Linux

I used to leave some usb device with multiple bootable isos lying round my table, but I found out that every time I needed something, none of them would serve me, and I had to download something else, so I don't do that anymore and just download and write isos as I need them. Oh, but I still keep an old 4gb usb stick with some random distro on it, just in case my pc becomes unbootable and I have to do some maintenance/data rescue.

Ventoy with bazzite, arch, think there's a tails or something similar, a few recovery and hacking tools

Well if you don't have an actual use case for it, don't try to artificially find one.

The only thing I use USB sticks for nowadays is for OS installs.

For everything else their write speeds are slow (even the more expensive USB sticks slow down to a crawl after what feels like not even one complete overwrite) and they are unreliable.

Sure, if you want to carry around random OS installers and live environments, go for it. I personally don't have a use case for it.

I had one:

1. Live OS, Fedora KDE or something
2. 5GB FAT32 for printers and windows, lol
3. X GB encrypted EXT4, F2FS or BTRFS for storage

Of course Ventoy and multiples ISO, but also a full copy of SDIO, it's maybe 30-40GB, but absolutely essential for Windows

A medicat install, insanely useful.

Pretty boring. School textbooks and portableapps with a few of my essentials - Firefox, vim, GIMP, and some others I'm forgetting right now.

Before Google Drive and Syncthing I relied on such a USB device. Today, no matter what I put on the stick, it's outdated or entirely not what I need when I need something.

Having any stick on hand, and being able to flash an image from your phone, that's nice

Eh...

Ventoy (on a comically small external hd -- 8 GiB) and retrogaming/backup-related files on a 1 TB one.

Tails and another for storing random stuff, like a copy of documents when travelling.

Kali

I've got 3 usb's on my keychain. One for ventoi, one for tails and one for random storage.

I carry an empty one, to make copies of movies I find on work computers.

Yeah main thing is Ventoy and images for windows 10 and 11. I also have some basic tools, and some portable versions of some games I like (OoT, Warcraft 3, etc).

Some useful files I might need someday (of course encrypted), bootable linux rescue distro and of course tailsos just in case.

I have a Debian 12 install on a 5GB partition (btrfs compression is magic), and the rest is exfat. It has rEFInd as the bootloader, should be pretty good at detecting and running other OSes with bootloader problems.

I have a copy of MX Linux installed, as well as encrypted copies of all my most important data and a few commonly used portable utilities for windows and Linux. It's mostly just an emergency backup, but I have used the other parts before, just very rarely.

I hate to break it down but you probably dont need one

ventoy with medicat, kali, crunchbang plus plus

The only solid reason I can think carry anything on a USB stick is if you're going to be in an area without Internet. If you're in an IT role where you're interacting with end-user machines all the time, then the answer would obviously be some sort of live environment to troubleshoot or fix issues. In that case, load a Ventoy partition with a few different images, and and be done with it I guess.

If you're thinking like a Prepper or whatever, keep a copy of Wikipedia, and some survival books maybe? Maps? That's all I can think of. If you're going this far, better carry a backpack with portable solar panels, a large battery, and a lifejacket. None of this matters when you don't have food and water though, so...

If it's anything like mine, this is a great idea that's going to get smashed to fuck

What are you doing with your life that necessitates carrying a USB drive everywhere you go?

Git repos of some helpful scripts and configs.

Music.

Profile backup.