“Portable USB Linux distros are wonderful go-anywhere Linuxes
for troubleshooting and repair. The catch is older hardware doesn’t
always support booting from a USB stick– but there is a workaround
called Plop Boot Manager“I don’t usually offer my opinions on purely technical matters
related to computers and systems, because I don’t consider myself
an especially technical person. On the other hand, when I come
across something technical that makes a major improvement in my
life at the computer, I do my best to advertise it to others. The
latest item to perform that minor miracle for me has been the Plop
Boot Manager, and the need arose when I first put a Linux distro on
a thumb drive.“There is a lot to be said for the Linux-on-a-stick concept, a
USB thumb drive with a bootable Linux distro on it. The small size
of the system image many distros offer means that even a modest
thumb drive can hold the image and still provide a healthy amount
of space for the persistence you need to save your configuration
and the work you do on it.”