Hi all,
a typical laptop you get from a company these days is locked and running linux. Many IT departments will not let you make partitions so booting a distribution from a USB stick seems to be the only option.

I wanted to ask you on which distribution you can suggest me that can run a decent window manager, kde,gnome, or xfce and can write changes to the usb disk.

Can you provide me some suggestions on the type of distributions I should try and what size of USB disks should I buy? 64 or 128GB or even more? What type of speeds.
Thanks
Alex

There are many good distros that you can run off a USB stick as a 'live, persistent' boot. You can use Fedora, openSUSE, Mint, or Ubuntu, among others.

But I'd strongly suggest you get your resume in order, and start looking for a new job first, before you do this. Mainly because any company with such IT polices in place will **NOT** like you doing as you wish with their equipment, and will probably fire you upon finding out what you're doing. Violating data security/IT polices is a great way to get fired. Their equipment = their rules. Either work with them, or don't be surprised when you have to bear the consequences of your actions.

If they have the BIOS locked better make sure you can even boot from a USB port first. As far as what distro to use. The most important part is that it has the apps you need and room for them if not, and that it has persistence. So you will not lose everything you did in it.

yes, in our company we are allowed to use ubuntu on our laptops, but we are not allowed to change /etc/apt/sources.list which is pointed to the repo created inside our company (even the official canonical repo is "forbidden").

Agreed, but I know several companies with good data-security setups that DETECT when you've plugged a USB drive in the next time you connect to the company network. And then you get a visit from data-security and IT, who will ask you to explain yourself.

If the OP's company doesn't permit it...I wouldn't do it.

I agree, I was not adding the if they allow, or in accordance to their rules into the equation. I was leaving that responsibility on the user. He or She would have been briefed on what they can and cannot do with a company laptop. Personally why not just buy a good used one to play with?

Linux Mint and Ubuntu are good, user-friendly distros to run from USB thumb drive.

I agree with the advice offered above, to buy an inexpensive laptop for your personal use, and don't conduct IT experiments on your corporate laptop.

good point and I will indeed ask. so my question will be

Can I boot my linux from usb when I want to use the hardware for personal use and connect it at my private network? If they say it is forbidden then I will not do it.

Regards
Alex

You were given advice above; there is **NO WAY** for us to answer this question. We don't know who you work for, what policies/procedures your company has, etc. The only way to know this is for you to ask THEM.

I would do a full install to a Sandisk USB of 64gb. Treat it like a hard drive choosing 'something else' during installation and pointing the installer to your usb stick, then Make Sure you install grub to that drive: sdb, sdc, etc. MATE or Xfce or KDE Plasma would be great choices for DE.

I'd think that the corporate IT honcho's would frown on using anything but what they supplied. Unless the internal hard drive is encrypted in a way that linux can't access there could be some security issues.

Just bring your own laptop.

Saying that... I buy the fastest usb I can get that is reasonable in price.

If you can boot Linux from USB, then you could repartition the hard disk to your hearts content...

A properly locked down PC won't allow you to use USB.

I think that the OP meant that it would be their question to the company, not to other LQ posters. That's the way I read it anyway.

Also the way I read it TBH.