Live USB – Remove Welcome Screen from Live USB on Ubuntu 10.10

I'm not really sure what you want, but if you want it to behave this way you should install Ubuntu on the usb disk rather than installing the Live-CD on it.

I wouldn't do it the way you have, but it kinda depends what you want to use the USB key for. If you want to use it to do installs on computers then the way you set up the key is right. If you want to use it as a standard desktop install, that you can use on any random (or even just a few specific) machines then use this method instead:-

For this you will need:

• 1xUSB key onto which you will install Ubuntu
• 2xCDR or DVD or USB key onto which you will put the installer
• 1xComputer which is capable of booting off the above device

Steps to install:

• Download the ISO and burn it to a CD or DVD, or use USB startup disk creator (or unetbootin) to make an 'install USB key'
• Insert the above media into a computer and boot from it
• Choose 'Install Ubuntu' from the menu
• Once booted to the installer, insert the USB key you want to install Ubuntu "persistent" onto
• During the installer, when you get to partitioning, ensure you select the USB key inserted, to install Ubuntu onto.
  • Meaning, don't mistakenly install Ubuntu onto the internal hard disk on the computer
• At the end of the install you need to tell the installer to put GRUB onto your USB key, and not to overwrite the bootloader on the hard disk (or indeed the USB stick you installed from - I have made that mistake!)
• Once the install is done, you can shutdown, pull out all the keys and optical disks, and take that new key to any machine and boot from it.

Advantages to this method

• It's a full desktop install that you can add packages to, remove packages from and generally fully customise as you would any install
• You can enable encryption of the home directory during install so that if you lose the key you don't have to worry about losing your data

Disadvantages to this method

• It's not as straightforward as making a persistent key, but it's no more difficult than a standard Ubuntu install
• A full install on a usb flash key will cause more write cycles, and thus more wear and tear on the flash drive's memory, potentially causing it to fail much sooner