Installing Ubuntu from a single USB drive is easy. This guide details the steps to get this great OS onto your UMPC with little effort.

Requirements for guide:

• Latest version of Syslinux
• Ubuntu or Variant of choice
• USB Flash drive/thumb stick with enough storage for files

Step 1

Formatting the USB flash drive

Select My Computer, right-click on the USB flash drive and select click Format.

Select FAT32 as the file system. Click start and wait for the format to complete.

Step 2

Making the USB flash drive bootable

Open the command prompt and change the directory to the extracted Syslinux/win32 folder.

cd Desktop/syslinux/win32

Once in the correct directory, enter the following to install the syslinux bootlader to the USB flash drive

Note: h: is the letter of your USB flash drive

syslinux -ma h:

Press enter.

Step 3

Extract the Ubuntu ISO

Right click on the ISO file and extract the files with WinRAR/7zip to the Ubuntu folder.

Step 4

Compiling the files.

The USB flash drive is now bootable, the Ubuntu files have been extracted.

Copy the files you extracted from the ubuntu-8.04 folder onto the empty USB drive.

Move the contents of the isolinux folder to the root of the drive. eg: from H:\isolinux\ into H:\

Rename isolinux.cfg file to syslinux.cfg

Finished!

Eject the USB flash drive, that’s it!

A sub 5 minute solution to a problem that causes a lot of headaches for many people when trying to install without a CD/DVD.