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Simple version: what filesystem (or more complex setup, perhaps) is best for use on a liveusb system? LiveUSB system with filesystem directly on the drive, not one with compressed system image a-la livecd.

(The Choice of filesystem for GNU/Linux on an SD card question is somewhat relevant, but not completely)

Generally, it seems ext2 is somewhat problematic with regards to data-loss (i.e. sudden power failures / disconnects / etc.), and journaling filesystems (ext3, ext4) are relatively slow (i.e. terribly slow on some $8 thumb drive). Caching (eprd?) seems like a possible option, although likely too problematic and not very useful.

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HoverHell
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For one squashfs is a good read only choice. Together with unionfs you can also install new software.

On my netbook I decided to go with ext2. The more modern versions perform many more writes which might lead to an early degradation of the drive (see here). In that context - make sure you have no swap on your drive. This might also support choosing a read only filesystem for your main system.

I wouldn't call ext2 problematic - AFAIK it's as save as ext3. It's true journalling speeds some things up - but at the cost of many extra writes.

Oh - and it might be a good idea to put your /var and /tmp dirs onto ramdisks to further reduces writes.

bdecaf
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