The wiki itself has errors? Great. Well I'll keep in mind what you've said here once I get the chance to read the wiki.

The reason why I made the USB drive have an MBR is so that I'd be able to boot into Linux made from the Live Kit using CSM mode, and then once there, I could install GRUB onto the EFI partition, and then change the MBR to a GPT (which would probably require formatting a new drive and then just copying the partitions onto it), so that I could henceforth boot in UEFI mode.

But I couldn't install GRUB while I was booted into the Live Kit one (maybe because it's live mode, though the default Mint live ISO has GRUB, so who knows?). So what I might be able to do is install GRUB onto the USB EFI partition while booted into the Linux on my HD, and even though it would put my HD Linux and Windows on the list, it could also put the Live Kit Linux on the list (if I first update GRUB while booted into my HD with the USB stick plugged in), so that it will then hopefully be possible to boot into it after that. Then once inside I could just update GRUB in such a way as to remove the reference to my HD Linux (I hope there's a way to do that, or maybe I'd have to do it on another computer which doesn't have Linux installed).

I don't see why Cubic wouldn't be able to modify a Live Kit ISO, because it can modify Linux ISO files in general, including the Mint default ISO. But I don't know.

Please stop suggesting a persistent installation, because it's a moot point, UNLESS you can think of a way to do it such that:

- It's read-only, so as to NOT actually be persistent at all, even though it's installed (to prevent both reconfiguration and wear-and-tear).

- It runs as fast or nearly as fast as live mode does on a USB (and with all of the supposedly ridiculously mis-configured problems in my BIOS - though I doubt that's true, and I've looked at the settings myself - I don't have the slightest clue how I'd go about fixing all of that, but it's just one more hurdle in an endless stream of hurdles!).

- It's able to run in RAM mode (toram), and have the ability to perfectly self-duplicate for backups, even if it needs the aid of a program like GParted to do so.



rojimboo, I'm not necessarily saying that there's definitely nothing wrong, but I'm saying that once everything boots it all works fine and it's fast as hell, and I haven't the SLIGHTEST idea how to fix the boot time problem, and I'm not about to get sidetracked by months of work trying to figure out that puzzle, when I'm trying to work on THIS problem, which is a much higher priority for me. If I have to wait 4 minutes then I have to wait 4 minutes.

Orkhepaj, the 4-minute boot is for any Linux whether it's on the HD or USB (and the HD is a disk because I don't use solid state).

Darvond, yes it's 4 minutes, and using a traditional-style HD. So evidently they do take that long.

clarry, alright but what does that prove? I'm still not even entirely sure what aufs is, let alone why it would make a difference (again, I'm getting about 10000000 different ideas thrown at me, and for each one that I try, it takes me about a week to either make any progress or realize that I've hit a dead end from all possible angles, and in that time there have been about 10000 more suggestions, so forgive me if I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up with it all).

I tried installing Cubic to test it, using the instructions on this page:

https://ostechnix.com/how-to-create-a-custom-ubuntu-live-iso-image-with-cubic/

And here are the results:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:cubic-wizard/release



You are about to add the following PPA:
PPA for Cubic release branch

      ///////
     ///\ \
    /// \___\ Custom Ubuntu ISO Creator
    \ \ /////
     \ \/////
      \_____\

Cubic (Custom Ubuntu ISO Creator) is a GUI wizard to create a customized Ubuntu Live ISO image.

