[Meatloaf] Am I looking for a "live" Linux distro?

[pt]

I think I'm looking for something called a "live" distro that will run off
of a USB stick ... something that absolutely won't modify the hard drives
on the laptop I'm running it on. I'm trying to reacquaint myself with
Linux. I used Unix (PrimeOS) and Linux extensively in the 80s, 90s & early
2000s, but not since then. I'm familiar with command line and use the
Gnuwin32 tools a lot.

I have a Windows 7 Pro laptop that, for the time being, must remain
Windows. I've got some USB sticks
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5K8E1A?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1>
.

I'm considering Debian, SUSE, Ubuntu, Alpine and Kali.

I've tried Ubuntu via Unetbootin and it got to a point where it looked like
it wanted to repartition my laptop drives. I bailed on that.

For setting up the USB stick I've downloaded Unetbootin, BalenaEtcher,
rawriteexe, Fedora Media Writer and ddrelease64. Etcher and Unetbootin seem
to be the least favored.

Q. Do I only look for releases / distros say they're "live"?

Q. Can any distro be convinced to run in "USB only / don't f*** with my
hard drive" mode?

Thanks in advance.

-- 
Please wash your hands and change your shoes after shredding this message
into tiny bits and trampling it into the ground.
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