Maximum PC

Quick question: I want to install ubuntu on my portable hard drive. Would i be able to go over to a buddy's house and plug it into usb and boot from that drive and have it all intact or would any different hardware we had cause it not to function. I'm not talking like a live cd i mean fully installing it on the external. Also would that alter his boot loader at all? I'm not sure the answers i found on google pertain to my specific situation so i want to find out before i wind up altering his pc or anything like that.

First google result, how does that not apply?

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/installing ... ard-drive/

Thank you for replying. Like i said I have no doubt that i can install it onto the usb drive. I'm sorry if i was unclear. I can do all that. My question was about then taking this usb drive and using it on any computer i want with varying hardware. This article doesn't really say. To expand if i have: e6600, 2gb ddr2, 250gb hdd and gts8800 can i use it on that machine AND his that may have : i5 870, 4gb ddr3, 60 gb ssd and whatever the fastest vid card out today is. That's what i want to know. And before i just give it a shot and end up somehow causing problems with his pc (like altering his boot loader) i'd like to know. Once again sorry if my original post was unclear.

udev should be able to handle the changes...just don't go installing the nvidia driver

YMMV

As long as the computer can boot to an external device it will work.

I do that with a USB drive using the USB stick installing software.
It allows you to create a Persistence area for saving changes.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal- ... -as-1-2-3/
I have used it on many different laptops and when the laptop is Unity capable, it automatically boots into it.
If not it reverts back to the standard Ubuntu Desktop.