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When traveling and visiting friends or relatives I usually don’t carry my laptop since I know I’ll have access to a computer. I am however concerned about the security of these machines. Fry’s had a deal on 128MB USB flash drives for less than $10 so I figured it would be worth it to install a minimal Linux system on one. I found Puppy Linux which works great as a live CD but I’m having a tough time getting any of my machines to boot from the flash drive. I followed the USB installation procedure found on the live CD but I haven’t had any luck. I’ve tried my two ThinkPad T40’s (with the lastest BIOS) and a couple of my desktops. I’ve tried all sorts of BIOS settings – trying to boot from USB ZIP, USB Floppy, and USB CDROM. Nothing works for me. I’m quite comfortable with Linux (having used it as a primary desktop for a couple of years) but I really must be missing something.
UPDATE: I tried this on a friend’s computer and it worked great. I guess I’m just unlucky and the BIOS on my computers don’t support USB boot. No big deal – I’ll carry both the UBS flash drive and the live CD with me.