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http://www.pendrivelinux.com/u... Click, click, bootable thumb drive for most distros. Not exactly rocket surgery.

Are you able to boot from a USB stick? I found this tool quite useful for trying out a variety of live-linux iso's on a usb drive:
yumi

It provides some useful links to download what is needed to try out a whole bunch of different distros. You can also stack a number of different distros on the same usb drive and choose which one to boot from at startup.

Personally I have been using Debian for quite a few years now, gave ubuntu a brief try but wasn't too happy with it.
I have installed Mint on virtual recently and it really does look as good as people here have stated. Mint would be my final recommendation too.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Running a recent version of Linux Mint with the MATE desktop
http://linuxmint.com/

Create a big 4GB casper file on the USB stick.

Have it mount the existing hard disk and create shortcuts so they can get to their photos and stuff.
Maybe put on http://www.playonlinux.com/en/ to help get some of the old Windows software working under Wine

Bring a new stick with you over the holidays with upgrades.

They may or may not use it (they can just remove the USB stick and reboot to go back to their old getup), but at least you feel good that you've done "your part" without spending more than a few hours downloading and twiddling while you're there, and they don't go running off to all their friends complaining about how you came and now their computer is all different.

Smartest thing I've read all day. It is literally a perfect match to the original question, which is probably the dumbest thing I've read all day (drive image your work laptop, smoke it and install your own warez, and restore the drive image before giving it back to them.)

OP - here's the one piece where your plan fails : the active directory connection establishing your machine as a trusted member of the domain, and your user as the domain with the same name ... disconnects if it hasn't been refreshed in a while. I don't know how long it takes, but it happens. And it is a particularly uncomfortable discussion with corporate IT explaining why, given that your machine looks exactly like it did when they gave it to you, and you have been using it for a few months. The question is going to come up 'What did you do to it?' and you are going to answer just like they expect you to 'Nothing.' ... and it goes downhill from there.

Technical answer for you is same as Anrego : USB Thumbdrive install of Linux : Pen Drive Linux has a zillion distros you can pick from, and they give you step by step instructions on making it work.

If technical answer #1 doesn't work for you, here's technical answer #2 for you : remove the work hard drive, install a new hard drive, install your own OS on that and swap out drives for work / pleasure. Downside is limited to the danger of physically borking the work drive while removing it or storing it while it is out of the machine. Explaining how you managed to mangle the SATA connector on a work laptop is a very difficult discussion.

Personal preference answer is also same as Anrego : don't do anything on your work laptop that you wouldn't do with representatives from corporate HR, IT, your boss and his boss standing over your shoulder. Buy a cheap used netbook for $150 on Craigslist and take it with you to do your warez/internet surfing/pr0n viewing.

well you can use a bootable USB of course, or you could use virtualization-on-a-stick, using qemu or portable virtual-box

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/using-a-portable-virtualbox-to-run-linux-from-usb/

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/run-a-live-linux-cd-from-within-windows/

or you could use portable app's projects off of sourceforge.

well you can use a bootable USB of course, or you could use virtualization-on-a-stick, using qemu or portable virtual-box

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/using-a-portable-virtualbox-to-run-linux-from-usb/

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/run-a-live-linux-cd-from-within-windows/

or you could use portable app's projects off of sourceforge.

Use http://www.pendrivelinux.com/downloads/Universal-USB-Installer/Universal-USB-Installer.exe which ubuntu recommends, or use unetbootin.

You wouldn't be complaining if you've ever tried to install Windows XP from a usb drive. It's nearly impossible (I've never succeeded). I think it's better with win7 now.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

Why use ubuntu when you have so many choices?

Many LiveCD distros can be dumped to a USB flash drive. Alternatively, you could use rewriteable CDs.

As it's Grub-compatible, I hope it's going to be easy to add to a multi-boot usb toolkit. Along the lines of: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-multiple-iso-from-usb-multiboot-usb/

Just boot an .iso image of a live distro with a persistent home partition for storage. No need for a VM.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-multiple-iso-from-usb-multiboot-usb/

"I got stung by a drive-by exploit on a work machine .. something that installed 'XP Antivirus 2010"

Run your browser from a read-only device, that way you won't ever get stung.

Pendrive

You could also just run your browser in a virtual machine and set the write-back to a file that's deleted every restart.

"I got stung by a drive-by exploit on a work machine .. something that installed 'XP Antivirus 2010"

Run your browser from a read-only device, that way you won't ever get stung.

Pendrive

Pendrivelinux uses colinux http://www.colinux.org/ to run a linux kernel as a windows process without using any general purpose PC virtualization software.

