what ought to be a simple task has turned into a huge headache.

the idea of a cool linux tablet being postponed, i thought i'd maybe update 
an old acer aspire one netbook i had in a closet. it was last booted, to 
kubuntu running a 2.6 kernel and kde-3.5.10, sometime in 2010. in that it 
has a 1.6 mHz chip and a gig of memory on a 120-gig drive, it seemed a 
good machine for a Q4OS experiment. (the experiment part being whether i 
can keep my kde settings -- i have never enjoyed reconfiguring.)

so i d/led the .iso for the current stable Q4OS, no problem. it's getting 
it onto a USB stick that's killing me.

reason is, when i insert the USB drive, it automounts and refuses to 
unmount, and one apparently cannot make a bootable disk onto a mounted 
drive.

i've tried a couple of programs in hope of burning the bootable stick -- 
the ubuntu startup disk creator and something called unetbootin. they both 
blow up, apparently because the stick is mounted. the little icon for the 
usb stick that appears at the top left of my monitor has the green line 
saying it's mounted. i right click and click "unmount" and either nothing 
happens or the green line disappears only to reappear soon thereafter. and 
if i try to umount it, i'm told it's busy.

in my younger days one or more pieces of equipment would by now have flown 
across the room and smashed into the far wall, but i'm older and calmer 
now. so it is merely driving me insane. there's got to be a way to get the 
image onto the usb drive and make it bootable, but i'm damned if i can 
find it, with automount confounding me at every turn.

(i'm not interested in turning off automount forever -- i'm a photographer 
and not having to manually mount sd cards is a wonderful thing.)

anybody here have any ideas?
-- 
dep

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