how can I boot from a USB stick?

I'm not sure if this should go under hardware or linux, but I'm hoping users in this forum will have some relevant experience. I have a new Acer Aspire One, 10", with XP installed. I want to dual boot Ubuntu, and have tried various ways of creating a bootable USB stick. The USB creating seems to go ok, because if I plug it into another laptop, it will boot from the USB stick. On the Acer, I have set "USB FDD" and "USB HDD" at positions 1 and 2 in the boot list under BIOS. But although booting takes longer with the USB stick in, it still boots straight into XP. The USB stick is a Kingston 8GB DataTraveler, in case that's relevant.

I've tried using unetbootin and installing from the hard drive, but I need to resize the big windows partition, and ubuntu install can't do that if the iso image is on that partition.

This must be possible. Can someone please advise? (I don't know anything about XP, have never used Windows before, but I'd like to keep it on the Acer for video conferencing using Skype)

Many thanks.

 

Press F12 while booting and then select the option to run your Linux distro "live" from the pen, I'd suggest. Most (probably all?) will then offer you a dual boot setup during the bit where you pick partitioning. This is step 5 or 6 of 7 for a typical Ubuntu, I think.

I'm running Crunchbang Ubuntu now, btw - seems great for a Netbook. I'd advise avoiding Ubunutu Netbook Remix.Linux4One has a good name, bt avoid the "Light" version, it's still noticeably beta-ish. Kuki is another possibility, but I think its less stable than Crunch.

 

Thanks, but F12 during boot appears to do nothing. I get a message "press <F2> to enter Setup". If I do this, I enter BIOS setup, and can alter the order of devices under boot, but no order I have tried allows me to boot from the USB stick.

 

if you only want Skype you can run it on the LINPUS software , only thing I noticed boot clean with no usb devices or else the camera does not always work

I am busy installing linux4one will let you know if better....

i see Crunch would be the best accoring to the post....

 

can I get skype with video+sound under linpus, on the 10" (ie the model which doesn't come with linpus pre-installed)? If so, I could forget about windows altogether but I still need to be able to boot from a USB stick to install linpus or any flavour of ubuntu in the first place. and I don't understand why I can't.