Ah, yes, I misunderstood. I thought you meant "many of them - reboots".
Please see Taha_mcp's response, in which case.
Yes! That's the case
The process sounds a bit daunting but I don't think it will be much of a challenge. Depending on your customizations, you'd probably only want to add some scripts that run on boot to automatically install all your customizations.
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Yes, but I still want to use this pendrives in live mode, not to full install Zorin on them. Is there any way of doing this?
Orrr if that is time consuming, a better and easier alternative is to make one usb with persistence and then you can clone that USB drive. That way, you only do the setup once, but you can copy it to as many USBs as you like.
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If that is the case, you can make a master USB with a customization. Then use Gnome Disks to create disk image. Then use whatever the USB writing software (Mintstick is my favourite) of your choice to copy this image as many USB keys you need.
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Great, thanks for help!
But next question is, I want to use this pendrive on many(!) laptops, there would be my script for diagnosing laptops (cpu name, stress test, ram size, harddrives, camera, keyboard test etc). Do linux write any other data to persistence when booting in new device? Or this is not a problem and only my settings will stay in persistence? Btw. sorry for my english, its poor
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If you mean that whether Linux(Zorin) will write some log data to the persistent storage, then I'd say probably yeah. However, I'm not 100% sure. But could you elaborate more on your issue? You are worried that private analytical data on one computer could be potentially viewed on another computer?
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No, that's not a problem. In my job, I need to diagnose almost 100 laptops every day, I'm curious if there won't be any errors if that many various laptops write something on this USB key persistent memory.
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Another question.
Are those laptops are identical?
Bland new?
Or are you trying to salvage a troop of used laptops for charity?
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Not identical, various brand, used and new. My company is computer repair store
I'm not really sure. But I'd say try it. Create a persistent USB with your settings and then also install and App that you can use to see if anything has been written on the disk or not. I think an App that uses RSYNC will suit your needs. So with an app like timeshift, you can see if it writes anything to the USB. With timeshift, you can make a scan of the whole USB drive and then after you ran your software, you can use it to see what files have changed.
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What if persistent get full?
Okay one option to be 100% safe and sure is to set up amnesia on the Live system. Amnesia make it so that when the PC restarts, it WILL revert back everything. So doesn't matter what files get added or removed, on a reboot, your USB will be clean and new. As if nothing had happened on it before.
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I'd say this is your best option. But I don't remember what the software was actually called. Other people have to help me a bit with this.
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Live USB does this anyway- removing the need for persistence, which the user wants persistence to prevent a Clean USB on each reboot.
Yes, log files would be saved and if you are moving across many laptops, those logs (and errors) will increase.
If you are doing as many as 100 computers in a day, that would be a non-trivial amount. You may want a larger USB, 64gigs at minimum.
That being said, the LiveUSB boot of Zorin OS is a little bit different than a fully installed Zorin OS. The Live USB uses Safe Graphics and set parameters for drivers to ensure it should work across a large variety of machines.
While this is beneficial to you, these drivers are often more generic and lacking in performance as seen from a full install with optimal drivers.
This should actually help you, though, as it means you have a better chance of being able to successfully boot multiple devices with the same USB drive.
You can also clear out system logs prior to powering down and ejecting the USB drive.
I find Zorin to be a great operating system that delivers some of the best performance around. It is a distro that is very well supported across a large variety of machines, too.
However, in your case, performance through the bottleneck of a USB port is less of a priority. You want a Lightweight but high level kernel (at a bare minimum, above 5.6) system.
There are distros that are sold preinstalled as a USB drive that are optimized to plug n play on any computer. But you may consider making yours with Xubuntu 20.04. While not quite as good as Zorin OS (in my estimation), it would be higher kernel than Zorin OS 15.3 Lite while retaining a lighter weight desktop.
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Maybe there is a way to do any script that will delete everything from persistent (but not my settings) on every boot?
Why xubuntu would be better for this type of operations? What advantages gives higher kernel? Im newbie in linux
Here is a handy utility to flash multiple USB sticks at the same time.
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Yes, a script can be made to do just that.
You can modify one like this to cover the age of the log file you want removed:
#!/bin/bash\
# Usage: cleanup_old_logs <folder> <days>
# Removes all log files in the directory older than a certain number of days
FOLDER=$1
N_DAYS=$2
# Validate
if [ "$FOLDER" == "" ] || [ "$N_DAYS" == "" ]
then
echo "Usage: $0 folder number_of_days"
exit 1
fi
if [ ! -d "$FOLDER" ]
then
echo "$FOLDER is not a directory"
exit 2
fi
# Remove
echo "Deleting files in $FOLDER older than $N_DAYS days"
find $FOLDER/* -mtime +$N_DAYS -exec rm {} \;
Xubuntu 20.04 carries the current mainstream kernel that is higher than Zorin OS 15.3 Lite.
Xubuntu - because of the Lighter XFCE desktop.
Higher Kernel - Because it provides better support across a variety of new and old hardware.
Zorin OS16 is currently working toward Final Release and the Lightweight XFCE destkop of Zorin Lite is not yet ready for release - otherwise, I would recommend it.
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It sounds a bit of a drastic measures but I think it is also possible not to create a log file to start with.
I disabled a log file on our Raspberry Pi printserver to protect the microSD card from wearing out.
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