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Introduction
USB is an abbreviation for Universal Serial Bus. USB is an industry standard type of port for connecting peripherals to your computer. A USB device can be used as soon as it is connected, without having to reboot the computer. USB was developed in the mid-1990s.
Mounting devices
The mount command makes a directory accessible by attaching a root directory of one file system to another directory, which makes all the file systems usable as if they were subdirectories of the file system they are attached to. USB drives should be automatically mounted, with an icon appearing on the desktop.
See Mount/USB for more information on mounting USB drives.
Renaming USB Drives
Sometimes you may want to rename a USB drive, usually for the purpose of adding clarity to identifying which drive is which. You may also choose to change the name of your USB drive for aesthetic reasons, such as controlling what appears on your desktop.
See Renaming USB drives for information on how to do so.
Actions on Plugging in
Often, you may want to automate things when connecting a USB drive (USB Stick, external USB harddisk) to your computer. Typical use cases are:
- you want to copy images from a flash drive to your photo collection, delete them on the usb drive, and show them automatically
- you connect a USB harddisk to the computer and the computer should backup some data to it
- you connect an encrypted usb store and want the system to mount the encrypted harddisk
This used to be done with hotplug but in later linux distros is done using udev and module-init-tools.
What you need to do is setup a script that is triggered when the device is plugged in.
See Have something happen when you plug in a USB device for more information.
USB Modems
A USB modem basically works by converting between a digital data stream used by the computer, and an audio stream going over the phone line to another modem at the other end of the connection.
See Using a USB modem for more information.
Compatible Hardware
Ubuntu is compatible with several different USB hardware devices such as printers, mice, keyboards, scanners and printers.
See Hardware Supported by Ubuntu for more information.
External Links
Universal_Serial_Bus - Wikipedia article on USB.
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/devices.php - Linux USB devices.
http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-on-usb-bar-p2 - Install a persistent Ubuntu on a USB disk.