Two interns (Raki and Alex) are currently working to install a lighter variant of Ubuntu (lUbuntu) on 16gb flash drives recently purchased by the Observatory. The final installation will include programs such as ds9, Stellarium, SalsaJ, and imageGUI. The intent is to boot these from the older laptops we have, as using these drives will be a lot faster than the current Windows installed on the internal hard disks.
Have one USB harddrive with linux for each laptop to allow using the computers without affecting the windows installation.