I have not used pendrivelinux 2009, but I have an earlier version of pendrivelinux based on the Qemu emulator. Here's a link to Qemu USB Pendrivelinux Persistent Linux: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/portable-qemu-persistent-pendrivelinux/

You might want to experiment with both of these options. .

Pendrivelinux uses colinux http://www.colinux.org/ to run a linux kernel as a windows process without using any general purpose PC virtualization software.

I have not used pendrivelinux 2009, but I have an earlier version of pendrivelinux based on the Qemu emulator. Here's a link to Qemu USB Pendrivelinux Persistent Linux: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/portable-qemu-persistent-pendrivelinux/

You might want to experiment with both of these options. .

I think we'll be sticking with Server 2003 until the cows come home lol.

Asterisk for the phone server. Worked out well. We were severely getting ripped, and our hardware was from the early 90's.

Only thing I had to train people on in OpenOffice was Mail Merge. Everything else they could figure out. But yea....definitely try out LinuxMint if you get a chance. I keep a persistent version on my flash drive at all times, and used pendrivelinux's installer to make it that way. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/install-linux-mint-8-to-a-flash-drive-in-windows/

I don't have as much trouble with my family's computers... maybe you just need to tell them to stop surfing pr0n sites :P

But if they insist, just stick a Linux LiveCD in their box "until you get around to fixing windows". And let them know they can surf all the (legal) p0rn they like with it with little repercussion :P

My current favorite is Linux Mint : http://www.linuxmint.com/ It's based on Ubuntu, but they're a bit less shy about including non-free software such as Flash and proprietary video drivers by default.

If they like it, you can also create a USB drive version of it so they can carry their changes (updated software and files) around with them. If they still manage to break it, you can simply copy over the casper-rw file over again with an empty version (or from the last working backup)
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/create-a-linux-mint-7-usb-flash-drive-from-cd/

OK, this is kinda backwards and probably something of a joke, but I'd boot the other computer off of a PendriveLinux (I like the LinuxMint variety). Then I mount the computer's disks and copy files to/from them.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Another wonky way to do this without rebooting into Linux is to have a small FAT partition with qemu or some other portable x86 emulator and boot the pendriveLinux in a virtual machine. Then use samba to transfer files from the USB filesystem to the host machine over the virtual network.

Hey, you did ask for creativity :P

FWIW, I actually have done both of these things before using KNOPPIX LiveCDs... just recently got around to making USBdrive versions of them now that large USB drives are a commodity. I'd never really gotten into USB pendrives since I mostly tend to move files over the network or would just access my computer remotely over VNC or ssh to get stuff done.

#4, Why not use a USB stick as a complete Ubuntu workstation? Here are instructions to make a stick that will either run in a QEMU window on a host Windows OS, _or_ you can simply boot-up directly into Ubuntu?

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/all-in-one-pendrivelinux-2008/

So you can have your cake and eat it too. During work hours, just insert your USB stick when you need access to your own PC.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Or, for Windows XP:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5928902.html

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Pen Drive Linux to the rescue!!!

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Save yourself the cost of a hard drive, buy a usb stick, use it, and chuck it.

there is a way. If you can use a iso, you can probably also get other files on the system. Thus just make a USB flash drive with a bootable Ubuntu live system on another system. Then copy the created directories from the usb to your disk in a working installation and get the information you need for grub from the "syslinux/text.cfg" file that is created. If all goes to plan, your system should boot as if from the USB flash drive: it should find the filesystem.squashfs file and mound it with a loop. Just recreate the directory structure on the usb stick on your existing root directory. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ubuntu-810-install-using-the-built-in-usb-installer/

Just a suggestion: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

And you forget how easy that would be to fix. Format, copy in your preferred distro (Or if you prefer, load in a flavor of Windows more to your liking)... presto!

I came across this LiveCD from spotmau yesterday http://www.spotmau.com/products/package/full.htm. I never tested it(didn't get a chance to see if it was on pb yet) and I don't work for them or have any affiliation. But it claims to be a livecd that fixes registry entries, spyware, cracks forgotten passwords. The link I submitted is the one product that does spyware, the root of that site lists the other products. It was an embedded ad while browsing http://www.pendrivelinux.com/.

In addition to what other /.ers said about WUBI, there's also the possibility to use Live USB distribution.
PenDrive Linux has a lot of resources about this kind of distributions.
I've been using their Quick and easy Pendrivelinux for quite some time.
You can buy commercial preinstalled ones from companies like Mandriva Flash.

