Linux Distro suggestions - USB drive

[Fujimitsu]

I'm picking up an 8gb of 16gb flash drive. I'm planning on installing a linux distro on it, since I find myself using liveCDs so much anymore.

Any suggestions? I've used puppy and DSL before, but since I'm not really limited spacewise I'd like to use something a little bit more feature-rich. I was considering backtrack, since I would probably install a lot of the networking stuff anyway.. but I'm still undecided. I'd like it to work with relatively little configuration on a wide variety of machines. I've considered ubuntu but for some reason it just feels cumbersome to me, and I think that might be made worse on such a slow storage medium. Customizability and portability are most important to me, I would like to be able to use this on pretty much any machine I come across.

Thanks in advance :).

 

[mgb_phys]

Puppy is still great - and it has packet management so you can add as many more apps as you like.
You should be able to install eg. ubuntu directly - it's just another disk drive!
You probably want to do a few things like disable swap partitions etc.

 

[Dr Transport]

Mandriva is advertising a usb flash version of their code...look into it, you might be able to get a version free in a few months.

 

[Ed Aboud]

I highly recommend the new backtrack beta!
It works so well and has got an endless list of networking tools preinstalled.
Knoppix is a good choice as well, but from experience I definitely would pick backtrack.

 

[Fujimitsu]

Thanks for the suggestions fellas.

I'll try the new backtrack beta, I like the idea of not having to install/configure all the networking tools.

 

[Ed Aboud]

No problem.
If you use WPA on your wireless network, I must say be prepared to do a bit of work or simply just use WEP. I couldn't get my wireless card to work with WPA for ages (something to do with the WPA_supplicant) so I just used WEP and it works perfectly.
I'm running it off a 4gb usb key and its great, can carry it around in my pocket all the time. :D