this is my first post, I feel like this is an issue nobody else has had before but I'm probably wrong.
I created a persistent live bootable USB from windows using Rufus 3.9. I want to install chrome as well as firefox and use apt-get update and apt-get upgrade while keeping the USB persistent. I think this is only possible if I do a complete install of Ubuntu, but I want to keep all of my files on the computer and only install Ubuntu on the USB drive. The USB is 16 GB and I made my persistent storage 8 GB in Rufus. Rufus makes 2 partitions, one for the EFI boot (I think) and the other is a casper-rw. If you're going to point me to a link, please direct me where to look as I have done some of my own research and nothing seems to address my specific case. I hope I'm wrong, but I've tried and nothing seems to look or be the way that my machine is. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. When I run the "Install Ubuntu 19.10" thing on the desktop, there is no "Try Ubuntu" option. I get through the options and then go to the partitions window and that's where I have trouble. My computer is unable to connect to wifi because I think that is an extra feature that comes with the install, so my apt-get requests fail. I want to make sure that none of my computer's files are erased, so I took out the storage from the computer. I tried to unmount the persistent storage using GPartEd, and doing this allowed me to make a new partition table in the last section of the installer GUI, although any changes I made were deleted since there is no longer any persistence. Then I tried installing and got an endless supply of SQUASHFS errors. I am trying to install on a 2010 macbook pro that basically can't be moved when it is powered on, I'm not sure of the cause.
This is for a homework assignment, and I have limited experience in Linux. I've essentially taken an intro to linux course, but other than that I have no real experience with the OS. The teacher says he has a solution key, so if I can't figure this out, I'll update my post with his answer.