[circlecity]

Every 5 years or so I like to load up Linux and play with it a bit to see how it’s doing. The last time I was able to download a copy of mandrake and run it off a thumb drive. What is the current most popular flavor of Linux that I can run off of a disk or thumb drive? It’s getting time to check it out again.

[ShadowAce]

I've heard good things about Mint and Zorin OS.

[posterchild]

Given the increased size of thumb drives, just about any linux should boot off of it:) Ubuntu seems the most popular and mainstream lately.

[JRandomFreeper]

Whenever I need a quick distro to slap on a box to check out the box, I reach for Mint. Not is it the only one I can usually find easily, it autoloads easily.

/johnny

[taxcontrol]

I would recommend Mint for those that are Windows oriented. http://www.linuxmint.com/

Ubuntu and RedHat are the two most popular distros. Almost all distros are able to boot and run from a USB. There are even specialty distros of Linux designed to make repair of Windows and Linux systems easier (http://www.supergrubdisk.org/rescatux/) Since I travel a lot and have to do a lot of my own support, I keep this distro handy.

[angryoldfatman]

Fourth vote for Mint.

You can use lightweight GUIs for it, or if you’ve got a relatively new computer (one that can run Windows 7, for example), you can just run all default.

It’s the closest to the old single taskbar WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) interface from Win 95 to Win 7.

[GeronL]

Mint or Ubuntu I guess

[TexasRepublic]

Now that the Mate desktop runs on Ubuntu as well as Mint, I prefer the latest Ubuntu.