Portable Ubuntu for Windows is a small Ubuntu distribution that can run off of a flash drive as a Windows application.

Linux applications run through Portable Ubuntu have access to your Windows folders and files, and any applications installed or changes made to the Portable Ubuntu system are persistent.

Installing Portable Ubuntu requires that you download and extract it from Sourceforge.net (400MB-500MB, around 1GB-2GB when extracted), then follow the instructions below, dependent on your version of Windows:

Installing and Running Portable Ubuntu in Windows Vista or Windows 7:

Open your command prompt as an administrator by clicking on the Start menu (or hitting the Windows key), typing “cmd“, right-clicking on the “Command Prompt” option that appears and selecting “Run as Administrator“.

Switch to the folder you extracted Portable Ubuntu to, then type “run_portable_ubuntu” and hit the Enter key to launch the .bat script.

Portable Ubuntu will be decompressed and installed. If you get any prompts to “Unblock” the Linux applications, do so.

Installing and Running Portable Ubuntu in Windows XP:

Open your command prompt by clicking on the Start menu, choosing “Run…“, typing “cmd” and hitting the Enter key.

Switch to the folder you extracted Portable Ubuntu to, then type “run_portable_ubuntu” and hit the Enter key to launch the .bat script.

Portable Ubuntu will be decompressed and installed. If you get any prompts to “Unblock” the Linux applications, do so.

Using Portable Ubuntu

Once the installation finishes, a small menubar will appear on your Desktop. From this menubar’s entries (Applications, Places, System) you can do virtually anything you’d do on a real Ubuntu system (Linux applications will launch in a window seperate from the menubar).

To access your Windows files from Ubuntu, open a file browser (from the “Places” menu) and go to /mnt/C, /mnt/D, or whichever drive letter you need to access.

If you need access to the root user account for any reason, it’s default password is “123456“.

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