Apporiate size of a thumbdrive to put linux on.
 

Hi i want to experiment with putting linux on a thumb drive. I have a 256mb stick already. Is that big enough to put linux on or should i get a 512 mb stick at some point to put linux on?

Have you checked out "Damn Small Linux"? I've no experience with it myself, but from what I've read it might be a good distro to try on a thumb drive. If it were me, I'd go with the 512MB, though... But I'd still try the 256 "just because it's there" ;)

Since you are going to boot from the thumbdrive, make sure that your BIOS allows you to boot from USB Device. If it doesn't, you can't run linux off of it. But, you can run linux off CD and save configs, etc to the thumbdrive. And yes, I would try DSL (Damn Small Linux) if you can boot from thumbdrive. Hey, even if you want to boot from CD, use DSL or SLAX.

calcon

how do i check to know if my bios can boot from usb or not?

You have to go into your BIOS setup routine at boot time to find out - should be some setting in there about boot order or boot devices. Or you can look up the specs for your motherboard/computer on the Internet to see if USB Booting is supported.