Yesterday, I downloaded Knoppix, a self-contained Linux distribution that boots & runs off one cd. It doesn't install itself on your computer; rather, it uses your memory and the cd to run Linux. Just set your computer to boot from cd, pop it in, and it runs.

I gotta tell you it's very nice. Has KDE gui with Mozilla, AbiWord, Open Office, and many other apps. It'll also let you "read" files off of your hard drive if you have the right windows file system (FAT 32, common on Win 9x). But know that you can't accidentally change the files on your hard drive (or the cd for that matter) since they are protected as "read only."

s stealing the cd's :)

I was really impressed and so were a couple of other techie friends of mine. On my machine, seemed to run as fast as RedHat 8.0 which is installed on my hard drive. Would also be a great tool if Windows crashed for getting back on to Internet and email at a moment's notice, or for pulling files and posting them to a web server account while you do a reinstall of Windows.

I'm guessing it'll want a PIII or above and a decent amount of memory to run well (sorry, no mac's). But give it a shot if you are curious. You just have to download it and burn a cd of it (nero uses the "burn image" option).

This is a great way to experiment with Linux if you just haven't wanted to try to install it or don't have the hard drive space.

More thought for techies: It's possible to use Knoppix to create your own remastered-knoppix. Imagine setting up Knoppix the way you want it and burning a cd. Then you could run a Linux desktop on any pc, your Linux desktop, just by running the cd.

For the classroom: Could work nice, too, for computer classrooms since a quick reboot is like a fresh install. Students could save their work to floppy or upload to the web. The only thing you'd have to worry about is students stealing the cd's.