The USB Linux installation enables you to install a portable Linux operating SYSTEM on a flash drive or USB key no larger than your thumb. This portable Linux operating system can then be run from any computer that can boot from a flash device.

Always intrigued by alternative operating systems, I decided to play with Pen Drive Linux this weekend...a portable open source operating system which can be booted to from a USB flash drive, or can be run from within Windows without rebooting (for those whose BIOS doesn't support booting from a USB flash drive), from a "virtual machine" environment. It is way cool!

This would work just like a LiveCD, with the big improvement that all your data could be saved onto the USB drive! This means not just your documents, but also e.g. network settings or your desktop background. You were practically carrying around a fully-functional operating system on your USB drive!

These days, it only takes an increasingly-cheap USB thumb drive and a program like UNetbootin to create a portable Linux desktop you can run on any computer that can boot from a USB port.

Free application Portable Ubuntu for Windows runs an entire Linux operating system as a Windows application. As if that weren't cool enough, it's portable, so you can carry it on your thumb drive.

Portable Ubuntu is a Free application Software for Windows, runs an entire Linux operating system
as a Windows application. It is superb, and it is portable application , so you can carry it on your thumb drive. You can run Linux applications on your Windows desktop, Portable Ubuntu is a stand-alone package.

"This week's release of the Fedora 9 Linux distribution makes putting a full-fledged desktop on a portable USB thumb drive a three-click affair. Even better, you don't need Linux installed to create it, you can leave the data on your thumb drive untouched, and any files you create or settings you tweak remain in place the next time you boot up."

There are many options with USB Flash drives now. Here is a tutorial on how to install Damn Small Linux on a Pen Drive. This is version 4.4.7, the newest version. Plugin your Pen Drive in to the USB slot. For DSL it is a great one to experiment with because you can use a small Pen Drive to work with. A 256 MB Pen Drive allows you a lot of space since the operating system is only 50 MB.

What can you do with a few gigabytes and a USB port? Quite a lot, with the right software. Learn how to encrypt your work, run whole systems, rescue Windows, and customize your thumb drive with these USB-geared tricks.