Not only can you create a live USB stick of any distro you want, but you can also store data and save your settings between reboots, making it a real mobile OS on which you can install programs, make changes, and even update software on. It also hides all your data, so snoopers looking at your USB drive won't see anything you've saved onto it.

In addition, while you can boot directly from the drive as normal, each drive even comes with a portable version of VirtualBox on it, so you can also boot your mobile distro right from Windows. You don't even need to know how to use VirtualBox; it creates an .exe file on the drive that will take you directly into a virtualized session of your mobile distro (Though you can't save data from VirtualBox sessions, only from true live sessions).

LiLi Creates Versatile, Go-Anywhere Bootable Linux Thumb Drives

Just tried it and it works just as it says. Also the Virtualbox bit is a nice touch.

Perfect solution to be used as a live system on a stick for buggy internet cafe machines, even though the proprietor might not be happy sometimes. Plug in the stick and reboot the machine while holding ESC or F1 - depending on the hardware - to get into the bios. Not all machines will boot from a USB device, but you can simply reboot normally and ask to change machines

It's a perfect system for storing your pswrdos in your own browser on the stick, with no possibility of transfer to the machines native OS to be harvested by malware.

Another thing worth flagging up for your "comfort and safety" is PuTTY on a stick, or a version called Port-a-PuTTY. Either of which will allow you to log into a remote shell by IP or domain. Very useful if you are using commandline tools or applications like irssi with BitlBee, and for general hosting admin done the old-fashioned way

A word on USB sticks - they do not last forever - keep a backup

Perfect solution to be used as a live system on a stick for buggy internet cafe machines, even though the proprietor might not be happy sometimes. Plug in the stick and reboot the machine while holding ESC or F1 - depending on the hardware - to get into the bios. Not all machines will boot from a USB device, but you can simply reboot normally and ask to change machines

It's a perfect system for storing your pswrdos in your own browser on the stick, with no possibility of transfer to the machines native OS to be harvested by malware.

Another thing worth flagging up for your "comfort and safety" is PuTTY on a stick, or a version called Port-a-PuTTY. Either of which will allow you to log into a remote shell by IP or domain. Very useful if you are using commandline tools or applications like irssi with BitlBee, and for general hosting admin done the old-fashioned way

A word on USB sticks - they do not last forever - keep a backup

I'm curious about that. Unlike a DVD or CD they don't scratch. So how long do they last?

Is there any reason now to use a cd/dvd for installing or testing linux? USB should allow persistent storage and even multiple distros on one stick.

I'm curious about that. Unlike a DVD or CD they don't scratch. So how long do they last?

Is there any reason now to use a cd/dvd for installing or testing linux? USB should allow persistent storage and even multiple distros on one stick.

How long is a piece of string? Depends on usage and there has been reams written about the limitations on the number of writes they can take. Also depends on hardware quality and a certain amount of user luck. I have an old 1GB stick about ten years old and still in use most days, and others have failed after just a month. Whirly drives fail too, so the exhortation to backup your stuff is valid in all cases and comes from some painful recovery processes using command line tools like dd For backups rsync is your friend, maybe invoked by a cron job. Everyone has their favourite, there are gui tools as well.

As an aside, I recommend people to join one or more of the various irc channels for linux in it's various flavours. irc.freenode.net is a good place to start with. There are irc channels for most distros.