More info: https://launchpad.net/cubic
More info: [url=https://launchpad.net/~cubic-wizard/+archive/ubuntu/release]https://launchpad.net/~cubic-wizard/+archive/ubuntu/release[/url]
Press Enter to continue or Ctrl+C to cancel

Executing: /tmp/apt-key-gpghome.rYBR4dOdeO/gpg.1.sh --keyserver hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com:443 --recv-keys B7579F80E494ED3406A59DF9081525E2B4F1283B
gpg: key 081525E2B4F1283B: public key "Launchpad PPA for PJ Singh" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1



sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys B7579F80E494ED3406A59DF9081525E2B4F1283B



Executing: /tmp/apt-key-gpghome.mi6lsZSvUx/gpg.1.sh --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys B7579F80E494ED3406A59DF9081525E2B4F1283B
gpg: key 081525E2B4F1283B: "Launchpad PPA for PJ Singh" not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: unchanged: 1



sudo apt update



Ign:1 http://packages.linuxmint.com ulyana InRelease
Hit:2 http://packages.linuxmint.com ulyana Release
Hit:4 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu focal InRelease
Hit:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease
Get:6 http://ppa.launchpad.net/cubic-wizard/release/ubuntu focal InRelease [18.0 kB]
Hit:7 https://download.mono-project.com/repo/ubuntu stable-focal InRelease
Hit:8 https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian focal InRelease
Get:9 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease [109 kB]
Get:10 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease [114 kB]
Hit:11 http://ppa.launchpad.net/gezakovacs/ppa/ubuntu focal InRelease
Hit:12 http://ppa.launchpad.net/pjbroad/ppa/ubuntu focal InRelease
Get:13 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease [101 kB]
Get:14 http://ppa.launchpad.net/cubic-wizard/release/ubuntu focal/main i386 Packages [728 B]
Get:15 http://ppa.launchpad.net/cubic-wizard/release/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages [728 B]
Get:16 http://ppa.launchpad.net/cubic-wizard/release/ubuntu focal/main Translation-en [460 B]
Fetched 344 kB in 2s (161 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
20 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-i386/Packages' as repository 'https://download.mono-project.com/repo/ubuntu stable-focal InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'i386'
W: Target Packages (contrib/binary-amd64/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target Packages (contrib/binary-all/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target Translations (contrib/i18n/Translation-en_US) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target Translations (contrib/i18n/Translation-en) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target DEP-11 (contrib/dep11/Components-amd64.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target DEP-11 (contrib/dep11/Components-all.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target Packages (contrib/binary-amd64/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target Packages (contrib/binary-all/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target Translations (contrib/i18n/Translation-en_US) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target Translations (contrib/i18n/Translation-en) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target DEP-11 (contrib/dep11/Components-amd64.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9
W: Target DEP-11 (contrib/dep11/Components-all.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:8 and /etc/apt/sources.list:9



sudo apt install cubic



Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
cubic : Depends: systemd-container (>= 237)
systemd : Depends: libsystemd0 (= 245.4-4ubuntu3.2) but 245.4-4ubuntu3.3 is to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.



After installing it, I couldn't find a shortcut or find it when I search, and man, whatis and whereis all act like cubic doesn't exist.

Also, these lines with the "list:8" and "list:9" remind me of errors that I always get when I run the Update Manager and install new updates.

I kinda skipped most of the points, because there were quite a few. Yet I don't think they were that relevant anymore, and enough had been said. Here are some of the relevant ones:

I'm not sure you realise that wear and tear will occur regardless on the live iso. Live iso doesn't make the drive read only, there will still be a bunch written and read. It's just at shutdown, all those written things are lost for the next boot. Non-mechanical drives fare much better anyways with wear and tear as there are no moving parts, so I'm not sure where you get your estimates from for a few months lifetimes for a USB key or by extension, SSDs...

And all I'm saying there should be a way to make a persistent live usb read-only where relevant, or just setup the security in such a way that a normal user can't install anything (simply not give them sudo priviledges) or change anything major. So it's definitely worth considering if you're adamant about having cushy firefox custom settings for users in a live iso that apparently can't be done in CLI...


It took me 30seconds to google two solutions for you based on reading the error messages.

GUI:
System settings >> Software and Updates >> Other Software and removing each duplicate entry from the list.
CLI:
In your /etc/apt/sources.list, you have duplicate components. Edit and remove duplicate lines.

Reboot and rerun sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade and see what happens this time.

