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#30
First iyou have to learn how to install it correctly to avoid seeing Grub(mandatory part of installation) be installed to the flash drive directly. You can partition and format the flash drive either during or before the actual install in case you plan to use a larger portion for data recovery or see a swap partition.
Once you have any Linux distro like ubuntu installed the drive will unavailable in Windows when plugged since Windows will automatically want to reformat the flash drive. Generally the distro will run as normal as if you had installed it on an internal drive as far as detecting all hardwares and connecting through a Lan or nic card without issue.
For a usb connection you may have a problem there however since a Linux equivalent driver may be required. The particular release number of ubuntu didn't make much of a difference however as far as going on and running. The problem I ran into was with the old dsl usb adapter nightmare for both the 64bit Windows and never getting any distro online until changing ISPs entirely. The long outdated RJ-11 dsl to usb went "out the door"! while the updated XFinity came in!
The Zorin OS 6.1 was just looked over recently is also a ubuntu LTS type release to consider as well as another like Puppy Linux for anything 16gb or smaller to be a via install. http://ostatic.com/blog/is-zorin-os-...er-than-ubuntu
For the larger more feature packed and Debian based form of Linux Mint a 32gb flash drive still saw a 4gb root without any swap partition note and a large NTFS data recovery partition. The prepackaged options to install some 200 apps made that a choice for seeing the entire flash drive that size turned into a Linux stick.
For you a 1gb swap with the rest set up for the root for the 12 or 16gb flash drive would work out easily for ubuntu there. Just follow the warnings in the guide about how the Grub install needs to be pointed at the flash drive however if not unplugging your main drive.