I am just about to set up my new Linux machine, which will be used to convert analog video and audio to digital video and audio. Is there any reason why I shouldn't run the system off of a live USB stick (say, a good quality one from Sandisk), that is, without installing Linux on the hard drive and not setting up a boot partition, a system partition, and all that?
Just mount /home and /var to an SSD, tempFS(If you dont care about your data), or network drive and this is a perfect purpose for USB booting.
Saves your hard drives from all the bootloader stuff, and should be faster than a spinning disk if the drive is 3.0.
Id even mount the USB as read only to ensure it isnt damaged, and use any ISO generator to manage updates from another device (Like create a new flash, shutdown this PC, plug in the new flash - bam update complete)