Introduction

It can be a pain to correctly install GNU radio with the appropriate hardware drivers on a Windows or Mac OSX computer. Luckily, there is an alternative. Arguably, the fastest and easiest way to use GNU radio on any PC is to use a bootable USB stick with the GNU Radio Live SDR Environment (liveSDR image). The idea is that instead of permanently installing GNU Radio (as well as the supporting drivers and third party software) on a specific computer, you simply boot it from a portable USB flash drive, which contains Ubuntu Linux and all the necessary SDR software pre-installed. You can then run GNU Radio on any computer, so long as you can boot it from the USB flash device.

Below are the steps for creating a bootable USB stick with the GNU Radio Live SDR Environment.

Instructions

1. Start with a USB flash drive with at least 8 GB of memory. Not all flash drives are created equal. From what I've read (on the Internet), some models are actually "better" for BIOS booting compatibility than others. The basic rule of thumb is "you get what you pay for". So generally, you want to start with a good quality USB. Personally, however, I've had good luck with inexpensive USB sticks. For more information on this, look up "Recommended USB Linux flash drives".
2. Format the drive with the FAT32 file system. You can do this using Windows or MAC. This is a simple step and there are many tutorials out there for doing this. Look up "how to format FAT32", and follow the instructions.
3. Download to your desktop the latest current stable release of The GNU Radio Live SDR Environment. This is an ISO image file. At the time of this writing, the latest release was named: ubuntu-14.04.3-desktop-amd64-gnuradio-3.7.9.iso. However, depending on when you read this, your version will most likely be updated.
4. If using Windows, download the latest version of Universal USB Installer (UUI). You can download it from here. Note: there are tons of software packages out there to create live bootable USB drives out there. I found UUI to to be the best "first try" software package for this task.
   • After downloading and installing UUI, use it to install the The GNU Radio Live SDR Environment ISO image to your USB flash drive. UUI will ask you to select a .iso file. Select ISO image you downloaded to your desktop in the previous step. For convenience, you can also choose 1000 to 2000 MB of persistant file size. Persistence is the space on your USB drive that stores information, so that that information is still there after a reboot. Without persistance, every file you save on the USB drive is wiped clean after a reboot.
5. If using MAC OSX, you can use Unetbootin to create your live bootable USB drive. In my experience, Unetbootin works OK, but unfortunately creates USB drives that do not boot on some computers (I don't know why). So, if possible, go with UUI and Windows over Unetbootin and Mac OSX.
6. You are ready to boot! Restart your computer and boot from the USB drive. For many PC's this involves pressing F12 when you first turn it on (for my Acer laptop, I press F12 when I fist see the Acer logo after a restart). For Mac this generally involves restarting the computer and pressing the option key upon hearing the startup chime. If you are having trouble booting from the USB, you may need to change your BIOS settings.
7. If all worked well, you will be running Ubuntu. There will be an icon for GNU radio right on the desktop waiting fo you!
8. What if there is a problem and the USB just won't boot (like it freezes at the startup)? In this case, I suggest using Rufus to create your bootable USB drive (instead of UUI or Unetbootin). Rufus works excellent. The only problem with Rufus is that it does not have an option for persistence (so you will not be able to save your work on the bootable USB). Good luck!