I think the first error message is about 32-bit architecture and the repo being 64-bit. I would hazard a guess you are running in 32-bit architecture Ubuntu for some reason. Check with 'uname -m'. Alternatively edit the /etc/apt/sources.list and replace and add 'deb [arch=amd64]' instead of 'deb' in the offending line.

Do these errors stop you from upgrading all your packages? Or are they just warnings and sudo apt upgrade completes ok? Because your cubic install has a major systemd dependency issue, that should be fixed by upgrading the offending packages with their own dependencies...You need to sort out your linux install first, at a basic level.

Keep trying it with Cubic though, I think that's your most user-friendly option.

But honestly, if updating and upgrading normal packages is such a hurdle (on the most beginner-friendly distro haha), I suddenly have misgivings about you managing to do even the slightly trickier stuff...You might just have to go back to basics, bite the bullet, and find linux docs to understand the 101 stuff, for Ubuntu for example. I don't know how much experience you have with computers and PCs, or what kind of programming you do, or how tech savvy you are, but you might want to seriously consider taking some time to learn the basics first before deep diving head first into these complex things.

I applaud your efforts at extracting information from others on a vidya gaming forum that's not even Linux friendly and quite off-topic to boot (no pun intended) but really at some point you need to ask yourself - Is this the best way of doing things? and - Can I spend my time more effectively? Because it seems like your rig and linux install is quite a mess and that you're not really learning a lot.

First thing I would probably do, is to make a list of hard requirements for this project. Preferably from the point of view of the technical feasiblity of doing it as a live iso in either persistent or non-persistent mode, and figure out if all the requirements can be met with an existing tool that you are able to understand and use. And then go from there.

From what I understand, the live mode just writes into memory and doesn't save it anywhere on any drive, but pretends to do so - like if you make changes to a file or even delete a file, it just pretends that it doesn't exist, but obviously it didn't delete it, because it's still on the drive. So it's basically like using toram, except that it doesn't read everything into RAM during booting, and may keep reading more whenever it needs it. Isn't that right? So f it's not changing anything then how, and for that matter, why would it write anything to the drive?

And I think I need the users to be able to use sudo, because they need to be able to boot with toram occasionally, and then be able to copy everything from the USB drive onto a new one to make a clone of it in case they need backups (I'll provide specific instructions on how to do it, but it will need to be possible).

Thanks, I'll try that when I get the chance. It's just that this stuff has taken priority so everything else has a back seat until it's finished.

I know that my Linux and processor are both 64-bit, and uname -m says "x86_64". I'll check that file though.

They seem to upgrade fine, because afterwards it doesn't come back again requesting the same upgrades.

I wouldn't call it user-friendly at all. Live Kit is user-friendly, because all I have to do is use my OS as normal, get it into the exact state that I want it to be, and then run a script to make the ISO. Can Cubic do all that? No. You even admitted that it's going to be very difficult if not virtually impossible to configure some of the settings and stuff, not to mention that I would need to know all commands corresponding to every single thing that I want to do, if there even is a command for it. I swear, I can't imagine why any moron would create a utility that works in any way other than the way Live Kit and Ubuntu Imager work. They're extremely intuitive, and there's just no possible advantage to doing it this other, indirect way with a text-only interface. I mean really, what's the advantage of doing things the hard way when the same thing (and more) can be accomplished the easy way? But of course it's just my luck that the only program(s) that can work the easy and good way aren't compatible with UEFI! Is the whole world filled with masochists and imbeciles that want everything to be impossible, just to make it so that every avenue I attempt to follow forces me into dead ends that lead nowhere?!?!?!

In any case, I'll look into it anyway IF I can actually get it installed and working. If not then I don't know how I'll get UEFI to work. I may just have to leave the stupid thing to be only compatible with CSM. But regarding that, are there computers that aren't compatible with Legacy/BIOS/CSM? If so then how common are they, and if not then is there any large chance at all that it will happen in the future? I mean I wouldn't think that anyone would want to make a motherboard which is incompatible with it, because wouldn't that cause a HUGE amount of stuff to be unable to boot? Frankly, I don't see the point of why UEFI was ever invented. The old way worked fine and was MUCH simpler, so it seems like UEFI is just an enormous overcomplication with little or no advantage. Am I right?

