Install linux TO bootable dvd?

[amorton12]

I've seen a few posts dealing with this idea, but I've had a different idea on how to go about it. Could a bootable, GUI functional distribution be installed to a dvd, and have the working file system mounted to a usbdrive or something? I don't really know anything about portable distributions and such, but I was just wondering if it could even be done.
I have a laptop w/ winxp, but the harddrive isn't really that big, so I don't want to dual-boot, but I would like some of Linux's features, including a decent GUI, on the road.
Thanx for reading!

[Viper8896]

yeah why not. do u mean just the users files eg /home on the usb drive gets mounted when plugged in?

[Minus]

Sumthing like:

http://souptonuts.sourceforge.net/cdrom.htm
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7233

[amorton12]

That's more or less what I was going for, but most are cd-bootable, so they are rather small, and the /usr, /var, etc., writable directories, are mounted to a RAM drive. I'm looking for a way to mount them to some kind of portable media, so I can still have writable workspace, but not at the expense of my RAM. Otherwise pretty much what I was looking for. Thanx!

[budman7]

Try a live cd like knoppix or Mepis.
From the live cd you can access files already existing on your hard drive. You might have to mount the hda1 icon on the desktop. Make it so you can write to it, and you should be good to go.