Linux on my stick?

I got a new stick drive this morning. Four gigs. I'm thinking about putting a Linux on it, but I don't want to wear down the flash drive faster than I have to. Should I go for distros that are advertised specifically for portable flash drives, or will any old distro work just as well in this respect?

There's something else I wanna ask, but I should start another thread for that.

 

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you COULD boot linux off of it but truthfully..what would that accomplish? I suppose you could put some of the most common troubleshooting utilities on it if you were a helpdesk person or something but I digress..that wasnt your question.

http://pendrivelinux.com/

 

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And even so, can many computers even boot from USB devices?

 

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I suppose not much, except that I'd gain that experience. Also, this is sorta related to my other thread in this subforum ([Thread=74280]link[/Thread]).

Thanks for the link, but that doesn't answer my question. I want to know if I need a distro that is specifically portrayed as a distro for stick drives, or if any distro that will fit on the drive will do.

I assume so, given the existence of Linux distros, and I believe even an old version of Mac, for stick drives.

 

Will you have a cd with you? If so, get a distro like puppy linux or Damn Small Linux, which can save all your applications, settings & documents on a stick while running off the cd. This'll extend the stick life and performance is as good as your RAM, but being tiny - it runs quick - I do this with my mp3 memstick. It runs as a full-blown os that I use for web developing, it has a web server, mysql and my projects etc which I never have to reconfigure each boot.

Basically, bootup the distro, get it to the working state you require, then save the setup to mem stick - job done.