I actually do have another Debian install on a USB jump drive as I have a USB port on my motherboard. I mostly use it as a kind of backup and alternate boot option. It is a fair bit slower, being USB 2. On the testing I've done using USB 3, it's comparable to HDD speeds, so not a huge slowdown, but still slower than SATA III. The RAM drive is of course very fast indeed, much faster than even SATA III, but that so far only has some practical benefits that might not make it worthwhile, depending on what you're trying to do, of course.
The USB jump drives themselves aren't something I'd consider to be very reliable but can often times be good enough. I wouldn't recommend using them as the main OS drive for typical usage scenarios. I suspect we're not all that far away from essentially having jump SSDs though.
Cheers.
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Oh, just wanted to mention though that on the listed computer in my signature, I do primarily boot to Windows 7 and then use Debian in it as a VM. This is a main part of my home entertainment system, so you'll have to forgive me for not optimizing it toward some specific tasks.
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