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Thinking of giving Linux a try?

Entering the world of Linux can be a bit daunting, sometimes simply because of the vast number of choices of different versions of Linux, called distributions (often shortened to 'distro').

If you haven't used Linux before and you'd like to just give it a try, one of the best ways to do this is with a Live CD. A Live CD distro allows you to boot your computer from the CD and use Linux without installing it to your hard drive and without making any changes to your computer at all. The disadvantage of a live CD is that it's really best only for experimenting and having a play -- anything you do won't be saved when you restart your computer! Live CDs will also be a lot slower than Linux installed on your hard drive.

Ubuntu is a great Live CD distribution to start with. You'll want to download the 'Ubuntu Desktop' file from the Ubuntu download page. The download size is quite large -- you are downloading a whole operating system here!

Other good Live CD distributions you can try include Fedora, Linux Mint and PCLinuxOS.

Once you have download the .iso file, you need to burn it to CD to make your 'Live CD'. However, you can't just copy the file to a CD normally -- you have to make sure the ISO image is properly unpacked on your CD. ISO Recorder is a good, free program to use for this on Windows, or you may already have CD burning software that can write ISO image files.

Once you have used ISO Recorder or another program to burn your new live CD to a disc, you should be able to just reboot your computer with the disc in the drive to start your Linux distribution up. (If that doesn't work, you might need to check your BIOS settings to allow booting from a CD)

Now you can have a play with Linux in this Live CD environment, without affecting anything else on your computer. Later on, you can choose to install the distribution to your hard drive if you want to use Linux more often.

Have you noticed that many websites don't quite look the same on Linux than they do other computers?

This is because many of the fonts web designers expect to be installed on any computer don't generally come with Linux. You can install them, however, and make websites look much more attractive and 'as the designer intended'.

Follow our very quick tutorial to install the msttcorefonts package.

Installing software on Linux is actually quite different to how you usually install software on a Windows system.

Most Linux distributions use what is known as a 'package management system' (such as RPM or Deb). The package management system is responsible for keeping a list of all the software installed on your Linux computer, knowing which bits of software need other bits of software to run and for preventing different pieces of software interfering with each other.

That means that rather than downloading some software as an .exe installer file and running that, as in Windows, the best way to install software on Linux is to go through your package management system so that it can keep everything neat and tidy.

To make it easy to find the .rpm and .deb packages you need, most distributions also have a program for automatically finding the right files, downloading them and installing them for you. This is, for example, aptitude (apt-get, apt-remove) on Ubuntu, Debian and many similar distributions and yum on Fedora/RedHat/CentOS-based systems.

For example, if you wanted to install the program recordmydesktop (a great program for making screen recordings of what's happening on your computer screen), you could use these commands at a terminal:

For Ubuntu/Debian/etc.:

sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop

For RedHat/Fedora/CentOS/etc.:

su -
yum install recordmydesktop

However! You can avoid using the terminal in most of these distributions; just look for an Add/Remove Software application or a Software Manager or similar. Most of these are pretty easy to use; you can search for the program you are looking for and download and install it in a few clicks.

You know that clunky PC on your desk? Or under it? How about reducing it to something smaller, kinda shoebox-sized? Oh, they've done that - the shuttle PC.

So how about even smaller? Take a look at SheevaPlug, Linux within a PC power adapter:

Actually, that's old news..

Perhaps you'd like a Guruplug instead:
.

Oh, wait. Too large? Ladies, Gents and offspring of much smaller dimensions, I present the Picotux:

Yes, you see it right there. Network card in one end, video card in the other, socket for external power supply. Hidden between the rest is...

Oh, read it for yourself!

Disclaimer: I have no commercial connection to the above companies, nor have bought their products so cannot offer a review of their functionality. I'm just highly excited and geekily aroused at the thought of processing power being in something so small that a few of these and NAS somewhere on the LAN means I could do away with PCs entirely.