What about the idea of carrying your operating system whereever you go? I am not talking about bringing your laptop everywhere you go, instead use your pendrive to carry your linux distro. Not simply the live distro, you can carry your operating system with all your configurations, favorite desktop background and personal files.

The last time I needed to install Ubuntu on a system without a CD drive, my Eee PC, I created a bootable USB drive to run the graphical installer. The UNetbootin tool I used makes creating the USB system simple, but in Ubuntu 8.10 theres an even easier way.

A tutorial on how to create a bootable pendrive with 3 distros.

uSbuntu Live Creator is a free software for Windows that allows you to create a bootable USB stick with Ubuntu 8.10 on it. This software also offers a new option for virtualization to run Ubuntu directly into Windows and without any setup or installation - this is done by using a portable version of VirtualBox.

LiLi USB Creator is a free software  for Windows that allows you to create a bootable Live USB  key with a Linux on it.

The easiest way to create a bootable USB drive on Linux or Windows is to use UNetbootin. Follow this simple howto to create a bootable FreeDOS flash drive.

If you read our "what's new in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala" post, you must know that a new hard disk tool is now available by default in Ubuntu 9.10: Palimpsest Disk Utility, which was created by Red Hat and is a S.M.A.R.T.

Since most laptop and desktop computers these days can boot from a USB drive, one of the handiest utilities in my toolbox is an installation of Pendrive Linux.

RMS GNU/Linux-Libre is a project to create a complete free software distribution of GNU/Linux that's small enough to run on a USB key, or pendrive. The distribution, which promises to be the perfect pocket companion of freedom lovers, supports the ability to save your changes to the pendrive, as well as install, update and disable software packages in the form of modules.