Thought puppy might be the one, apparently not
 

So not only can no one figure out how to make it persistent on usb but another disgusting problem was it apparently disconnected once I connected to wifi, and when I tried opening up the wifi manager it told me it was already open, and rather than just making it pop up and not even bother with that message, no, makes you hunt for it, and no, it would not display anywhere no matter what screen view I clicked, and could not find any task manager to shut it off wherever it was. Why isn't the wifi just shown in the taskbar or why is there no reconnect button?

What version of Puppy Linux did you try?

I've used Puppy on a portable usb install for my main distro back in the day. Never had a problem with WiFi not working.