I haven't installed Linux onto a USB FLASH drive, but I know that there are people out there who have.  You can go to that distro's forum and ask how to do this.

Have you tried Puppy Linux or antiX Linux?  Puppy Linux is user-friendly and very lightweight - not much more than 100MB.  The full installation of antiX Linux would take up something like 430 MB on the USB drive, but its speed is competitive with Puppy Linux.  antiX Linux really blows away Puppy Linux in the software repository.

I don't like Ubuntu because it's too slow and bloated, but then, my computers have only 256-384 MB of RAM.  Those with 1 GB of RAM or more would beg to differ.  Ubuntu has its merits, but operation on a slow machine and quick installation times are NOT among them.  So I don't think it would be suitable for a live CD or booting from the USB drive.

On Tue, 9 Feb 2010 18:35:46 -0600 (CST)
Yaron <tclug at freakzilla.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Has anyone here played with Linux on a USB thumbdrive? It seems more 
> convenient to me than carrying a LiveCD around, plus you can, you know, 
> save personalised settings.
> 
> I've been trying for a few days and have had... mixed results. I've 
> managed to get Ubuntu to make a copy of it's LiveCD on a thumbdrive, but 
> then you end up with an Ubuntu Live CD. Which would be better than 
> nothing, except even THAT doesn't always boot up all the way.
> 
> I've tried plain ol' installing Ubuntu on the thumbdrive (even going so 
> far as to remove the other harddrives from the system) but that won't boot 
> all the way, either - they get stuck on the splash screen somewhere (even 
> when I take "quiet" out of grub).
> 
> I know about Damn Small Linux, but I'd rather have a system thats a biiit 
> more current than 2.4 kernels and Firefox 2.0.
> 
> Anyone have any experiences?
> 
> 
> -Yaron
> 
> --
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list


-- 
Jason Hsu, Linux user <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com>