Lot's of people have thought about converting to Linux for all the right reasons, but lack the courage to take the plunge. If you are one of those who is skittish, relax. There's a way you can test the waters without jumping in over your head. You do not have to reformat your computer's hard drive. You can visit the land of Linux without learning the language.

Here's a quote from the Knoppix website.

KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it.

Even though I am a faithful Linux user, I downloaded Knoppix to see how it works. I have several friends who are Windows users and fearful of change. (Aren't we all?) I must admit, I was very impressed with the way Knoppix loaded and ran on my system. It even found all of my hardware and made it usable. Sound card, CD-Writer, graphics card, etc. all worked without any tinkering.

Knoppix runs completely from a CD without making any changes to your hard drive. When you are done playing with it, simply remove the CD and reboot your machine back into Windows.

You can download the ISO here. Burn your own CD and boot from it.

If you do not have a CD burner or you are using a dial-up account, you can order the CD for $1.99 from LinuxCD.org.

Knoppix is based on Debian, which is an easy-to-use version of Linux. It is also a free download from their site or you can purchase the CDs.

I won't get into the advantages of switching from Windows to Linux because I have already covered that in other articles.

Knoppix might be the nudge you need to do the right thing. Give it a try.


- Rod

• Topic: Public Service

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