Bootable Linux USB Installation

[Gregory James]

Dear Image Community,

I am trying to install ImageJ on a bootable Linux USB stick. I have used the fantastic YUMI (Universal Mulitboot Installer) program from the pendrivelinux.com website to make a bootable version of Linux Mint with 4GB of memory allocated for writing files. I am not familiar with Linux and I find the installation instructions on the ImageJ website (perhaps) too simplistic, especially for a dummy like me!

I was wondering if somebody could kindly explain the Linux installation process in an understandable way. I would be particularly interested to hear from people who have successfully installed ImageJ on a bootable Linux USB stick. I have read the posts from January 2007 discussing a similar issue but I find them difficult to follow and I am still struggling to achieve my goal.

Thank you,

Greg.

--
ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html

[Mark Bentley]

Hi Greg,

I use ImageJ on Debian Linux, the distribution from which Mint and
Ubuntu are derived.

Often times tutorials for installing software on Linux feature building
the program from source code, and this (sometimes, maybe) has benefits
over using an already compiled and provided executable.  That said, I
use a provided executable whenever possible.  Note that an 'executable'
here refers to a file that Linux can run directly as a complete (perhaps
graphical) program, ie I'm not referring to aProgramInstaller.exe in the
Windows sense.

1) Often, a Linux executable file is provided along with a collection of
necessary support files.  If so, the executable is most likely found
within a directory containing these additional files.  You simply run
the program by executing the file from within that directory.  It's that
easy!  There is NO 'installation program.'
2) Often, the executable code requires no special administrative
permissions, so it may be executed by any user, and run from any
directory in your filesystem.  This is nice for live CD/USB environments.

Both 1 and 2 are the case with ImageJ!

So, to run ImageJ on Linux, simply download ImageJ for Linux from
http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/download.html, unzip the file in any directory
of choice, navigate into the created 'ImageJ' directory, and then
execute the file 'Image' directly.  Step by step...

Open a terminal window and navigate to the directory where you're going
to extract/'install' ImageJ.  I'm lazy so I'll just use my home folder.  
You may need to navigate to the 'persistent directory' on the liveUSB
(the 4GB space you allocated for storing files).  The name/location of
this directory varies, so I won't wager a guess at it's location.

$ cd

or

$ cd path/to/the/persistent/directory

Now unzip the file you downloaded (which I'm assuming is in your
Downloads folder), for 64-bit Linux it would currently look like this

$ unzip ~/Downloads/ij148-linux64.zip

Now navigate into the directory created by the unzip

$ cd ImageJ/

and execute the main program file, also called 'ImageJ'

$ ./ImageJ &

This should start ImageJ, and the & frees your terminal to execute the
next command, more or less.  You could also just close the terminal
window at this point.

"Wait, do I have to open a terminal/shell, navigate to the directory,
and type ./ImageJ & every time I wish to run Image!?"

No.

http://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/alacarte

good luck!

Mark Bentley

On 09/26/2014 04:56 AM, Gregory James wrote:

> Dear Image Community,
>
> I am trying to install ImageJ on a bootable Linux USB stick. I have used the fantastic YUMI (Universal Mulitboot Installer) program from the pendrivelinux.com website to make a bootable version of Linux Mint with 4GB of memory allocated for writing files. I am not familiar with Linux and I find the installation instructions on the ImageJ website (perhaps) too simplistic, especially for a dummy like me!
>
> I was wondering if somebody could kindly explain the Linux installation process in an understandable way. I would be particularly interested to hear from people who have successfully installed ImageJ on a bootable Linux USB stick. I have read the posts from January 2007 discussing a similar issue but I find them difficult to follow and I am still struggling to achieve my goal.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Greg.
>
> --
> ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html

--
ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html

[Gregory James]

Hi Mark,

I would like to thank you for your detailed reply to my post. Your explanations and instructions were great and you have solved my problem. I did have an issue with privileges but a simple 'sudo' command got round this. I hope people will find your reply useful for the future.

In the end it was quite straightforward. I understand Wayne's response of "It should be as simple as copying the ImageJ folder to the USB stick" but for some reason this didn't work for me. I had to do everything through the Linux command terminal, at least to begin with. After going through the terminal commands, the ImageJ icon has appeared in my bootable Linux environment and I can use the GUI from now on.

Thanks again to you both.

Greg.

--
ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html