Windows pissed you off lately? Of course it has. Well, for those of you interested in running something
other than Windows on your home machines but are afraid or unwilling to install Linux or some other operating system there is a solution. And a fun one, at that.
For quite some time now, you've had the option to have your cake and eat it too by using a LiveDistro.
From
WikiPedia:
LiveDistro is a generic term for an operating system distribution that is executed upon boot, without installation on a hard drive. Typically, it is stored on bootable media such as a CD-ROM (Live CD), DVD (Live DVD), USB Flash Drive, among others.
This means you download a distro, burn it to CD, reboot your computer (booting from the CD) and- BAM! You're using Linux or some other flavor of *nix without changing
anything on your hard drive. The operating system is loaded from CD directly into memory. Pop out the CD, restart your computer and you're right back to the Windows you love to hate.
Go ahead, this is one example of cheating in a relationship that I support- No one will ever know!
For those just starting out, I recommend
Knoppix. It does a very good job detecting your hardware so your wireless mouse, new video card, monitor- all will likely show up in the OS without a hitch.
Pretty nifty, eh?
But it gets better- play around with the OS, run the browser, play your collection of MP3's, view your videos- as you can still
read the data Windows stored on the drives. Get bored, frustrated, whatever? Just kick out the CD, reboot, and you're back to Windows.
FrozenTech's LiveCD List which has a much larger of possible distributions ("distros") to download. As I said, Knoppix is a great starter. Also, Mandrake is another good one if you're coming from Windows-only computer experience.
And best of all- it's
FREE.
What the hell are you waiting for? :D
PB