I like your problem and hope you solve it. I'll try to help where I can. I have a similar situation where I could use usb sticks.  And for me, I would stick with cgminer. You stated diskspace, I take it the thumbs are 4GBish?

Some questions so I don't offer ideas that you've tried already...
* confirm - live not an installed 12.10 on the usb, correct?
* if yes, have you attempted to install on the usb vs live - and then from there, it would have to be a limited install if you are using small sticks; compiling issues are over at that point.

I would like to see you get it working and I want to get it working with cgminer. I actually just gparted a 16G stick last night to prep for xubuntu install for shits n giggles (will run on a 2x7870 box). I want to get this working with CPU mining like yourself for the servers I have access to.

Any effort towards mining is not wasting effort from my perspective, BOL to you!