A while ago I posted about installing Ubuntu on USB flash drive so that you no longer need to throw away CD’s. I wrote that the process should be made easier for inexperienced users. When I investigated what options there are for installing other distributions on a USB flash drive, I found an application for Fedora called liveusb-creator. This is exactly what I was looking for. I proposed an idea to copy this application for Ubuntu in Ubuntu Brainstorm, but apparently an application to do this is already being developed for Ubuntu 8.10. It’s still experimental work, but this is good news. Certainly this is essential for netbooks which don’t have a built-in optical drive.
EDIT: a specification for USB installation images has recently been approved for the next release of Ubuntu.