There are lot of Portable Linux Operating Systems. Its difficult to choose one. I just want to know what linux distro do you prefer...
My requirements are...
Since I'm a key contributor to the Ubuntu forums and now, to the Mint forums, I'd provide my views ...
*Should be preloaded with VLC, Firefox/Chromium, LibreOffice and some basic apps.
Mint tends to come preloaded with more apps than Ubuntu. Both of these constantly argue about which is most popular, but Mint popularity soared last year and continues to grow. It retained the "legacy" menu style interface that lots of folks (including me) like, as opposed to the cell-phone-like desktop of Unity.
You will probably have to install apps yourself, regardless of which Distro you choose.
Sorry, but this is impossible to address -- what's "easy" for one person might be "hard" for another. Requirements worded like this are useless. You should go to DistroWatch.com, and look through the Distros yourself, and decide which of the desktops you like.
Ubuntu comes with Unity (cell-phone-like) by default, but also has Xubuntu (with Xfce) and other desktops. Mint comes with Cinnamon (menu-like) but also has Mate.
*Should boot in few seconds even with old pentium 3 hardware.
Again, what does "few" mean? And, let's get REAL here -- any recent Linux distro is NOT going to boot in a "few" seconds on anything but powerful hardware. I have a 6-core, 3.2GHx AMD processor with high-speed memory, and it still takes 40 seconds to boot into Ubuntu or Mint -- and with Mint, I'm using a SSD!
Both Ubuntu and Mint have minimum hardware requirements, which an old Pentium 3, with very limited memory, is NOT going to meet.
If you want something to run on that hardware, you will be relegated to something like Lubuntu or Damn Small Linux, or Puppy Linux -- which are NOT going to give you the rich experience of something more powerful like Ubuntu or Mint.
*Should be lightweight (less size)
Sigh ... all these vague terms... What is "lightweight"? Less size -- less than what amount?
The true "lightweight" Distros are the three I mentioned above with the "size" shrinking in their order from left to right in the list.
*Should be error free (less crashes, hangups)
Then, you want an OS that is NOT written by human beings -- because anything written by human beings is, by definition, NOT capable of being error-free.
That said, in terms of Linux distros, the longer it has been out, the more bugs have been found and fixed. So, in terms of Ubuntu, if you were to install 13.04, that came out only in April this year, and still is working through fixing serious bugs. Ubuntu 12.10 came out last October and is more stable. Ubuntu 12.04 came out last April and is even more stable.
In stark contrast, the pre-release versions (Like Ubuntu Saucy) are riddled with bugs because they are still being written and won't be ready for release until October.
In terms of crashes and hangups, again, any OS written by humans is going to have these. Just visit the Ubuntu or Mint forums on any day and scroll through the posts about such problems.
*Should not be a battery sucker(low power consumption)...
Then, you've pretty much ruled out any recent Linux distro. Why? Because there are known Linux kernel bugs in which processor idling is not handled properly. Once again, read through the Ubuntu or Mint forums about hardware and you will see post after post with folks complaining about their laptop overheating, and their batteries running down, since they installed a Llinux distro. And, while there are some utilities (like Juniper and TPL) that can sometimes offset some of the overheating, they don't always work -- especially on recent laptops that use Hybrid Graphics.
*Should support newer wireless (Intel, Atheros & Ralink) hardwares.
Here's where you run into the infamous Linux "catch-22": the newer the kernel version, the newer the drivers built into it. So for new hardware, you want the latest kernel. But the newer the kernel, the newer the release, the more buggy (i.e., unstable) it is. So, you trade improved drivers for instability. And, once you start hacking a Linux distro to force a new kernel into an old version, you ask for major problems down the road.
I am going to use it in a CD/DVD.
Not only a bad idea, but for all but the very smallest Linux distro installations, not nearly enough space. You might be able to force a minimalist install onto a DVD (4GB), but you would then encounter really POOR performance, as you will be doing reads from the DVD almost constantly.
If you really want to run from a DVD, you would do better simply burning a Linux distro ISO to a DVD and running from that (something historically known as LiveCD mode, although USB sticks are most often used today) -- without trying to install it. But be prepared to wait several minutes for it to boot to a desktop, and after that, wait again every time you try run something.
Good Luck.
