[oclug] Newbie Question

[michael ondrechak]

On Apr 5, 2005 2:27 PM, Stephen M. Webb <stephenw at xandros.com> wrote:
<snip>
> If you want to take the OS plunge, get yourself a copy of a modern Linux
> distribution and install it -- the good ones will create room on your hard
> drive for installation without harming your existing OS.  Some distributions
> offer a "live" CD, but those are actually poor demonstrations and I don't
> recommend them for your purposes.

Can you explain why the live CD is a poor demonstration? 

Personally, I think they're a great idea and what better way to
demonstrait to someone comtemplating the jump to open source what
tools are available.  With the live CD, you just pop it into the CDROM
and reboot.  Nothing installs onto the hard drive and when you reboot,
you're back to the original environment.   (If you're unfamiliar with
what a live CD is, it is an installation of an operating system, linux
in my case, and all the support tools and applications.  The
installation runs out of your computer's ram and doesn't touch your
hard drive, If you want to get at the files stored on your machine's
drive, the liveCD does contain everything you need to get at your
hard-drive.)

The live CDs generally come with a complete environment consisting of
a desktop, word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, web
browser, mail client, etc.  I carry one with me everywhere I go and I
can usually hop onto someone's machine, boot a linux Live CD and tools
and resume working using files stored on the web somewhere.   When I'm
done, I reboot the machine I borrowed and it is as if I was never
there.

As  for which live CD to use, I like knoppix and I'm giving ubuntu a
try.  I've noticed that when run under windows, ubuntu will give you
the option of installing open source software that runs under windows.
 The software that ubunto is willing to install is the same as the
list provided by Brenda.

regards,
Michael.