Whilst browsing through LWN this afternoon I started reading about
"Zero Install"
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/02/15/0724206
and that lead me to looking at "Rox Desktop"
http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/static.html
and that in turn lead me to "CPX-Mini" a distro that is installable
on a 'thumb drive' It is a live CD which you can download from
http://debian.tu-bs.de/project/cpx-mini/index.html
and when it has loaded there is an icon on the desktop which will
install the OS to a USB stick (or whatever you like to call it).
No faffing about formatting the thingy, copying files, installing
grub - it is all done for you.
Having said that I haven't yet tested it to see if it will boot my
spare system, that is for tomorrow.
--
John Lewis
Debian Linux with Geneweb genealogy application