First of all, I'm a very good and very experienced programmer, but I don't have much experience with Linux, simply because I'm new to it. I've spent time here and there, to an extent, just learning various things about it, but I've mainly been focusing on this specific project, because it's EXTREMELY important to me that I get it to work! It MUST work! And frankly, getting it compatible with Linux is just the final step in a very long list of very horrible steps that have all been incredibly arduous, and the whole thing has taken over a year of constant headaches, when it really should have taken maybe a month or two all together! But now I'm about 99% of the way there, so I hope you can see why I'm feeling a bit impatient and I just want the damned thing to FINALLY work!

I don't see a more time-effective way of trying to get this thing to work, unless there's an easier solution. Do you have one? I'm learning a lot in some ways, but then only a fraction of the things that I learn, or the ideas that I try, actually work (maybe 5% of them), but that's only because all of this stuff seems to be defective and not as advertised, and not doing what I would expect it to do (or what any reasonable person would have designed it to do, or would expect it to do based on the description of what all this stuff is and what it's supposed to do, but there are too many incompatibilities that aren't even obvious until one attempts everything from every angle only to finally realize that it can't be done!).

What do you think I've been doing? I've listed the things that I need, so I obviously have figured out what needs to be done, but just now how it needs to be done. The reason why I'm haphazardly trying every method imaginable is because in my experience, only a very small percentage of methods - usually only one of them, if even that - will actually work, but there's no way to know which one until I try everything (or at least everything that seems like it can feasibly have any chance of accomplishing all of the things that I want to do).

By the way, I checked /etc/apt/sources.list and it only seemed to have two lines which are not comments:

deb [arch=amd64] https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian focal contrib

That line is repeated twice, and there's nothing else. I remember once installing VirtualBox, not being able to get it to work and then installing it a different way, but why would that be the only thing in the file? So I guess that answers the other question - it already said deb [arch=amd64].

I just thought of another thing: how do I have it encrypt the Home folder while it's in a live ISO?

Yeah I guess it uses a virtual drive in RAM via tmpfs for the constant temporary files needed. It's actually quite interesting to read about how a live, non-persistent, non-swap, read-only linux install deals with this. I should check out my Arch ISO if it mounts a tmpfs. My point was that there's some IO activity on the USB regardless. And I'm not convinced of a few months lifetime of heavily using USBs and other solid state drives. Their big selling point vs mechanical drives was longevity and decreased vulnerability for failures.

Great. Another crazy requirement. Now you want them to be able to clone isos, and mount another usb drive and partition, and burn it on there? All from a live iso? Are you actually sure you need them to do such extensive work for whatever reason? What is that you actually want to provide them with? Some way to save files/documents? Because cloning a multi GB OS and burning it as backup with all that entails seems extreme, and you could probably achieve what you want in other simpler ways.

But how is this a low priority when you can't even do a simple update and upgrade of your packages and install necessary software to try and achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve for your project? Baffling to me at least. I mean, dude, you can't even install some package currently. Might wanna look into that ;)

THere will be a way to do almost everything you wanted, with Cubic, mostly with GUI. So yes, it's braindead user-friendly for the most part. For the few installed software custom settings, you might (shock horror on Linux) have to use the terminal and learn how to use a few commands. The rest (like installed Firefox custom settings) I imagine you could look into whether or not they're a hard requirement or figure out some workaround (use a generic user profile for Firefox that is logged into at startup or something or make and then copy some configuration files from your normal installation).

Anyways, you still haven't even tried it, and it appears you haven't really done any research by yourself on Cubic and read its documentation or guides, so maybe try that first.

