This burner operating system runs entirely in RAM and leaves zero traces when you shut down

I added a burner operating system to my main gaming laptop's boot menu. It lives entirely in RAM, right alongside Windows 11 and EndeavourOS installs, and I tested whether it actually forgets what I do on it, then used it for three real things I'd normally hesitate to do on my actual machine.

I've run a similar trick (an OS that loads entirely into RAM) on an old HP Pavilion m6, and it was stupid fast for a 14-year-old laptop. But somewhere in the middle of writing that story, I realized: the same trick that makes an OS fast also makes it forget, which could be perfect if I needed to lend the laptop to someone else, use it to test sketchy software, or wanted to travel to places I wouldn't want my files going.

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Using a better computer, not the old one

Same trick, better hardware

My last two articles on this were about performance: I revived that 14-year-old laptop with an OS that runs entirely in memory, then I raced that same laptop against my modern gaming rig. I found that an operating system that skips the disk entirely is sometimes shockingly fast.

What I hadn't sat with was the flip side. If nothing gets written to disk, nothing survives a reboot, either. The speed and lack of persistence come from the exact same design decision.

I flashed TrixiePup64-Retro, a current community build of Puppy Linux, to a USB stick with Rufus in ISO mode and booted it on my MSI Cyborg 15, which already dual-boots Windows 11 and EndeavourOS. I didn't install anything or mess with any partitions. I just added a UEFI boot option pointed at the stick.

Quiz 5 Questions Untangling Windows RAM: Cache, SysMain, and Real Memory Hogs Your Top Score -- Attempts -- Average 89% Users 200 Start Quiz 0 0

Once at the desktop, I checked what was actually happening under the hood with the following command:

mount | grep " / " The answer came back as follows:

unionfs on / type overlay (rw,relatime,lowerdir=/pup_a:/pup_b:/pup_ro2:/pup_k:/pup_f:/pup_z,upperdir=/mnt/tmpfs/pup_rw,workdir=/mnt/tmpfs/pup_work,uuid=on,xino=on). What that means is that the read-only base system loads from the compressed ISO layers, and anything I create or change writes to upperdir, which sits inside /mnt/tmpfs. That's straight up RAM and not an internal memory partion or the USB disk.

It didn't touch my existing install, either. The Windows and EndeavourOS partitions stayed put; Puppy just borrowed the CPU and memory for the session I booted into.

I tried to leave a trace and couldn't

Three tests with zero residue

First, I created a text file on the desktop, saved it, then shut down through Menu > Leave > Shutdown and declined the save-session prompt. When I booted back in, that file was gone. It was like a totally fresh version of PuppyOS without any of my files left there. In fact, I had forgotten to grab the screenshots I took to illustrate the test file and they were gone, too. I had to recreate them later.

Next, I downloaded the EICAR test file, the industry-standard harmless string every antivirus engine is built to recognize and flag, and saved it to the desktop. Nothing intercepted it, because Puppy doesn't ship an antivirus at all. I didn't see a single scan, quarantine, or pop-up. I opened the file, confirmed it was the real EICAR string, then rebooted the same way. The file was gone, just like the document above. Running your OS in RAM means there's nothing for viruses to hold on to or take advantage of. It's a safe way to check out any sketchy files you might want to open without putting your actual data at risk.

Finally, I browsed, signed in to my Google account, changed a couple of settings in the Firefox browser, then powered off without saving. On the next boot, none of it carried over. It was actually a pain, since I didn't have any passwords I'd saved. A friend using this laptop for an afternoon would leave nothing behind for me to find, and I'd leave nothing behind for them either.

This isn't Tails, and that's kind of the point

A lower-effort tool for a narrower job

If total anonymity online is what you're after, Tails already does that better than anything I could rig up here: it forces your traffic through Tor and is made for folks who need to disappear from the network layer, not just the local drive. But Tails asks you to shut down your regular machine, keep a dedicated USB around, and accept Tor's super slow browsing every time you boot it up.

What I've got is a lot more casual. I'm still booting from a USB stick, same as Tails requires, but there's no separate verification ritual before every use and no Tor tax slowing down every page load. It's ready in about the time it takes Windows to log in. It doesn't hide what you're doing from your ISP, of course, or the sites you visit, only the stuff you put on the machine itself once you power off. If you need anonymity, use Tails. If you just don't want a session to outlive the session, this could be much easier to manage.

I'm keeping this as a permanent boot option

I'm not replacing my daily Windows or EndeavourOS setup with this, of course, but the flashed USB stick is staying in my bag. It's an option I can reach for when I'm traveling with this laptop and don't want my browsing session to outlive the trip, or the next time I want to poke at something sketchy without wondering what it left behind. A quick boot up via the firmware menu, and I'm in. That old laptop in the drawer ended up helping me with the more modern rig, too.