Hey everyone!
I'm (kinda?) new to linux - I made the switch a couple of months back when I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon - in a Virtualbox at first, then as Dualboot, it became my daily driver and now, I moved on to Manjaro, but I never moved on from the Cinnamon desktop (its so pretty ^^), even though I tried pretty much all of them, I kept coming back to it.
I use Linux Lite on my USB thumb drive as my portable OS, and I gotta say, it excels at that! I tried it at first on my small, old and slow USB2.0 8GB flash drive to see if it would work at all, and sure enough it did (but had some serious slowdowns at times, because of the port speed). I since got a USB 3.1 64GB drive for this sole purpose and was surprised how smooth everything worked (even when plugged into a usb 2.0 port).
Linux Lite has a special place in my heart, because it is exactly what I was looking for - a lightweight, yet feature-packed distro to run from my USB. I did try a couple of other "lightweight" distros before that like puppy linux, but they were so stripped of features (and so unpleasing to the eye, might I add), that they were borderline unusable for me (yeah I'm pretentious when it comes to my software). The XFCE DE for linux lite is starting to grow on me too, even if it's not my beloved Cinnamon.
The reason I need a portable USB OS, is that in my university we have some work-PCs that actually have pretty good specs, but have TERRIBLY bloated windows 10 installations (they're public afterall, anyone can install anything, you can imagine the mess), and it's everything but a pleasure to work on them. I did try to fix them, but every time I come back, someone has undone all of my hard work. Booting from a USB allows me to use the full potential of the hardware, while avoiding windows altogether with all its bloat.
Why is performance so important for a university work pc, you ask? I study design, and we use powerful 2D and 3D editing software that requires good hardware. I currently have Krita, Inkscape and Blender on my LL installation, as alternatives to Photoshop, Illustrator and 3DSmax, and they're working wonderfully well. Too bad I can't use the USB at uni right now, because of the whole quarantine situation that's going on 'round the globe, but I'm still using it at my GF's place
I'm glad to be part of this (relatively small, but friendly) community.
Also, here's a screenshot of my desktop for the lulz:
