So I wanted to get linux running from a flash drive, but there seems a fair bit of ambiguity out there about "live" distributions. And I'm pretty confused about my options. Can you correct any assumptions I'm making and recommend a good distro for this?
It's mainly for system recovery, but I'd also like to be able to store my own files and programs on the desktop (if you're running a live system - I know that has to be a separate partition - but can you "install" to a USB drive and have it use it's own partition? I have a feeling that might hinder the ability to detect different hardware at start-up - am I right?)
I'd rather not have a gui - I'd rather just have something that loads quickly, reocgnizes the local hardware, and lets me look through the files, editing them or pulling them onto the USB drive if I choose to.
I'm not a big pro at mounting drives from the CLI - but I wouldn't mind learning. If it recognizes hardware as well as ubuntu and just dumps me in the CLI with everything mounted - well hey that's perfect!
The only reason I don't just install Ubuntu is because I think I can get away with taking up a lot less space and having more space for my own files, and the only reason I don't just install the most bare bones distro I can find is that I want to make sure that I have support for most common file-systems and hardware, etc...
If you can point me in a better direction that I'm going with google - I'd appreciate it! I'm making more progress but I definitly want to learn more - but I'm not at the point where I'd be able to put my own distro together - which is where I'd like to end up.
edit: Is Damn Small Linux pretty good at recognizing usb drives, hard drives, etc... out of the box? And if you put it on a USB drive, can it treat it's own partition as though it was a hard drive? i.e. installing new software, writing to files, customizing the desktop, etc... DSL seems like it might be a good choice for me...
