Hacker News Reader

It's not hard at all. In Ubuntu you can set up a live USB using the Ubuntu Live USB creator[0]. More directions in the Ubuntu docs[1]. On Windows, there's the LinuxLive USB Creator[2].

Yes, I know I can do it since I've done it before.

I'm just saying I find it much more involved than changing a simple BIOS setting.

I have use this before:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB...

Very simple.

IIRC the Arch isos are set up such that you can literally dd them onto a usb drive and they're automatically bootable. Not sure if any other distros do this, but they ought to.

Keep in mind though that your mainboad must support USB-HDD mode for that to work. Many mainboards don't though, for these you need to install a bootloader on the plug.

unetbootin is in the repositories.

This. It runs on the three main OSs and creates USB sticks for many distros, it's awesome.