Yes, depending on default BIOS settings on most Windows OEM laptops and desktops. Depending on when they were made. They weren't built in mind for supporting other OSes and legacy bios settings necessarily. They just wanted to set it up for Windows 10 UEFI, secure boot etc. so I find it unlikely without changing bios settings they would boot in legacy mode too. I was trying to remember if my recently bought mobo had been setup as UEFI only, or I changed it at the same time as disabling Secure Boot. Not sure, but I think I had to change it.

If I were you, I would start posting anywhere I could, specifying in great detail what is required, what has been tried so far, and what I think needs to be done to accomplish those requirements. In particular Unix stack exchange, but also reddit and distro-specific forums, githubs of the tools I think I will be using etc. I think I saw a very similar person asking a very similar thing as you on the Linux Mint forums, but the one guy tried helping was summarily dissuaded from doing so after an exchange. But I would definitely pursue this project in more appropriate venues, if you haven't done so already posting in a detailed manner.

And my suggestion to be more time-effective ties into how you're going about this whole thing. You put important things on low priority without realising how important they are to making things work (like updating/upgrading/installing packages on a very beginner-friendly distro, or severe performance issues on a brand new rig). And time-effective doesn't necessarily mean easier, if the more complicated method is the one that works. Then you have to put in the legwork, do alot of reading, and actually try out the tools and methods. Otherwise, you won't learn, and what's the point in that? Why waste so much time, and just go around failing, without learning anything? Take this advice with a pinch of salt, because everyone is guilty of preferring not doing this, but like the guy trying to help you on the Mint forums said, you need to start doing a lot more research by yourself and not expect to be handed the solution on a silver platter ready to execute by pressing a button.

Instead of 'haphazardly' trying out everything superficially, stick with a few and explore them further and in detail. I mean, there's been a lot of discussion on Cubic and UbuntuLiveCDCustomization utilities, but you haven't even tried them nor demonstrated you read about them...

I have been exploring things in detail. I explored Live Kit in about as much detail as a person can, but now I've run out of ideas for it. I checked out UbuntuLiveCDCustomization and it looked like a page that I've seen before - as far as I can tell, it's not even a utility but just some tutorial for how to do it yet another extremely complicated way with a bunch of commands that I didn't understand and would take me MONTHS to research enough to make sense of it - frankly it reminded me of the stuff that I saw about LFS, and Cubic looks easier than that, which is why I'm trying it now. Also, keep in mind that I'm not spending my whole life doing this, because I have other responsibilities as well (and I can only stand to work on something for so long, rather than just doing it all day every day). But frankly, if they can't make something that enables people to get this stuff to work within a day or two, that's WAY too convoluted and should be made MUCH easier to use! As I've said before (yet nobody seems to even acknowledge this point for some reason), why make things unnecessarily complicated? I understand them being complicated if they have to be, but this doesn't, as has already been proven by Live Kit, but I just wish it worked with UEFI - that's all.

Now, in regards to what I've done with Cubic:

I managed to install it onto a test partition onto which I installed Mint. Then I ran Cubic and created a folder for the project, and selected an ISO to use (it took a long time to load that for some reason, even though in the video I watched it happened almost instantly, but it did finally finish). Then it gave me a terminal, or some emulation thereof. I can do commands, but I tried ls and got nothing (I was in the ~ directory at the time). I went to / and tried ls again, and got some folders (the usual bin, boot, dev, etc.), but when I went into home, or media, or mnt, I can't get any results from ls. Not even home! I get results in etc and lib, but that's about it as far as I've checked. I don't even see any files in /! Not even a swap file, which would normally be there (actually I want to disable that, but I'm confused why it wouldn't be there by default, and afraid that it will only make it impossible to disable, since it doesn't exist, but then it may create one automatically without me specifying it, after I build the new ISO).

However, I was able to edit and save /etc/default/grub using sudo nano, and when I opened it again it kept the changes, so at least I know that I can make edits, but I can't even find a desktop, for God's sake! I can't find my Downloads folder or anything, because that should all be in home!

