Of course, BACKUP, BACKUP and BACKUP first and foremost !!!!
I installed Ubuntu Lucid Lynx on a 16GB memory stick with no major issue. However, there is ONE thing that you need to be extremely careful about. At the very last window before confirming and going ahead, you need to click on the advanced button, to change the location of the master boot record for the startup. By default, it will install itself on /dev/sda, or /dev/hda, depending on your hard disk. This is your main booting hard disk, and it will screw up your hard disk. Make sure it is instead installed on the USB stick device, which should be something /dev/sdb, or /dev/sdc.
I would also recommend that you have NO other USB storage device on your computer at that time, and if you can temporarily disconnect your hard disk, it is even safer.
I screwed up two hard disks with this, once with JoliCloud, and once with Ubuntu 10.04.
I would also recommend that you have no swap partition. Such partition is accessed a lot and your memory stick has a finite number of writes it can sustain before becoming defective. If this is only to experiment with Ubuntu before doing the big move, don't worry. If you want to have it permanently on the stick for portable use, remove the swap partition, expanding the main partition instead.
But otherwise, it works like a charm.
No replies.... :( :( – User – 2010-06-01T14:20:34.643
2You need to be a little more patient. – ThatGraemeGuy – 2010-06-01T14:39:49.293