Tough way to ask this question since opinions will vary. I am going to setup a linux bootable flash drive to use ONLY "closed system" (no online connection at all). Purpose; for formatting, dd in abundance, partnew, etc.... I have a bunch of computers and sometimes I need to move stuff and manipulate disk space. I will be using only command line and don't need any fancy stuff. This is boring byte crunching only. It might be nice if there was a small amount of persistence space on the flash. I am sooooooo tired of using optical disks because they are slow. I have read about a few little distro's but thought I would ask around here. Just guessing but I am thinking a few hundred meg should do it. Since I will be moving the flash among machines quite often I don't want something that takes a couple of minutes to boot. Small, cryptic, terminal use almost 100 %. Prefer to stay with generic linux so I don't have to use a different "language" in the terminals. I almost certainly won't be updating this after creation, unless partnew and dd change, which is not too likely.
Hi Palancar, If you just want to move the flash drive among machines, why are you even considering making it bootable as in minimal boot drive Linuxes at all. Why not just use a USB drive for data only, then you never have to boot up? The real question with this is the data USB accepted on each candidate system, i.e. when you plug it into a system you want to do something to, it is not rejected and works as normal instead of not rendering as a successful plugged in USB flash drive with data on it. The way I guarantee (no online connection at all) is to turn off my router. Is that doable for your setup? I have a landline setup for FiOS - no wireless, etc. I normally do everything by command line in Linux. I use no optical DVDs or CDs anymore unless I choose to do so for some odd reason. Most of my flash drives are 8GB PNY. My normal setup in the morning is to boot from a USB Flash drive and then run my own setup scripts entirely with no online connection at all, and then and only then turn my router on for access to the Internet to update Synaptic Package Manager to complete my setup, followed by browser access. Maybe I don't understand exactly what you have described that you are doing now and intend to do, so I might need more elaboration from you to help contribute to what you have described, or maybe I just don't understand what you are trying to do. -- Tom