And VERY importantly, without anything in the media folder, how can I get to my other partitions so that I can pull in files that I need? Usually it's all mounted within /media! I did lsblk and saw that it found sda6 (where my main Mint installation is), so I tried this:

mkdir /test
sudo mount /dev/sda6 /test

And it just said:

mount: /test: special device /dev/sda6 does not exist.

And by the way, I tried to copy that with Ctrl-Shift-C, and it printed ^C, as though I had pressed Ctrl-C without the Shift, so evidently it won't even let me copy lines! I also tried to paste in a line and it thought I pressed Ctrl-V without the Shift. So I have to type every line manually, including this incredibly long key for installing Mono, and hope that I don't make a typo!

You're right, this is a very user-friendly program. But how can I mount a drive, copy in files that I need, copy and paste lines, get all of the directories which should have appeared there in the first place, etc.?

I'm not even 100% certain this thing has Internet access (I always have to manually install a driver for my WiFi adapter that I downloaded from GitHub). Does it just use the driver that I'm running right now in the Linux OS that I'm booted into while using Cubic, or do I have to install the driver into the terminal in Cubic directly before it will work? Actually, I tested installing something that I think it had to download to do so, which means that I may have just answered my own question about that, but I'm not absolutely certain.

In any case, you can see there are still a bunch of kinks to work out though.

Oh, and I don't know if I said this before, because I may have taken it for granted since Live Kit always seems to do it this way, but I don't want Ubiquity or any kind of Linux installer to be included, because I don't want it to be installable from the USB drive - it needs to just run only in live mode.

EDIT: In any case, I did manage to generate an ISO (though I just did it, so I haven't burned or tested booting it yet), but I kind of skipped through a lot of the steps, and of course I still have all of the problems that I described above.

Also, for some inexplicable reason, whenever I tell it to hide the recent files it always causes Cinnamon to crash and restart, and then it asks me for a password any time I plug in or eject a USB stick.

Alright, so the good news is:

I tested the ISO and it boots just fine! Actually, the weird thing is that if I burn it onto a USB stick it won't let me mount it or even properly eject it while I'm running in the HD Linux installation, but then when I rebooted, I was able to boot the USB stick even in UEFI mode, and even in RAM mode (so that I can use that for cloning), and it worked just fine! Then it actually let me mount it and see the files on the drive (I don't know why it didn't let me when booting from the HD), and there are actually 3 parttiions.

I also tried putting the ISO on my Ventoy USB drive and it boots there as well. However, even though it boots when I'm in UEFI mode, somehow it seems to automatically switch to CSM mode just as it starts booting (judging by the way the text looks).

The bad news is:

- I still don't know how to get a home folder or anything inside of it to appear in the Cubic terminal, and it acts like they just don't exist.

- I can't seem to mount my hard drive partitions (or probably other USB drives), which is essential, because I have specific files that I MUST put onto it (it's the entire purpose of it, really).

- I still have to figure out a way to get everything configured the way it needs to be, even if there's no obvious way to do it without a GUI (I can probably just uninstall the installer - Ubiquity - or even just delete the file on the desktop, but program configurations may be a bit of a pain).

- I can't seem to copy and paste between my running OS and the Cubic terminal, which doesn't seem to recognize copy or paste commands (and this could make typing in long hexadecimal keys very difficult!).

- There are a few other weird glitches, but they're not as big of a deal, because so far the previous ones that I listed are the big ones that I've found (and I think the Internet works on it, but if it doesn't then I should be able to install the WiFi driver once I'm able to mount the HD partitions).

So, I guess I'm making progress, but there's still a way to go. I REALLY need to be able to get it to mount drives and to show the home folder and any other folders which are supposed to be there but aren't for some reason. That's the really essential stuff in order for me to have any chance of getting the rest of it working.

