Reading files from a USB memory stick
 

OK, REALLY, really dumb question any forum member should be able to answer. I have just installed puppy on an old laptop and have it up and running. It does have one USB port on it.

My question ... does a memory stick have to be formatted with a Linux format, or will I be able to read one of the Windows formats on it, like NTFS? I haven't looked, but I am assuming there are some import utilities out there that will translate some things from the WinTel world?

Dumb question, I know ...

You don't have to do anything. Linux has support for almost every filesystem used in the modern world, which includes anything Windows is aware of (which is shockingly little, actually).

if your usb drive is on FAT32 type (which is the usual) OR i think its usbfs, once you inserted it on your distr, it will be read automatically.. whereas if you are using an external hd, and formatted it with NTFS (in windows) you need to have (your distro) must support hte ntfs-3g driver for you to be able to mount your external hd. i did this in my ntfs type of external hd. (using slackware 12.0) my VL 5.1 automatically detects the usb disk.

Reading memory stick files
 

I actually do have some external HDs I might want to read at some point in the future using Linux, so that is good to know. I think you said this at the end of your message above, but is the usb device automatically mounted or must it be manually mounted, once plugged in??

Thanks for the quick answer to a newbie.

It actually depends on the distribution you use, some like ubuntu automatically mounts it when you plug in and some you need to mount manually using mount command