AFAIK, Slax is the most reliable for booting viay USB key.
I haven't had the space to try it myself--and I can't boot off USB on my POS pee-cee...
Speaking of which, question for you: do you know how to connect a Windows NX client to a Linux server?
What's making this difficult is that my Linux box is acting like the server--and it's behind the router.
I've tried forwarding ports 22 tcp and udp--still can't connect outside my LAN.
It'd be nice--especially considering I have an hour commute to school every day.