USB live distros.. not satisfied

[ud6]

So, yep.. USB live distros have come a long way, but not long enough.

I use 19.0 mint mate, and like a portable USB version but the standard mint is (i) not persistent and (ii) relatively slow and large on USB.

I tried puppylinux, but no bluetooth (can you believe that!) and I hate the DE. Fatdog64 was also fast, and had libreoffice, abd Bluetooth, but bluetooth didnt work and after setting up nicely, it lost my desktop icon image files (not sure how). Porteus I couldn't ever get to boot up. And I want my mate DE.

Is it too much to ask to have a debian base and mate DE but something like fatdog64 (fast bootin and persistence)? Been thinking maybe I just do my own stripped version of mint 19 and make it persistent on a USB, but what a hassle. Any thoughts. Anyone run mint from USB or any other distros?

[gm10]

Making a persistent version of Mint isn't that much effort though:
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=275536

[ud6]

Making a persistent version of Mint isn't that much effort though:
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=275536

I must have spent about 12 hours messing with various USB distros. I think a persistent mint 19 live usb is the answer. Fundamentally mint is an excellent OS.. I had forgotten the swath of hardware problems you get with may other OSs. Also, some of these 'lite' versions are just not suitable for modern computing: puppy linus wasn't allowing me to read Ext4 partition on computer (I think cos LVM dynamic partition sizing on file system) and also many of my USBs are now f2fs, and weren't useable. Synaptic was in repos, but would not install. .. fundamentally I need menu system and software similar to what I use, amd worth slower boot up time to get more efficiencies with actual use.

Mint 19 (Mate) is best OS I've ever used. As an aside, I found out today, Mate comes from Erba Maté. i.e. we shouldn't pronounce it "may-t" but instead "maa-tay".

[catweazel]

I use 19.0 mint mate, and like a portable USB version but the standard mint is (i) not persistent and (ii) relatively slow and large on USB.

@gm10 has answered (i). As for (ii), that's a function of the USB device, not the OS. These days there are flash drives available that have SSD speeds. https://www.corsair.com/ww/en/flash-voyager-gtx