Mandriva Linux recently announced the Mandriva Flash 2008 Spring operating system, the latest version of its Linux-on-a-USB-stick distro. The Flash sticks come with a complete, bootable version of Mandriva Linux and make it dead simple to take your Linux with you wherever you go - a huge help when you're trying to impress the babes at the beach.

Mandriva, formerly Mandrake, was once the darling of the Linux community and managed to strike a nice balance between cutting edge features and newcomer friendliness. While Ubuntu has surpassed Mandriva as the current Linux darling, Mardriva continues to deliver a strong distro.

While the non-free aspects of Mandriva might make purists hestitate, others will appreciate the ready-to-go capabilities of the Flash distro - plug it in and boot. In our experience, everything just worked.

The latest Flash sticks have been bumped from 4 GB to 8 GB and pack in a speed boost as well. Mandriva claims the new keys can manage 4.6MB/sec write speeds and an impressive 18.7MB/sec read speed.

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