Carry an Operating System in Your Pocket

With large capacity flash drives, we have almost reached the point where we could carry our Windows environment with us in our pocket and have access to our familiar desktop and settings wherever there is a public computer. But we really aren't there quite yet.

A practical solution available now is taking Linux with you on a flash drive instead. Linux isn't geeky and scary any longer. The interfaces for many Linux builds, like Ubuntu (shown below), look almost exactly like Windows.



The advantages of using your own Linux OS on a public computer are:

1) Reduce the risk of picking up viruses and malware from a public computer - When you boot a public computer from a flash drive you completely eliminate any interaction with the public computer's operating system. This significantly reduces the chances that your flash drive will become infected by any malware that may be running and infecting the public computer.

2) Linux isn't as prone to attack - Since Windows has a 91% market share, people who write malware tend to target Windows systems. By running Linux on a public computer, you are much less likely to be the target of an attack or infection.

3) Enhanced privacy - When you run off your own storage medium (flash drive), you avoid reading and writing to the hard disk of the public computer. Therefore, you don't leave traces of your activity behind.

4) Ease of use - Instead of dealing with a different configuration on each public computer you use, you have access to an operating system with which you are familiar.

Sometimes you can't find a public computer that lets you boot from a USB drive. You can also take a CD with you that contains a Linux OS which should help avoid this issue.

You still need some virus protection but fortunately you can get free antivirus programs that run in a Linux environment such as avast! Linux Home Edition. If you buy a flash drive with a switch that allows you to make it a read-only device, this will also increase your level of protection.

I like demonstrating Linux in the classroom because many students have never seen it. Since most of my students have flash drives now, this saves me from burning CDs for them from which to boot the Windows computers. There are many distros (different variations of Linux) that you can choose from to load onto your flash drive. An excellent resource is Pendrivelinux which has many distros available for download and step-by-step instructions on how to install them to your flash drive. Personally, I like Ubuntu and Knoppix as they both include OpenOffice (which is just like using MS Office 2003) and the Firefox browser. But download a couple different distros and see which one you prefer.

And if you have Macs in your labs, there is an option for you too! gOS is a distro that provides a very close approximation of OS X, so you too can feel right at home.