settings too.

Before you begin, make sure the USB drive is unmounted. That doesn't mean disconnected! Linux recognises two states with devices like disk drives; unmounted and mounted. The former simply means that Linux is aware of the device but it hasn't yet been authorised to work with the system. The latter means it has. With things like USB drives, mounting is done automatically as soon as you click on the icon. Hard disk partitions, on the other hand, must first be authorised by root. To unmount the USB drive, right-click the icon and choose Safely unmount. (There's even a visual indicator of the drive's status. When mounted, the icon shows a little green diamond underneath it, as above. Unmounted, the diamond disappears.)

Now click K-Menu, choose Mepis Config and, under System Maintenance, Create OnTheGo Disk. The Disk and Partition tags should show information about your USB drive. The default size of the OnTheGo partition is 100MB and you can choose a standard ISO file format or a password-protected AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) one.


Simply click Create to create the file.

Now it's time to set Linux up the way you like it. There are far too many options to detail here but you might like to start by ditching that boring background pic. Right-click the desktop and choose Configure Desktop then Background. There's a whole load more options under Control Centre on the K-menu that allow you to change everything from icon size to double-click behaviour.

Once you've set up Mepis just the way you like it and are ready to shut down, go back into Mepis Config and this time choose Copy Between Desktops. You want to Copy From: demo (the account you signed in on) To: onthego.


You also have the option of What to Copy. The default Home folder's a mere 600KB. OnTheGo defaults to 100MB, so that leaves you plenty of room for your own stuff. The Entire home option will save everything including your emails, browser settings, documents, items on your desktop and all your configuration settings. Click Copy and you're done.

To test your new configuration choose Logout from the K-menu followed by End Current Session. With the USB drive still connected, log in again as onthego (password "onthego") and you should find everything magically restored.

Now armed with just the SimplyMepis CD and your USB drive, you can take your complete Linux setup anywhere!