As a starting point, I think it will be a good idea to play around with=20
a "Linux live CD", as Knoppix=20
(http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html), for example. It is a=20
bootable CD that puts your computer running Linux without having to mess=20
with your hard disk, repartitioning, installing a non familiar OS...=20
It's just a matter of downloading an ISO CD image, burning it to a CD=20
ROM and rebooting your machine (be sure that the BIOS settings will=20
allow a CD boot prior to HD) and voil=E1! You'll be in front of a fully=20
working version of a GNU/Linux system, based on the Debian distribution.=20
And, as Debian is one of the most "pure" GNU distributions available,=20
you can see that there are a lot of programs allowing to do almost=20
everything you can do with Windows.

You can read the documentations available at http://www.tldp.org/ and=20
the off-line manual pages for every program of the distro using the text=20
terminal (like a command prompt on Windows) and the command "man". You=20
can list all available manuals on the directory /usr/share/man or=20
/usr/local/man (I don't remember which one is used on Knoppix).

After that, you can learn some tricks on how to better suit Knoppix to=20
your hardware through some boot commands, and also can record your=20
system configuration to a floppy disk to avoid having to configure=20
everything at every boot.

Knoppix also allows you to install it to your hard disk, but if you=20
really want to do this, I would recommend another distro, like Debian=20
itself, or Fedora. Before deciding to install any Linux "flavor", I=20
recommend a good backup of your Windows system, a thoroughly defrag=20
(turn off swap before this and turn it on again after installing Linux)=20
OR install a new HD (best alternative, in my opinion).

Hope this helps
Francisco


And after that you can

Luis Moreira wrote:

>Hi Guys
>I been reading a lot of stuff on this list about Linux, and I am not ver=
y
>pleased with windows I would like to look at alternatives, specially if =
they
>are cheap or even free.
>The problem is that I been using windows for such a long time that I can=
 not
>get my head around the Linux concept.
>and then there are Linux, Debian, etc. I am confused...
>any really good sources of info that you can recommend ?
>>From all the info I got from a Electronics engineer's angle this system
>brings a lot of advantages in terms of hardware control.
>
>thanks in advance for any help, and sorry for my MS windows corrupted li=
ttle
>brain, I blame society...
>best regards
>                Luis
>
>--
>http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
>ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.
>
>.
>
> =20
>

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