bootable USB flash memory sticks for installation

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>

| As far as I can make out, there are several schemes for making a bootable 
| USB stick from a .iso, and I don't understand why.

This page is useful for Fedora:
  <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB>

It contains this warning:

    Ubuntu and derivative Linux distributions have a usb-creator
    program similar to Live USB Creator. This does not work with
    Fedora ISO images, it silently rejects them. usb-creator requires
    the ISO to have a Debian layout, with a /.disk/info file and a
    casper directory. Do not attempt to use this utility to write a
    Fedora ISO image.

    The livecd-iso-to-disk script is not meant to be run from a
    non-Fedora system. Even if it happens to run and write a stick
    apparently successfully from some other distribution, the stick
    may well fail to boot. Use of livecd-iso-to-disk on any
    distribution other than Fedora is unsupported and not expected to
    work: please use an alternative method described above.

This implies that the task is a bit tricky.

Also (earlier):
    With current Fedora releases you can also write the non-live Fedora
    installation images (the DVD and network installation images) to a USB
    stick, which many users find more convenient and faster than writing
    to an actual optical disc. 
Why would this not have always been the case?  They were bootable, so
why could they not be turned into USB sticks?
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