Your only real alternative would be tails, its a linux OS that you can boot off of anything like a CD or a thumb drive. As far as speed goes, tails routes everything through TOR so you wont get any increased speeds but the security on tails is better, tails only uses RAM for storage so when you turn off your computer, everything will be deleted and you wont leave a trace
TAILS is not the only alternative, then. Whonix is another.
Thank you. Whonix really looks good, I'm learning about all the security and anonymity features on whonix website right now and I'm glad I found it because of you. I'll be using it for a lot of things once I get it all figured out and set up.