http://www.puppylinux.org/user/images/puppylinux_logo_trans.gif

Puppy Linux - http://www.puppylinux.org - is a slick smooth fast mini-distro that's designed to run off a live CD or USB key. Interestingly, it can also run off a rewritable CD/DVD and keep stuff there! Or it can store your personal data on a Windows partition.

I installed it to the harddrive of an old 233 PII with 256Mb memory I have lying around and it's bloody impressive! Very fast, really pretty and very capable!

Lots of variants available, I used PuppyOffice (fat at 120MB download) which has OpenOffice2 included and it really is remarkably good.

Give it a whirl! Standard Puppy is only a 70Mb download.

How do you boot from a USB port? I did download puppy to play with but fell at that hurdle.

You have to create a Puppy boot CD first (download an .iso and burn it as as .iso). Boot from it and checkout the Install section, there should be one to install to USB key. Remember to set your machine to try and boot from USB first in the BIOS.

There's a guide at - http://www.apcstart.com/usb/puppy/

This help page might be of assistance:

My PC can't boot from USB|CD

http://www.puppylinux.com/boot2pup.htm

Posted at the same time as Mac.

Just to add...

Puppy Linux Dummies Guide
http://tmxxine.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakka=PuppyLinux

and the wiki
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HowToUsePuppy

http://www.puppylinux.org/user/images/puppylinux_logo_trans.gif

I think Puppy is great fun and very clever. My Pup is rapidly morphing into a dog!

Tip: Unless you're familiar with iptables don't turn the firewall on if you're on a local network (otherwise it's fine). I found getting SAMBA to work over a firewall quite difficult.