[unclesirbobby]

Is it possible to install debian simply onto a USB stick. I have two debian install disks. One is the KDE version.

When it comes to partitioning hard drives I could simply choose the USB disk and set this to ext3

Could that disk then easily be moved from machine to machine.

[iwanabeguru]

theoretically yes ,but i suggest you to install a such distribution wich is designed to usb sticks.

You can easily find some of them.

[miamicanes]

Do you know of any specific ones?

Every few weeks I go hunting for one, and all I ever seem to find are bootable CD distros that can also happen to run from a USB stick... but to actually do anything permanent or install new apps, you STILL have to remaster them as if they were a CD/DVD distro. Somewhere, somehow, SOMEONE has to have made a flashdrive-bootable distro by now that can be treated like a "normal" install thereafter -- using ramdisks for volatile things that don't need to survive a reboot anyway, but using the flashdrive itself for things like the /home directory, config settings, newly-installed apps, etc...

[iwanabeguru]

Boot and run Linux from a USB flash memory stick | USB Pen Drive Linux

[bigtomrodney]

You might want to check out SLAX. It normally runs with a persistant home directory and allows you to keep changes, but what's great is one of the boot options is for a fresh boot. I use it all the time and it fits into 190MB which is great, even with a full KDE desktop.