What's on your "Everyday Carry" USB stick?
I had one:
I don't really carry one anymore, but the one I have at my desk has Ventoy and LMDE on it for when I need to mess with something requiring my system to be down or modify my OS partition. I don't really do much on other PCs except when I have to help my wife with something.
When I was working at my last job I carried 2-3 with a ton of database backups and proprietary software and firmware files for clients' automation systems. Kinda don't miss it at all, but it sure made me feel important, lol.
Different Linux distros and Windows. Because I regularly need them.
How regularly do you really need them? Surely by the time you come to reinstall an OS there's already a later version available, doesn't it just make sense to create a fresh USB each time?
For example about a month ago I installed Project Bluefin on a couple of devices so that USB is lying around somewhere. But in the meantime the maintainers have rotated the update signing keys so that month old installer is now redundant.
Windows does not really have a version afaik, so I just update it every few months. Debian live is just for visually editing/moving partition in complex setups, and I can fix my Arch install with an installer/live iso that's months old. It's just that I don't want multiple USB-Sticks, and need multiple ISOs at the same time (eg. Arch and debian live for rescuing my installs, or Win 10/11 for new Installs for more tech illiterate people - Win 10 is the "just functions" thing for my father, when we need a laptop for proprietary laptops, and 11 is for other people who need something set up. Additionally, I use Windows' installer environment to update my Laptops, servers and workstations BIOS.)
Is there such a thing as a Windows live environment? Once in a blue moon I need to boot into Windows, like when I need to reprogram my gaming mouse or something. I’d love to not have to maintain a separate partition on my OS drive that I use like once a year.
With the stock installer? Not really. However, technically the installer itself is a very, very minimal windows. Just open up a cmd (with Ctrl + F12 or smth I believe) and you can open notepad from there, meaning you have a graphical file "manager". And from there you can do things such as executing BIOS installers, which will actually work - even though the WM looks pretty weird, you will be able to use very simple programs just fine - such as cmd, or the Intel BIOS installer.
Well if you don't have an actual use case for it, don't try to artificially find one.
The only thing I use USB sticks for nowadays is for OS installs.
For everything else their write speeds are slow (even the more expensive USB sticks slow down to a crawl after what feels like not even one complete overwrite) and they are unreliable.
Sure, if you want to carry around random OS installers and live environments, go for it. I personally don't have a use case for it.
Before Google Drive and Syncthing I relied on such a USB device. Today, no matter what I put on the stick, it's outdated or entirely not what I need when I need something.
Having any stick on hand, and being able to flash an image from your phone, that's nice
Of course Ventoy and multiples ISO, but also a full copy of SDIO, it's maybe 30-40GB, but absolutely essential for Windows
Pretty boring. School textbooks and portableapps with a few of my essentials - Firefox, vim, GIMP, and some others I'm forgetting right now.
Eh...
Ventoy (on a comically small external hd -- 8 GiB) and retrogaming/backup-related files on a 1 TB one.
right now mine has manjaro+cinnamon. i booted my wife's Win11 laptop to it so she could test drive it and within ten minutes she was asking how to get to the installer. i hope to repeat this process with others as well.
Ventoy with bazzite, arch, think there's a tails or something similar, a few recovery and hacking tools
I hate to break it down but you probably dont need one
Some useful files I might need someday (of course encrypted), bootable linux rescue distro and of course tailsos just in case.
Yeah main thing is Ventoy and images for windows 10 and 11. I also have some basic tools, and some portable versions of some games I like (OoT, Warcraft 3, etc).
I have a Debian 12 install on a 5GB partition (btrfs compression is magic), and the rest is exfat. It has rEFInd as the bootloader, should be pretty good at detecting and running other OSes with bootloader problems.
Tails and another for storing random stuff, like a copy of documents when travelling.
I carry an empty one, to make copies of movies I find on work computers.
Kali
Cheers, currently grabbed Ubuntu, Fedora, GParted, and Kali.
ventoy with medicat, kali, crunchbang plus plus
I have a copy of MX Linux installed, as well as encrypted copies of all my most important data and a few commonly used portable utilities for windows and Linux. It's mostly just an emergency backup, but I have used the other parts before, just very rarely.
I've got 3 usb's on my keychain. One for ventoi, one for tails and one for random storage.
The only solid reason I can think carry anything on a USB stick is if you're going to be in an area without Internet. If you're in an IT role where you're interacting with end-user machines all the time, then the answer would obviously be some sort of live environment to troubleshoot or fix issues. In that case, load a Ventoy partition with a few different images, and and be done with it I guess.
If you're thinking like a Prepper or whatever, keep a copy of Wikipedia, and some survival books maybe? Maps? That's all I can think of. If you're going this far, better carry a backpack with portable solar panels, a large battery, and a lifejacket. None of this matters when you don't have food and water though, so...
What are you doing with your life that necessitates carrying a USB drive everywhere you go?
What kinda question is that? Seems pretty judgemental to me.
Some people are "the computer guy" for a BUNCH of people, and if your usual pocket arrangement allows them there are a bunch of tools you can use for different jobs.
It's just a different kind of pocketknife at the end of the day. I don't interact with nearly enough people to need one, but I can definitely see the possibilities.
This seems like a question that 90s people would ask. "What are you doing with your life that necessitates carrying a globally-connected supercomputer in your pocket?"
In different use cases I can see plenty of times where a bootable USB drive can mean you can use your own computer from any other machine. Which is super cool. It's gonna be a much slower version of it, obviously(because of USB read/write, but pretty cool that you can carry a full copy of your system, settings, documents, and programs than can sync to/from your regular backups. Or another with copies of other boot level tools to have on hand. If you help a bunch of people with covering from microshit to Linux, then keeping a LiveISO on hand for them to try out and install seems like a good idea to keep around.
There's just so many reasons why you would ask this. Personally I don't, but if I did I would like to think I could ask the question.
If nothing else, it's interesting to think about for sure. Now I kinda wanna imagine what kind of stuff is even possible to run like this that would be useful to me.
I only own one such at all, and I've only used it a very few times. Once to install my own OS, once to install a different one I leave at my brother's house because his laptop is having issues and I go over there to watch movies with him, and once to install that same one (Mint in those cases, Pop for mine) on my parent's computer.
If I find a good enough use case, I would start carrying at least one. But for now I just rewrite this one for whatever things I need at the time.
Honestly, carrying around a usb drive is generally a pretty good idea. I carry one with several ISOs so I can rescue a machine if something happens and I am unable to fix it (and also show people what modern Linux has to offer).
This is something I carry pretty much anywhere I take my computer, and would recommend to most people. Sure, I could leave it at home, but if I have to meet a deadline, I don’t want to spend the extra hour driving to my house. It’s a worst case scenario kind of thing, but it pays off considering how little effort takes.
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