small installation

[poldie]

I want a bootable USB key version of Ubuntu. I've created a live boot disk, but nothing gets saved. I have a 2gb key. Ideally I'd like 1.5gigs of Ubuntu, and 500megs of fat32 for storing a truecrypt file which I'd use from both the USB ubuntu as well as other systems (windows!). But it's not even fitting when I give it the whole 2gigs. Is there any distribution which will fit? Mainly I need a web browser (with java) - not really bothered about anything else. Is there a version of Ubuntu which will fit?

[arrange]

A "lean install" might help:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081215
http://disambiguation.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/a-minimal-ubuntu-install-the-basics/
But it takes some work to tweak and get running.

[poldie]

A "lean install" might help:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081215
http://disambiguation.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/a-minimal-ubuntu-install-the-basics/
But it takes some work to tweak and get running.

It does look not entirely trivial, although I might attempt it at some later date to get a little more familiar with Ubuntu. Thanks for those links.

For now, perhaps there's something I missed when initially tried the live USB install. Is there any reason why changes to the desktop shouldn't be persisted? If if that does work, how can that fit on the usb disk but not a regular install? Surely it should be easy for the `live usb creator` to build the same stuff onto the key for me?