USB boot has been possible since the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B (v1.2), but it has only become really worthwhile with the Pi 4. Here is some information, tips, tricks and opinions explaining why and how.

Early versions of the Raspberry Pi could only boot from SD cards, but newer ones can boot from any USB device, like an external drive or USB stick. Here's how.

Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distributions, and it's based on Debian, same as Raspberry Pi OS, so you'd think it would be easy. It's not.

Raspberry Pi Foundation is almost ready to deliver a fix for Raspberry Pi 4's lack of support for USB mass storage boot.

Explore the new Raspberry Pi boot menu, a game-changer for device flexibility, allowing easy boot from USB, NVMe, and network sources.

What you need to do to get Ubuntu 14.10 with the LXDE desktop up and running on the Raspberry Pi 2.

Historically, booting a Raspberry Pi required an SD card. However, if you follow [tynick’s] instructions, you can get a Pi 4 to boot from the USB port. Combine it with a small solid state disk ...

You can now boot the Raspberry Pi 3 from just about anything. The documentation for these new boot modes goes over the process of how to put an image on a USB thumb drive.

1. What to Do if Your Raspberry Pi 5 Won't Boot As the fifth full generation of Raspberry Pi boards, the Pi 5 is a little more reliable than earlier models.