Six Best Portable Operating Systems
By Jason Fitzpatrick, 9:00 AM on Sun Apr 12 2009, 70,720 views (Edit post, Set to draft, Slurp) Copy this whole post to another site
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Why restrict yourself to merely carrying around your data on a thumb drive? Take your entire operating system on your flash drive with the excellent portable operating systems you'll find inside this week's Hive Five.

Photo by Marcin Wichary.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite portable operating system and to tell us what makes it dear to your heart. You responded with hundreds of nominations, and we're back with the top six contenders for the title of best portable operating system. Six contenders in a Hive Five contest? Due to a tie within the top five contenders, a sixth contender has squeezed into the race.

Puppy Linux
Puppy Linux doesn't require the kind of liposuction required by the meatier operating systems in the Hive Five in order to fit into a nice portable package. Weighing in at under 100MB, it can easily be loaded on everything from a CD to a USB drive with little fuss. The user interface is friendly even for a non-Linux user, and the basic tools you need for popular portable operations like partitioning and file recovery are readily available—although it's just as great for web browsing and basic computing. We've already taken Puppy Linux for a walk, so check it out if you want a closer look at this friendly portable OS.





Slax
Slax takes a very user friendly and novel approach to portable computing. Before you even download the distribution you can customize it right from the download site by adding and subtracting modules based on your needs. You don't need the office software? Delete the module. Can't live without multimedia tools? Add them in. If you're completely new to Linux and setting up a portable operating system, Slax will get you up and running with the tools you want in no time flat.





Ubuntu
The same qualities that make Ubuntu so popular as a desktop operating system and live CD bring it a lot of popularity as a portable operating system. Ubuntu isn't as small as some of the other contenders here, but thanks to a number of factors, including strong saturation in the Linux market and an easy to use tool built right for flash-drive installations, Ubuntu makes a great addition to your portable drive.





BackTrackIf BackTrack were your friend, it would be the friend you have who keeps a survival kit in an Altoids tin, a length of rope in his jacket just in case, and a folding shovel in his briefcase. BackTrack isn't the most lightweight and certainly not the fluffiest portable operating system in this Hive Five, but it is a serious tool packed with 300 applications covering everything from packet sniffing to hot spot probing to brute force password attacks. If you know what you're doing, BackTrack will leave no corner of your computer and network un-poked, un-scanned, un-prodded, and un-analyzed. If you've never used BackTrack, check out our screenshot tour.





CrunchBang
CrunchBang is a fork of the Ubuntu development tree, sporting an ultra-minimal interface with a heavy emphasis on media playback. Out of the box, for example, Firefox has Flash support and VLC can play a variety of media including DVDs. If you're missing an application or tool you need, thanks to its Ubuntu roots you can grab software right from the Ubuntu repository. Check out our CrunchBang screenshot tour for a closer look at this attractive portable system.





Damn Small Linux
Damn Small Linux is in fact really damn small. How small? Originally designed as an experiment to see how much Linux awesomeness could be packed into 50MB business card CD, Damn Small Linux hasn't strayed from its origins as an absolutely tiny portable distribution. Just because Damn Small Linux is tiny doesn't mean it's underpowered, though. It includes Firefox, a VNC viewer, file managers, instant messaging clients, and even a web server.




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Now that you've had a chance to look over the contenders for top portable operating system, it's time to cast your vote to determine who will win the title.

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