It works to a very similar way to WUBI, but on a flash drive.
Essentially it puts 2* big files that contain the file system on the USB drive, and make the USB stick bootable using "syslinux". You start it by hitting F12 when the BIOS starts and choose to boot on the USB drive instead of your hard drive.
(whereas WUBI puts a big file with the partition /on the windows drive/ and adds a new entry to the Windows boot loader to make the system. So you boot you hard drive normally and then use Windows XP's boot menu to select Linux instead of WinXP).

So in that solution, your hard drive is virtually untouched (not that creating a file and adding an entry are *that* much big change) so it may please more the paranoid admins at your company.

Last-but-not-least there's also the running-Linux-inside-Virtualbox (or some other virtual machines that have native-speed performance) solution. It's a bit complicated, but has the benefit of letting you run your Linux apps along side the Windows desktop (with possibilities for native integration, either using a X-Window server for Win32, or using the virtual machine's client tools).

* - most Live USB solutions tend to use 2 files : one is a big read-only file containing the live system, the other is read-writeable and used to store and remember modification (newly installed software, upgrades, user settings, user's home, etc.) between session.
This is because most Live USB distribution are descendant of Live CD distribution (where the CD-Rom is read only and holds the live distro and a RAM-disk holds the modification, using a UNIONFS to bridge the 2 together).
The big advantage of this system is that in case of a big fuckup, you can still reboot using only the original live system (just like a LiveCD) and fix/rebuild/create a new read-write big file.
Of course there are also other solutions for partitioning and installing linux on a USB stick the same way you install it on a harddrive.

In addition to what other /.ers said about WUBI, there's also the possibility to use Live USB distribution.
PenDrive Linux has a lot of resources about this kind of distributions.
I've been using their Quick and easy Pendrivelinux for quite some time.
You can buy commercial preinstalled ones from companies like Mandriva Flash.

It works to a very similar way to WUBI, but on a flash drive.
Essentially it puts 2* big files that contain the file system on the USB drive, and make the USB stick bootable using "syslinux". You start it by hitting F12 when the BIOS starts and choose to boot on the USB drive instead of your hard drive.
(whereas WUBI puts a big file with the partition /on the windows drive/ and adds a new entry to the Windows boot loader to make the system. So you boot you hard drive normally and then use Windows XP's boot menu to select Linux instead of WinXP).

So in that solution, your hard drive is virtually untouched (not that creating a file and adding an entry are *that* much big change) so it may please more the paranoid admins at your company.

Last-but-not-least there's also the running-Linux-inside-Virtualbox (or some other virtual machines that have native-speed performance) solution. It's a bit complicated, but has the benefit of letting you run your Linux apps along side the Windows desktop (with possibilities for native integration, either using a X-Window server for Win32, or using the virtual machine's client tools).

* - most Live USB solutions tend to use 2 files : one is a big read-only file containing the live system, the other is read-writeable and used to store and remember modification (newly installed software, upgrades, user settings, user's home, etc.) between session.
This is because most Live USB distribution are descendant of Live CD distribution (where the CD-Rom is read only and holds the live distro and a RAM-disk holds the modification, using a UNIONFS to bridge the 2 together).
The big advantage of this system is that in case of a big fuckup, you can still reboot using only the original live system (just like a LiveCD) and fix/rebuild/create a new read-write big file.
Of course there are also other solutions for partitioning and installing linux on a USB stick the same way you install it on a harddrive.

Nice, but will it run Pen Drive Linux?

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/category/usb-installs-from-linux/

I thought U3 was not too bad, played around a bit with it and it seemed to worked smoothly - updated the Virus scanner, copied a few settings over etc. What annoyed me was that when looking for U3 software you were referred to the U3 website where most software needs to be purchased ("free trial").

Then I did what I bought the stick for (4 GB like yours) - install a thumbdrive bootable Ubuntu according to these instructions. Instead of fdisk I used gparted, but the procedure should be the same. Originally it showed a few MBs of unpartitioned space at the end (under windows too). Once I deleted the main partition (some weird CD-based filesystem, hence read-only) it was usable like any blank USB stick, so I had no problems repartitioning, setting the boot partition and installing Ubuntu.

I hadn't tried deleting that main partition under windows, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Don't know about the disk partitioning tools for the Mac, but there should be something doing this as well.

Apparently so.. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

A good site offering information and links for a variety of USB bootable linux options if your system supports USB booting. There are a lot of sites offering complicated instructions on how to boot linux from a USB key, this one is fairly simple and painless. Once booted up you can copy off critical data unless the HDD is really dead.