I have a large Pen Drive 8GB.
And I want to install Linux on it, so that even if my system does not have a HDD, I can simply boot from the USB drive.

I searched for distros, and mostly found smallish distros which install on FAT32 USB drives.
But I don't care for FAT32, I want my Pen drive to be like a standard HDD.

Since I have 8GB, I don't want the bare bones distros, just a smallish distro which takes around 1.5GB and has following capabilities out of the box.

1. WLAN with Dell Inspiron 1505
2. I boot via install CD, and then I can choose /dev/sdb as my local hard disk, rather than the system HDD
3. I don't want a bootloader etc., since the pen drive will have just one distro, and no multiboot.

The basic purpose is simple. When I travel really high Altitude(15000 feet+) in the himalayas, I don't want to carry HDD along as change of failure is great.
So the plan is simple, take out HDD from laptop, boot from the USB stick, copy pictures from camera memory card, and burn DVD.
I will also have some GPS applications to process and analyze tracks so 8GB will come in handy.

I tried SLAX etc., but thats cumbersome. For example the standard downloaded distro does not have any WLAN support, you have to download modules etc.,

Is Puppy better?

Or should I just go ahead with some mainstream distro linux Kubuntu, Mandriva or Gentoo.

I am worried about life of flash drive with my swap sitting on it. With only a GB of RAM, there is bound to be quite a bit of thrashing with KDE(its humongous!)

So I am looking for ideas.

Suggestion - look at Puppy first.

It has lots of advantages for your scenario:

1. It's good about saving only what it needs to your 8GB drive (the default Puppy "hard drive" is your RAM, but you can easily persist what you want - when and only when you want to, and Puppy will automatically prompt you to save whatever you want to your USB when you shut down).

2. You don't have to format your USB to FAT or FAT32. You can choose any other standard filesystem (most of which support ++8GB).

3. You don't have to worry about swap.

I use Puppy under VMWare on my Vista PC (which I have to use Vista, which is unfortunately quite often). I also made a Puppy USB for my Mom (whose Windows/XP box had become intolerably slow, for reasons we still haven't completely determined). She can boot to Puppy simply by inserting the USB; it boots from the hard drive to XP otherwise. Works like a charm :-)

Good luck .. PSM

Puppy indeed seems to be good, I am currently going through the nitty gritties, lets see!

Another option would be to replace your existing mechanical drive with a solid state unit. You can install any distribution and with 1 GB of RAM you should be able to run without a swap.

I have a couple of mini-ITX PCs with SSDs that I use for special unpressurized tests and work fine. Your correct mechanical drives do not like high altitudes >10K ft.

I have a lot of data and photographs, along with Documents. A big enough SSD will burn a big hole in my pocket. Thats why I was thinking that whenever I head to high altitudes, I will take out the HDD, and just go along with the Pen drive, and the laptop
8GB costs 850 INR(16$) in India, and for the duration of the trip it should be sufficient.