Thinkpads Forum

Is it possible? The reason I ask is that the hard drive in my T43 is on its way out, and when it comes down to it, replacing it simply isn't worth the money. But I do have flash drives laying about, so if I could get an install of something on there that would work, it'd breathe new life into my only laptop.

I've also been out of the Linux scene for a while, what are the current/compatible distros?

Yes, it will work.
Most any 32-bit distro should work just fine.

I carry Puppy Linux around on a USB stick and it will boot almost any PC. I had a T42 as my main machine for some time and ran Puppy on that. The T40 series are all getting on a bit now - still good machines though - and the latest and greatest distros may be a little slow. Puppy will make it go like a train without any hard disk at all.