The reason I'm suggesting you read Linux from Scratch (all of it) is that you clearly have no idea what you're doing, and keep coming up with yet more requirements/complications. (We're now pretty far from the original idea of making a cross platform GUI program, without access to some of the target platforms for building/testing.)

Linux from Scratch is a fairly comprehensive way of learning what makes a Linux distro work and how to build one.
That knowledge is the only way for you to solve all those weird requirements as they come up.
And if you were able to demonstrate having done adequate research, the members of those Linux forums where you really ought to be asking these questions, would be far more inclined to help you.
That they don't/can't help you, should tell you something right there. Seriously.

I still think my suggestion of using a Raspberry Pi Zero to run whatever program you've written is your easiest way to success. They're cheap, even with the needed adapters to get full size HDMI and USB, and you just plug in your monitor and keyboard.
And best of all, the community around the Raspberrys is beginner friendly and helpful, even (or perhaps particularly) when those asking know next to nothing about how computers work.
Of course, that's only feasible if your program doesn't need direct access to your PCs (or Macs) hard drive. But since you've made no mention of how to handle Bitlocker if your clients are running Win 10 Pro, I've assumed that's not needed.

It is an extreme and crazy requirement for the users to be able to do this. I don't know their technical competencies, but consider for a minute, that you yourself, the creator of this portable linux project can't get it to work properly and are having great difficulties. And you expect the users to not only change individual varying bios settings AND clone drives with some utility or use the terminal to copy all the files, by first mounting a an unknown drive and partition that is different for each system, and then attempt to make it bootable with a script that only works on the linux-live iso? Have you really thought this through? Aren't you expecting a *tad* much from the end-user? I mean, doing a backup of files and docs is easy if there's a writable drive mounted, but making a clone of a live custom iso where you need at least a formatted and partitioned external drive to burn the iso on seems like asking too much...And I at least did not realise this was a hard requirement for you to have the users do such things.

As evidenced by this process, you need to be able to install packages now, not 'after', but if you're happy with failed installations then have at it haha.

Your list didn't seem too long about requiring specific software configurations, so I'm sure you could find them out one by one.

Pick one: a) the developer abandoned the project due to lack of funds, motivation, or user interest b) there was no demand for such a utility as it can be accomplished in other ways c) nobody bothered to fork it and fix it due to having no incentive to do so. I doubt the dev got even a cent for his/her work (except for that one guy who buys them a coffee through Patreon) and here you are demanding something that Microsoft would charge a fortune for, for it to have additional functionality or support for free. Bit unreasonable don't you think?

I'd look into LFS if I had time, but it's really an extremely roundabout way to try to get to where I'm going, and as I said, I'm 99% of the way there already, and I don't need distractions by overcomplicating stuff which is indirectly relevant but not ultimately what I'll be using (unless I absolutely can't get anything else to work and I have to resort to LFS).

I don't see how Raspberry Pi is cheap considering that it's about triple the price of the USB sticks that I'm using, and I may have to give away a bunch of them. Also, the people who would be using it have no idea what it is or how to use it (I don't really even know how to use it, so that would be yet another thing to have to learn, and I still don't see the benefit over a USB stick), and then I'd have to expect people to know how to hook these up to their monitors, etc. It's really just not an option.

It's not asking too much of them considering the fact that I will give very specific instructions of exactly how to do these things. First of all, changing BIOS settings really isn't hard to do, nor is cloning a drive if there's an easy way to do it, which in this case there is. The alternative is that I have to keep supplying backup drives myself. You've heard the one about teaching a man to fish, right? Well the thing is, with detailed and precise instructions, anyone with half a brain could do it! The reason that I'm having so much trouble with the stuff that I'm doing is because nothing has specific step-by-step instructions of EXACTLY how to do EACH and EVERY thing with an explanation of what it does, how it does it and why, while also having it set up to do it in a simple way, rather than an incredibly overcomplicated and convoluted way (like LFS), which would take months if not years to understand. If it's a simple process to begin with then there's nothing wrong with detailed instructions, because even then they wouldn't be too long, since there's not much to do. I can clone a drive in about a minute plus however long it takes to copy the files!

