[snowsislander]

I guess it must be a "feature" to have a system where everything you do disappears every time you turn it off, but I just don't get it.

It's considered an advantage when you are concerned about nasties that might creep in.

Some experts recommend, for instance, only doing your web-browsing on a live Linux image that doesn't retain any state. Even if you were to come across a website that transmitted malware that was persistent, it would be gone the next time you reboot.

Now that my memory has been jogged, the Puppy Linux distribution also has a native persistence feature.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Puppy is great for older machines ...and it's creator ...Barry Kauler has announced the release of Quirky 1.3, a small desktop distribution similar to Puppy Linux, but built with a different toolset: see:

Distribution Release: Quirky 1.3

I have downloaded it and fired it up ....not much beyond that.