“Be nice to have a complete portable Linux PC on a thumb drive only needing to borrow a host and display to plug it into.”
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Yeah, that’s why I always have one handy. You can also just install it in full on a stick - live USB to an OS destination USB.
In the Ubiquity installer when it asks where to install the OS, choose “something else”. In the GParted part of installing, you can skip making a swap file if you want, set the USB as the mount point and it’s easy from there.
One thing - if you want to make a stick you can pop into any PC, you should install the 32 bit version (if one is available)of whatever distro. That makes it compatible with both 32 and 64 bit PCs.
I’v tried Mint on USB stick as a full install, it works pretty good. It’s not as fast as an install on a normal disk, it’s a stick afterall, but good enough.
A 16 GB USB would be good enough for Mint, so you’d have about 8 GB left for updates/downloads/files on it’s drive after a full install. 32 GB USB or more is even better.
Thank you for the tips! I think I would just start with a 32 gig and be done with it. I wouldn’t really need a whole lot as portable because I can clean it out into my home system now and then. :)