Tell me your favourite rescue USB image and why!

Also rescue tips and tricks as that’s always interesting.

I have been using a Debian installer USB as I had it to hand (DVD image IIRC) but if I boot into a shell without mounting another root FS the number of utilities is quite limited (just busybox basics). For example just now I wanted gzip but it only had gunzip…

I feel like a shell started from the installer USB should have access to a lot more utilities because the files are there on the disk!

Does anyone know a way to set up a kind of USB like the debian installer where you can install packages from the installer into the live environment?

  • @[email protected]English
    4•2 years ago

    I use a Puppy Linux derivative - QuickPup64 to be exact. What sets this apart from other Puppies is that QuickPup is updated regularly and has a recent kernel, with the biggest advantage being that QuickPup is compatible with almost all the popular Linux package formats out there.

    Wider package support. Aside from PET, Debian (DEB), Red Hat (RPM), Slackware (TXZ, TGZ), and Arch Linux packages (PKG.TXZ).
It also accepts the following packages (natively installed, no more package conversion needed. This allows to utilize almost all available linux packages):
->Slitaz (*.tazpkg)
->Tiny Core (*.tcz,*.tce,*.tcel,*.tcem)
->Pardus (*.pisi)
->Alpine Linux (*.apk)
->Slax (*.sb)
->OpenWRT (*.ipk)
->0linux (*.spack)
->Void linux (*.xbps)
->Damn Small Linux (*.dsl)
->Puppyrus (*.pfs)
->Nutyx (*.cards.tar.xz)
->Solus (*.eopkg)
->Stampede (*.slp)
->Porteus (*.xzm,*.lzm)
->Gentoo precompiled package (*.xpak)
->Paldo Linux
->Venom Linux (*.spkg.txz)

    I also have to say that Puppy is fast - it’s designed to be run off USB and work on older systems with limited resources, so this thing absolutely flies, compared to a regular distro.