Hi
I am pretty much a Windows guy from the get-go. I bought SUSE Novell Linux however, I had trouble installing from the start and never quite figured out the issue as it seems overtly technical compared to Windows, I feel it isn't layman friendly. I did come across the USB PC on a Stick, a rather new device using DSL I think, on a USB memory card that holds a simple OS that can make moving data and apps back and forth easy. The price was around $70 to $80 and I think someone offered a link to Damn Small Linux as an option I was asking about earlier... It's been a while since I have been to this forum, but for a laptop lacking a HDD or to test a used PC, for example, this sounds pretty interesting, but I've been told there's no real way to boot from this method.
It's probably true that the USB will not work for a booting device, but wasn't DSL on a floppy one way?

BILL

USB works as a booting device on most new PC's
DLS hasnt fitted ona floppy since like version 1 (its 51mb and a floppy is 1.44, thats 36 floppies)

However a probelm is that a USB stick will break after about 1,000 writes whereas a harddisk lasts for about 7,000,000 (3 years if you have it on 24/7 doing regular office and web browsing only)

Because of the fact USB sticks dont last long before degrading it means you cant have a swap file (thats what happens when you run out of RAM - it writes to the HDD and you hear it clicking away)

The absence of a swap file means more RAM is needed. e.g windows XP when idle takes around 350mb RAM, if there was no swap it would take about 512meg of RAM