I think for what you want to do, a 'real' install might be your best choice. Flash drives are pretty cheap these days; I bought a 16 GB. USB 3 store brand for $10.99. I formatted it to ext4 and did a 'real' install from a live DVD. I unplugged my hard drive just so nothing got installed to the hard drive by accident but that isn't necessary. Just pay attention during the install process that the O.S.
and GRUB are written to the proper drive. Writing to flash drives is much slower than reading so installing takes more time than installing to a hard drive. I bought a USB 3 flash drive thinking write speeds might be faster than USB 2 even on a USB 2 port. I don't know if I wasted $3 or not
. I installed PCLinuxOS on it and can update and install additional software just like on a hard drive. Even though installing takes quite some time, using the flash drive install while slower than an internal hard drive, isn't too slow. Everyday functions - web browsing, office stuff etc. work pretty well. Any proprietary software such as video or network adapter drivers should install and work normally.
Bookmarks