I've been using Windows for years, as have most of my clients. I'm always wanting to play around with Unix and Linux more. Here is a cool (but huge) download that gives me the opportunity.

Knoppix Linux is a 700-Meg ISO image you can download here. The CD you create is bootable (installation not required), and it will make no changes to your hard drive. So it's a perfect way to try Linux if you don't have a spare system. It took me a few hours to download it, and about six minutes to burn it to CD. Then I popped it into a CD-ROM drive and re-booted. It was configured automatically, and I was up and running in a matter of minutes. Linux has come a long way!

The only manual intervention required at start-up was to specify the language (it defaults to German).

The GUI is much like Windows XP, so I felt pretty much at home. I was amazed to discover how much software is crammed on the CD: KOffice, Open Office, games, multimedia apps, editors, etc. etc. Apparently, the software is decompressed on-the-fly onto a RAM disk (which it creates). Overall, I was very impressed.

If you have any interest in Linux (and a fast Internet connection), give it a try. Thanks to Bill Winegarden (what a great sirname!) for encouraging me to post more items about 'nix.

20 January 2003  |   permalink