Installing Debian from USB thumb drive

For some years now I have tried to improve my Linux skills. I just don’t have the time to do Linux deep dives at work, so I figured I would set up a physical Linux box here, in addition to the VMs I use from time to time.

Anyway, without further thought about the pros and cons of VMs vs physical machines, creating the installation USB thumb drive turned out to be a bit of a challenge, until UNetbootin and LiLi came along. The former supports Windows, Linux and OS X (I am on OS X), while LiLi is Windows only.

LiLi looks good, but given my OS X preference I went with UNetbootin. After creating a Debian Wheezy installation thumb drive, I tried booting it in a Dell laptop. No luck, it booted straight into the Windows 8 that was on the hard drive.

When repeating the procedure on the Dell laptop (running Win 8) it worked like a charm, the Debian installer started after the USB drive had been created, and the laptop rebooted. I recall reading somewhere that there are issues with UNetbootin on OS X, I guess that’s still the case..

So, now onto the actual installation – nice!