[SGVLUG] recommendation for booting USB drive

[Claude Felizardo]

Any recommendations for a small but mostly useful distro to install
onto a USB thumb drive?  I'm partial to Mandriva but figure I don't
need a fancy GUI for a rescue disk.

Wife needed a USB thumb drive to bring some stuff to work and staples
had a Memorex 512 MB drive for $15 and a 1 GB drive for $25, NO
REBATES!   A 64 MB drive would have been sufficient but at the price I
picked up the 512 for her and figured I'd try the 1GB and see about
putting Linux on it.  They also have a 2 GB but didn't want to spend
that much.  I had scanned the Sunday paper ads and while other stores
had them for less, I didn't want to bother with any rebates, long
lines or wait for shipping.

claude