linux on usb

Gastly is right. Currently Red Hat has no distributions that will fit onto a flash drive. To alter their scripts enough to work will take so much time that it really isn't worth it. Damn Small Linux and Feather Linux are two that are speciffically built for flash drives and cd's. There are several others but not good enough to mention at this time. There is a special way you have to put it on the flash drive as well. Can't just pop a file on and let it go. If you do some searches on either USB flash linuxs then you'll find alot of explaniations to them as well as the download. Like almost every linux, those two are completely free and open source. They are nice to have, and GREAT for tech supporting computers (mostly servers), and the show-off-factor is way out there, but they aren't great for every day normal use. They are slow, and lack so very many of the features in any normal linux or any OS for that matter. I'm a computer tech and I make good use of them on a weekly basis, and out of XPE as well (Win XP on CD that doesn't need to be installed), so I can vouch for their stability and usefulness. But like every thing else they are not an every-situation type of thing.

By saying a "Red Hat Distribution" you could mean a few things. The full distribution is simply too large to fit on most udb keys (although technology is changing this fast). By installing a minimal installation then you can indeed install it on a USB drive. It is the same as installing it on a floppy drive; as you just need to properly setup the udb drive to be bootable and hope your bios supports it. There is lot's of information about USB linux on www.linux-usb.org.

I am fairly confident that this can be acheived, although I have not tied it myself. many Linux distributions can operate as a Live CD and even be installed onto a USB pen drive, so I suspect that Red Hat will work. First, you must ensure that your motherboard will boot from the USB, so I suggest checking the manufacturers site for the latest BIOS upgrade. Next you would need to check the Red Hat site or forums for details on how to best implement this proceedure.

i don't think so. debian, on the other hand, can be installed by usb

I don't think so. First of all in the configuration settings I only remember CD Drive, Disk drive, and hard drive as the primary boot drives. There's no removable disk. But then again that's just a wild guess. :)

Actually Red Hat is a very big linux disto. It comes on 2 CD's and is too big to fit onto a usb drive. But you can also use Damn Small Linux. It is specially made for USB drives. You can download it for free and it has got only a 50 MB download size. It's a complete distro and the very best when it comes to low end computers or use on USB drives.