[luau] thumb drive

[Hawaii Linux Institute]

Another trick that can make your life much easier after USB 2 became 
available--which indeed makes Linux potentially a much much more 
powerful desktop platform than Microsoft Windows, is that you can 
"temporarily" replace the home directory on the host machine with your 
own home directory.

I am sure many in this forum know how to do this, but just in case there 
are some newbies who are not aware of the power of Linux:

Suppose you have an extra IDE hard disk with /home installed in, e.g., 
the second partition, i.e., hda2.  You can convert it into a USB hard 
disk using a USB-IDE converter kit.  This now becomes your backup or 
even "movable" primary disk.

Any time you want to work with your own  /home directory (which contains 
your own data, bookmarks, cookies, mails, etc., as well as your own 
custom-configured programs such as Moz, OOo, etc., or even Microsoft 
Windows complete with Windows programs if you use Win4Lin), you can 
mount it onto the host machine using a simple command:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /home

The "home" directory on the host machine will temporarity disappear, 
replaced with the /home directory that you have on your USB disk.

If your /home directory is not installed in a separate partition, but as 
part of the root partition, then this becomes a two-step process:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /mnt

mount --bind /mnt/home /home

(The above procedure assumes that your root partition is the second 
partition.)