That one day I will be able to find a distro that runs on a USB thumb drive.

I think so far I have only been able to find distro's that run a live version from a thumb drive because they never seem to save any changes.

I want to develop a "server" version of linux that installs on a PC or Laptop and allows you to create user versions that are installed on usb thumb drives. You would then simply plug your thumb drive into a PC, boot from it and there you have your OS, your email, your bookmarks etc. Any changes you made were automatically saved and any programs you installed would still be there when you next booted your thumb drive.

To date the closest I have come is Slax but you have to lo in as Root every time, not conducive to preventing people screwing things up, not to mention being a little impersonal. The other downside to Slax is that all changes have to be saved manually from what I can gather. Its like its running a liver version and you have top specifically run a command to record any changes, not overly user friendly.

DSL is altogether a little too far from everyones current OS to make the switch enticing.

If anyone knows something that sounds exactly like what I'm looking for then please let me know, otherwise I would be grateful for some advice on where to best start learning about how to customise any distro to meet my needs.