this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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Is there a way to run a KDE Plasma distro like Fedora entirely in RAM from a boot disk to watch HDR content? (lemm.ee)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by hakase@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.world
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I've been using Linux Mint exclusively for a year and a half now, and I've gotten pretty used to the ecosystem, but I don't want to have to wait another year for them to implement HDR support for video playback. I also don't want to go through the effort of fully swapping distros (don't have time to completely reorganize my workflow at the moment, etc.).

Does anyone have a recommendation for a distro that I could run in RAM from a USB stick with an up-to-date version of KDE Plasma or another DE when I want to watch HDR movies?

Or, if I'm overthinking this and there's another obvious, simpler solution, please feel free to let me know that as well.

Edit: I thought about running Alpine Linux in RAM, but I'd have to reinstall Plasma every time I rebooted since I'm pretty sure it doesn't come with a DE by default.

Edit 2: Thanks for all of the helpful comments everyone! For those asking, live USB are usually pretty slow and clunky in my experience when they run from the USB stick, and I wasn't sure if that would interfere with video playback.

I think I'm just going to try a KDE Neon live USB and see if I can get HDR video working that way, without trying to run it from RAM. Thanks again!

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[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Grab two USB drives, flash Aurora on USB 1, install it to USB 2. Now you have a persistent, portable OS. If the USB drives are USB 3.0, they won't be slow.

[–] ChojinDSL@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You know you can just install a distro to a usb stick like any other harddrive. Why the need to run it entirely in ram?

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@infosec.pub 1 points 2 days ago

The only things that come to mind are anonymity and performance on very old hardware.

[–] ray@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago

Fedora has a kernel parameter that makes it run in RAM. You just need to add rd.live.ram=1 to the kernel line in GRUB.

[–] Ashiette@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There are three solutions to this problem :

  1. Ditch Linux Mint and go distrohopping (though not recommended)
  2. Install Fedora in a VM then through it, install fedora persistent on a usb stick (easiest, but I don't know if fedora supports HDR)
  3. Put archlinux live on a usb then reformat the usb and install a bootable arch distribution on it. (Hardest, but most functional)
[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Install KDE on Mint and select it at login

[–] hakase@lemm.ee 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Since Mint 22 is based on Ubuntu 24.04, I'm pretty sure it only has access to KDE 5.7 in apt, not 6, so I still won't be able to use HDR.

[–] daemonhill@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Would this instruction work for you?

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

I was immediately thinking about Suse Studio, but that service has radically changed since I last used it back in 2009/2010

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

Could you use Kodi?

[–] isgleas@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 days ago

I am not sure if your usecase can be fulfilled with dristrobox, it may be worth to try

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 days ago

What you could do is set up a chroot jail and use debootstrap to create a bootstrap system. Then put the sources.list for Debian Sid and run apt install kde-plasma-desktop

Mount /proc and /dev in the chroot jail.

Then go to a text terminal (alt-f3) and stop your login manager service.

Chroot into your debian sid chroot and start the x server with start (I think)

These steps might not work but it's kind of a roadmap of how i would do it.