I'll grant you that, except that like I said, I just installed Linux on a small test partition and then booted into that and installed and ran Cubic from there (which is what I was planning to do anyway) and it ran fine - problem solved. Now I just need to get it to do what I want.

Yeah, if that information is made publicly available. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. I haven't had time to search for it because I've been preoccupied with the rest of this stuff, but it's on my long list of things to do.

Alright fine, so the person who developed it didn't want to keep going and nobody else bothered to do it either - fine. I can understand that. What I can't understand is the idea that there was no demand for something that can be accomplished in "other" ways, but clearly not better ways, because it's much more limited and less intuitive to use Cubic than Live Kit. It's almost as though the developer of Cubic said to him/herself:

"You know what? This Live Kit thing is pretty cool, but it has certain limitations like a lack of UEFI compatibility, so I think I'll make my own alternative. However, I'm going to improve upon it by doing away with the simple concept of installing Linux, customizing it in a natural way and then compressing into an ISO, and instead "improve" it by replacing it with a different method that requires everything to be done through the terminal, rather than the way Live Kit does it, where you can use the terminal if you prefer, but you have the option to do things with the GUI. By getting rid of the GUI, this will have the huge "advantage" that you'll be forced to do things in a less intuitive way, even if they really should be done with a GUI. Want to customize icons and place them in spots on the desktop? Want to change the wallpaper? You can, but you won't be able to see how it looks until you build the ISO and boot it! Want to change settings in GUI programs that you could easily tweak if only you could actually run those programs? Well then you're going to have to hope to God that the developer will give you some information of how to do that by modifying configuration files, because otherwise you'll have to hack the damn program! And if you want to tweak a dozen programs like that then that just multiplies how much information you're going to have to try to hunt down, probably unsuccessfully in most cases. But hey, as long as it's theoretically customizable, even if in practice it's nearly impossible, then that's good enough. Why make something so intuitive that you can simply run Linux the normal way and then say, 'Build me an ISO of this - of everything I've got right here right now!' No, that would be stupid!"

Anyway, I just had to rant about that, because it's pissing me off that as always, the best program is the least compatible one and the worst one is the one that actually works (sort of), but I still can't get the home directory to appear and I can't mount partitions (see above post).

AND FOR THE 80000000TH TIME: Will someone, anyone, PLEASE clarify for me if there are computers that have NO compatibility with CSM/BIOS/Legacy, regardless how how the settings are configured, or is it just that they're not compatible when using the default settings??? Or is there any reasonable change that such machines will be made in the foreseeable future? This is one of the MOST important questions of all, but everyone seems to be ignoring it completely! The reason it's so important is because IF it turns out that all computers ARE compatible with CSM, provided that the settings are reconfigured, then it's really not necessary for me to make this compatible with UEFI at all, but on the other hand, IF it turns out that there are computers which are NOT compatible with CSM for ANY available configuration, then it's ESSENTIAL that I make it compatible with UEFI. So you see, the whole purpose of this thing rests on the answer to that question!!!

DAMN IT! I may have just found an answer to that:

https://www.techpowerup.com/238950/intel-to-remove-legacy-bios-support-from-motherboard-uefi-in-2020

How can they do this?! Don't they know that it will make so much stuff incompatible? I still can't find one single advantage to UEFI over CSM! It's like they just decided that they wanted to mess up everything so that it would be harder to use, less compatible, and often just wouldn't work at all, and they wanted to do it for no reason!!!

So much for one last question, eh?

And this is why for testing, I just stick to one live distro and only use others experimentally. At the end of the day, Linux is Linux so all that matters is what is preconfigured and packaged.

It's called sunsetting, kid. The discontinuation of Python 2 is going to make a lot of things incompatible too, but Fedora and others are following though with it. Nobody wants to keep chasing around bugs in a codebase everyone has moved on from.