The reason you're struggling to think of anything to put on it is because you don't need to be carrying a USB drive.
No aircraft cabin crew have ever put out a call asking if there are any Linux sysadmin onboard with a copy of GParted Live v1.5.0 for 32bit ARM devices .
No aircraft cabin crew have ever put out a call asking if there are any Linux sysadmin onboard with a copy of GParted Live v1.5.0 for 32bit ARM devices .
The grizzled greybeard spoke up, brandishing his weathered USB drive above his head like a sword. "I can do it. I'm a sysadmin."
"Oh, thank God!" the flight attendant sighed. "It says something about booting, I'm not sure. Nobody here knows Linux."
The greaybeard squeezed himself out of his seat and stood in the aisle. "I’d just like to interject for a moment." he interrupted with a raised finger and a self-satisfied expression. "What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/LInux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX."
He shifted his bulk to block one of the other passengers, who was screaming behind him that nobody cares. The pilot was now standing behind the flight attendant, begging the sysadmin to come up to the cockpit, but the greybeard was undeterred. "Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates t—"
The sysadmin never finished his sentence; the airplane smashed into the ground and all aboard were killed instantly. The impact somehow caused the GNU/Linux device to reboot correctly before it too was smashed to pieces a fraction of a second later.
Isn't it just far easier to transfer documents using one of the thousands of cloud apps though? Since Dropbox and such became a thing I've not had a use for USBs. If it's privacy that concerns you then you already mentioned self hosted services and I'm sure there's a few Dropbox clones among them.
There's not much point in survival PDFs unless you're also carrying a laptop to view them on.
If you really do want to go full apocalypse prepper then track down an archive of Wikipedia and various how-to websites.
lol, I feel you there. I got a ruggedized, waterproof USB stick about 6 years ago to keep on my keychain and I've used it maybe three times ever. Though I've also been working from home for the last 4+ years so, y'know, less opportunities to use it in general.
Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, though.
I've got a 15 year old SD/USB combo card on my keychain. I plugged it into a TV around 6-7 years ago because there were a couple of kids movies on there.
I also know I have some Portable apps on there, but probably a little out of date
I have three partitions: First one is Ventoy with a couple of distros per architecture. Partition two is a standard exfat partition for files. Partition three is a small fat16 partition, since there's always that one device someone has (oscilloscope, 3D printer, UEFI/BIOS, etc.) that only supports very simple file systems. I've had to use the fat16 partition more than a couple of times and I don't even work with legacy hardware.
A metal 128 GB USB on my keychain next to the U2F key
16 GB Ventoy partition with:
Clonezilla ('deploying' my system image and backups)
Mint Debian Edition (everything needed to test and recover my Debian systems)
Debian netinstall
Various manuals and reference documents
Portable CrystalDiskInfo and VeraCrypt for Windows
Dumping grounds for files that I intended to transfer between machines, particularly the XP retro gaming rig
An optimistic IF-FOUND.TXT
KeePass
Previously Windows, until once upon a time, I booted into WinRE via Ventoy, got confused between X:, C:, and whatever else, and proceeded to nuke my USB instead of another disk. The Windows installer lived on its own USB happily ever after.
And a LUKS encrypted partition in the remaining space with more documents and a backup of almost all of my photos.
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.
I carry one in my bag so I can easily transfer files to our from my instructor's computers without having to fuss around with email or my Google drive account
Mine is mostly lighting console show files of various concerts/comedians/dance performances I have been the lighting designer for. I know my use case is different than most people's, but hey, you asked.
Mostly Avolites and ETC. Mostly just always save to a couple of USB sticks as backup, one of which lives on my keys and the other in my computer bag. It is nice to have quick access to my user profile and some pre-built stuff though. Some of them I keep around because I do those shows every year but mostly it's just not worth the effort of deleting them because the files are so small. They are also all backed up to my home server.
When I last had an everyday carry USB stick (5+ years ago) I found I never actually used it for anything.
I had Ventoy and some practical ISOs, and PortableApps with a bunch of useful software (firefox, foobar2000, GIMP, notepad++...) for when I was using someone else's Windows PC.
...think I stored like two word documents on it, ever.
512GB Ventoy, every version windows that can boot from ISO. Gandalf's win 10 PE, gandalf's 111 PE, Debian live ISO, max versions of Debian and NixOS, silver blue and fedora. Ubuntu along with LTS. I could have put my crypto partition on it, but I actually like keeping that as a separate key.
If you ever do digitize it, or even going forward for other recipes you use, I recommend checking out the recipe app Paprika 3. I've been using it for years now and love it. It even bypasses pay walls on recipe sites like NYT cooking when downloading. Enter the url in the browser section, and hit download regardless of the paywalls I've encountered so far. I put cocktail recipes in there too.
MediCat is Ventoy with a ton of images and a config file.
It seems great, although I chose to roll my own as MediCat had a lot of Windows-centric images i have no need for.
I also have a USB stick on my keys. Mostly I keep books I'm reading, favorite movies, stuff like that. Then when I'm hanging out with friends later and we're talking about what we're watching I have it all ready to share.
Mine is a durable, metal 128GB stick. It lives on my keyring and has a relatively recent copy of Arch on it. It's handy for fixing broken laptops and rescuing data. A friend has a more advanced one, with multiple distros on it for different diagnosis options.
My "everyday carry" isn't a USB stick, but it can act as one - and much much more: I always have my trusty Flipper Zero with me, and the image I carry in the mass storage emulator is the Linux Mint installer, with extra space in the image to store small files.
To be honest, the Flipper Zero's mass storage emulator turns it into the slowest USB stick you never saw. But in a pinch, it's there and it's usable. I use my Flipper for a variety of other things all the time - including, with my laptop, as a presentation remote and secondary mouse - and I almost never need a USB flash drive. So slow though it is, it's enough for when I do need one.
I got two identical 64gb sticks. One's for a Ventoy setup with a bunch of different ISOs, in case anything has to be done and/or recovered. The other just has occasional random files i might need
I know Gparted helps format disks and stuff, but what can you do with it on a USB stick? Is it to format and partition other computers you come across? And how did you get Gparted on the stick itself?
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.
I used to leave some usb device with multiple bootable isos lying round my table, but I found out that every time I needed something, none of them would serve me, and I had to download something else, so I don't do that anymore and just download and write isos as I need them. Oh, but I still keep an old 4gb usb stick with some random distro on it, just in case my pc becomes unbootable and I have to do some maintenance/data rescue.
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...
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.
64 GiB, two partitions, one with my files including Keepass database, the other with Ventoy with ISOs for Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon, Debian 13.5 KDE, NixOS Gnome, Win 10 and bazzite
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
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.
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.)
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.
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.