Indeed, mx linux is a good project overall, with a a bunch of unique tools. It creates usb with persistence of mx linux, I’am not sure that it can do it for other distros. I’ll give it a shot. Good idea, thanks. That could be a solution.
In the meanwhile I made an attempt with archlabs. After 24 hours (!) I could eventually install it on usb and run it. I was happy that I succeeded, but I was soon disappointed since it runs way too slow for arch. I don’t mention arcolinux since It could not install it. For the debian family an usb install would be an easy task, quick and efficient. There seems to have a general problem for the arch family, which sometimes involves manjaro too.
I have tried exactly what you are attempting also and was not satisfied that they work well at all. Even MX is slow for me on a usb. What i do is create a live usb of MX linux then i use the tools in MX to create another live usb with persistence and i set the maximum values for space that it allows. That’s the best i could get. Creating a live usb of MX and setting the settings to persistence on it doesn’t work the same. There is a difference and i don’t know how they have this set up but it’s pretty good.
What i have found better is to get the small SSD drive and a case and use an MX live usb and install it to that drive because at least it runs WAY faster. It is a bit larger than a usb so carrying it around in your pocket is not as convenient but still do-able.
Edit: This doesn’t take hours to do but merely minutes as it installs normal how things should work.
MX live USB in USB 3.0 slot, boot toram, persistence, runs faster than installing MX to SSD, it’s blazing fast.
2 Likes
It would probably be a good idea to first convert the .iso to an .img format, as ISO is read-only and thus not very suitable as a permanent system on a stick that also needs to have writing capabilities.
Hi guys,
thank you for your replies. I come again for a last consideration, so that the issue can be considered solved (or unsolved, it depends on the point of view). I thank you again for your suggestions, especially the last ones. I regret that I could not install endevourOs on a usb stick since the community is so helpful and generous. The problem is general: none of the distro based on arch can be installed on usb, with the (partial) exception of manjaro. Community edition of manjaro do not work. At the moment, it makes no sense to go on in this attempt since there are better alternatives: mx linux, as many of you said, peppermint os or even manjaro xfce (it works great actually). I cannot say that these general failure of arch installer would be confirmed if I tried to install on a quick ssd (but last generation of usb 3.0 are not bad at all, and should be able to run any linux system). This will be a topic for the future. Thanks a lot for your attention and care
I am not sure if others have suggested this or not, but what you could do to get around this issue is install it on a VirtualBox instead, then ensure that your USB drive can get connected to the virtualbox. Then put in your USB drive while the OS is booted on VirtualBox and use dd to clone the entire partition table and to put it on your USB drive. Use this command dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=2048. After this then resize the partitions to your likings. This has worked for me. Do keep in mind though that if your system uses UEFI, set your VirtualBox to use EFI mode. Also ensure that the virtualdisk that you create is slightly smaller than your USB drive space.
Sorry you can’t get it working 
I use SUSE ImageWriter for Live USB and these will install Antergos, EOS, Manjaro, Debian, MX linux, Linux Mint, KDE Neon, SUSE, to another USB drive problem free. IMO USB drive is nothing more than a slower SSD drive in my usage
1 Like
TL;DR 
BTW, did you try simply copying an existing install from the hard disk to the stick? It might work, but requires some extra things after copying:
- arch-chroot to install booting feature to the stick (with grub-install)
- changing /etc/fstab according to the changes in UUIDs/LABELs//dev:s
- re-creating /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Also, I’ve installed Antergos to the USB stick using these tips:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Install_Arch_Linux_on_a_USB_key
It wasn’t very hard, only some partition names needed to be changed if I remember correctly.
1 Like
Sorry to drag up a months old post but I feel this deserves the attention. It seems manjaro has gone the route of having a persistent USB release:
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-xfce-20-0-3-persistent-usb-released/151622
2 Likes
It is not as easy to do that.
First, you will need a computer with no harddrive (or use a Windows computer, or virtualbox. Do not use a Linux computer with FAT partition)
Secondly, The USB stick need to be at least 32GB of storage.
Huh, Arch, Manjaro, and EndeavourOS worked for me to install onto a USB 
Just don’t add a Virtualdisk
1 Like