I was initially fascinated by them because I liked the ability to create very cheap media to distribute to students and users so they can have an actual Linux experience on their own machines without needing to install the operating system, change what they're comfortable with or risk doing any harm. Not only that, but live CDs exist for most distributions, so this same user group can quickly change from Fedora to Ubuntu to OpenSUSE and so on.

The end goal was to help users get comfortable in the Linux environment and show them they can do anything in it that they want to -- and then eventually migrate them to it.

But like I said, the luster is gone. My biggest quibble about live CDs is that they're incredibly slow -- to boot, to use, etc. -- and don't let you save configuration changes easily. Those are substantial issues.

I've been seeking a better solution, and thankfully, I've found it: bootable USB distributions. These have been around for some time, but their weaknesses have kept me from truly embracing them. However, Fedora 9's new LiveUSB implementation is the best I've encountered, and it's enough to make me a believer. Not only is there a simple method for creation which most users can perform unescorted, but the process is also nondestructive, letting you keep the files on the USB drive that were already there. Plus, data persistence -- the ability to retain changes -- is straightforward.

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Figure 1. The Fedora LiveUSB Creator simplifies the creation of the bootable flash drive.

Creating the Drive
I experimented with a number of flash drives and didn't run into a problem with any of them as long as there was 1GB of free space remaining. Smaller drives (2GB or less) are often factory-formatted with FAT while larger ones are formatted with FAT32; as far as I could tell, this didn't make any difference. 

While the drive can be created using a number of different command-line methods within Linux, the simplest -- and the one that users will be able to follow -- involves making it from Windows (I know that it's almost heresy to suggest making a Linux boot from Windows, but bear in mind that most users who are going to be interested in a LiveUSB implementation of Linux are probably running Windows and not Linux; this is probably the best method for them):

1. Go to http://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator and download the liveusb-creator program.
   
   
2. Install it and open the folder when it finishes.
   
   
3. Double-click on liveusb-creator to run it. This will start the program shown in Figure 1.
   
   
4. Set the Target Device to the flash drive.
   
   
5. Choose where the image (the ISO file) will come from. If you have a slow Internet connection, you can have one live CD that you use for this. If you have a decent Internet connection, you may as well use the download option.
   
   
6. Set the Persistent Storage amount. I don't know why this defaults to 0MB, but I suggest going with at least 300MB for the average user.
   
   
7. Click the Create Live USB button and sit back. You can watch the progress (as shown in Figure 2), but be prepared to wait around 10 minutes for the process to complete. Two folders are created on the drive: syslinux (less than 7MB and responsible for the actual booting) and LiveOS (the size differs based on your storage setting).
   
   
8. Close the application and move to a client workstation.

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Figure 2. The creation process takes about 10 minutes.

At the Workstation
As I mentioned before, using flash drives with 1GB of remaining free space didn't cause any problems. Also, there was no noticeable difference between drives formatted with FAT or FAT32.

But it's important to make sure the workstation will boot from USB, and this typically requires reconfiguring the BIOS. Reboot the workstation and press the corresponding key to take you into the BIOS configuration (F12 works often, as does DEL. If it's not one of those, try F1 or F2). Within the BIOS configuration options, access the Boot menu and enable "Boot USB Devices First" or a setting with similar wording. If the option to boot from USB is simply enable/disable, choose enable and then go to the order of boot devices and move USB above the hard drive.

Save the changes and exit the BIOS configuration. This will continue with the reboot and, if your USB drive is plugged in, should boot Fedora.

NOTE: If you get the single-line entry "Boot Error" and nothing else happens, update the BIOS and all should work as intended.

From Then On
When the system boots, the Fedora 9 environment will load much quicker than was possible with live CDs, and the user will be able to work within the Linux environment. As shown in Figure 3, the USB drive shows the new folders created on it, and other devices can be accessed as normal. The icon Install to Hard Drive remains on the desktop, allowing for a quick, permanent transition to Fedora should the user decide to do that.

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Figure 3. Working within the LiveUSB environment.

While an Internet connection isn't required on the workstation to use the operating system, it's strongly recommended because most users will want to download additional programs that let them test the operating system's functionality further.