Battle of the thumb drive linux distros

posted Oct 30th 2008 11:00am by Caleb Kraft
filed under: news, pcs hacks

We were expecting eye gouging and body slams, but this review of several thumb drive Linux distributions will do. They compared Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, Xubuntu, and Fedora. They don’t mention why they chose these four specifically, as UNetbootin has many many distributions available. They put each through its paces, listing common issues and boot up speed.

Their conclusion was that puppy Linux was preferable as it has a graphically nice interface and the ability to have persistent data storage on the disk. They have a poll going though, so head over and voice your opinion.

Comments [23]

tagged: linux, live cd, thumb drive

Reader Comments

Where’s Slitaz?
http://www.slitaz.org

Posted at 11:33 am on Oct 30th, 2008 by Mike

its all about the BackTrack

Posted at 12:24 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by monster

If your going to throw backtrack into the mix, then you would have to include ever single slax distribution in there too.

Posted at 12:54 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by mike

One more vote for Back|Track. the slax distros weren’t too bad either.

Posted at 1:28 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by barry99705

uhhhh what about Slax?!

Posted at 1:29 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by bob

Mandriva Flash FTW!

Of course, they only sell it preloaded…but if you have a thumbdrive you can install it yourself from their One CD. But it’s a much larger distro than back in the old days; apparently it needs a whole 1.5 gigs now.

Posted at 1:58 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by Urza

SLAX FTW! :D

Posted at 2:18 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by bfo

dslinux WOOT!
i run it offa pico itx without a hard drive, just on a 8 gig pico supertalent gold flash drive.
it’s the coolest thing in the universe, i made the case out of aluminum so its only as big as the motherboard, has onswitch four usb ports,mic and speaker cable and the vga ports through pin connectors, so theres no space lost beyond the motherboard, it has an option for hdmi and dvi ports but i didnt include them because i dont use them. but yeah DSL is fking awesome, all i need is a net surfer, a word processor, a sdk, and a meek media player for my musics, the next step in my super cool plan is to adapt a battery for it so it can go in my pocket, and buy some of those myvus that you can see through!! and i’ll have like a mobile ComputerMan(r) KICKASSSS

but i dont have the funds
so it’s just the desktop running dsl lol
but it kicks ass
but the book official dsl book kinda sucks, and i paid hella monies for it too!

-hero

Posted at 2:22 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by -hero

One more vote for backtrack! :)

Posted at 2:47 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by Alex

one more for backtrack

Posted at 3:21 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by slappy squirrel

backtrack gets my vote! haha, looks like we know hackaday’s favorite bootable distro.

Posted at 3:56 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by Skitchin

so it says backtrack is supported, but it’s not in the pulldown list, are there any special parameters i should list when i use the “disk image” option?

Posted at 4:39 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by monster

AWESOME! I just bought an old laptop from someone and I just started looking for an os that might run smoothly on a 10 year old comp.

The guy I bought it from had xp on it, so this is eerily convenient.

Posted at 4:43 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by icefox

backtrack all the way

Posted at 5:43 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by pksjaveed

No *BSD?

Posted at 6:10 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by spacecoyote

dsl works great for old hardware, but not new hardware. kinda defeats the purpose of a usb stick boot since older hardware doesn’t support that. works wonders with a cd boot on my old pentium mmx laptops though. I’ll have to look up backtrack. My favorite live linux though is helix mainly because I generally use a live linux to help people recover data from windows hard drives when windows hoses the registry.

Posted at 7:31 pm on Oct 30th, 2008 by sly

Linux is getting there but still has a while to go thakn you for allthe useful info though

Posted at 9:46 am on Oct 31st, 2008 by London Escort Agency

DSL is not so hot even for the older hardware because the X server only supports 60hz, so with a CRT monitor I got rioting headaches from the eyestrain.

I just got Puppy Linux and I think it rocks, still too slim on media support, but that isn’t important for an email/web box.

The real problem is lack of USB boot support, but if you check out something like this you can use it for almost any PC: http://www.logicsupply.com/products/t512mdom40vs

I am thinking of getting one loaded with PuppyLinux and BartPE to help me in my freelance PC repair work. Maybe even using NTlite set to always boot in safe mode :) I get a lot of people who need a volume check before their PC will boot, but after the check their PC runs fine for years. I think it is overheating and the PC writes some garbage to the disk.

Posted at 11:37 am on Oct 31st, 2008 by nubie

FaunOS anyone? <3

Posted at 1:45 am on Nov 2nd, 2008 by mike

Good

Posted at 10:43 am on Nov 2nd, 2008 by sysaprendiz

Hmm.. It seems that it really depends on what ur looking for in your distro, but personally I enjoy backtrack. but fedora is also nice, its really personal opinion

Posted at 10:05 pm on Dec 13th, 2008 by Name

“Linux is getting there but still has a while to go thakn you for allthe useful info though”

Really? I cant think of anything more useful!

http://www.getstock.co.uk

Posted at 3:56 pm on Jan 22nd, 2009 by Dave

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Posted at 8:00 am on Aug 17th, 2009 by Young escorts London

Battle of the thumb drive linux distros

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