Linux on a USB stick
 

Anyone have any good links on how to do it from a windows machine?

Honestly, I need to get an external and move all of my photos to it and free up about.. 60 gigs!

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent

Lots of ubuntu tips there...

Does that help? Or do you want another flavour?

Why not load it up through a live CD? Then partition the HD

I've never partitioned a hard drive and if I do I need to clear up space. I have about 60 gigs that need to be stuck on an external for storage (photos, music, etc).

I was going to go with Ubuntu

I think that requires me to already have linux

Wait I'm confused - whats stopping you from doing this in windows? Do you already have an external? Typically before a total reformat (i.e. virus infected machines) I load up linux through a liveCD, plug in the external hard drive and move over any files that I want to save.

No, I guess I wasn't clear

1) I need an external hard drive to free up hard drive space on my laptop
2) most of the tutorials for making a linux pen drive are mostly for doing it from a linux distro
3) if I get an external I might as well skip making a linux pen drive and just partition the hard drive for windows and linux.

Try Puppy 5.25. It's small and efficient. It'll go onto a 1GB stick with no problem with room to spare so you'd have lots of space on an 8 or 16 GB.

The "live CD" option is fine if you're just going to boot it on occasion. You'd still need a live CD to install it on a "stick".

Why do you need linux?

I want to be proficient with it. I am an IT major.

I guess that makes sense, formatting an external shouldn't have much to do with it though. To get started I'd definitely recommend Ubuntu, its the most user-friendly linux distro but obviously still retains the capability of any programming you want to do. I had a machine running on Ubuntu for about 3 years, then just got bored with it (I'm not a CSC major) so went back to windows.

You can use a Windows machine to create the bootable Ubuntu stick. Just make sure the computer you install it on can boot from a USB drive.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

going with that.. Lets see how long it takes to download the ISO

I should go with Ubuntu 11.04 Live, correct?

Yes that's the latest though I haven't upgraded to 11.04 yet. I have it running on a disk-less netbook for the last couple years, and each new version requires less and less tinkering. Its a pretty solid product now.