Linux – Distribution Recommendation for USB Flash Disks

distribution-choicelinuxusb

I'm a linux system administrator and dealing with big iron distributions like debian and redhat for a long time. I need a recommendation for a small distribution which I can install to USB flash disk. I need a general purpose distribution with an up-to-date kernel (especially ext4 / GPT support is needed) to carry some filesystem operations. Desktop environment is optional. In-Place updates like a real installation is a huge plus (I just don't want to reinstall it with every major version).

Best Answer

Check out Grml, to quote from their page:

Grml is a bootable live system based on Debian. Grml includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for system administrators. Users don't have to install anything on fixed storage. Grml is especially well suited for administrative tasks like installation, deployment and system rescue.

Grml provides tools and images for installation to a USB device. It also contains an X environment and comes with elaborate default configurations for a lot of text tools (zsh, screen etc.).

There are several documented ways for customizing default Grml USB-images, depending on the use case (remastering, adding packages, starting extra services, configuring sshd keys etc.).

As an advantage to Arch Linux, Grml uses binary packages, i.e. you don't have to compile source packages all the time. Since it is a Debian based distribution, it uses the dpkg system, including the apt-get package manager, which is powerful and ultra fast.