Windows Anonymous

What? Linux? Um, yeah, I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know anything about it.

Famous last words!

My world got more interesting about two months ago, when a friend (yes, our illustrious leader here at WA) finally talked me into checking into a live CD of Ubuntu. I downloaded it, ran it onto a CD, then booted from the CD to see what he was talking about. So started the journey from which I hope to never return...

Care to take the steps with me? It’s pretty easy, really, and won’t harm your windows install in the least – it will be a temporary boot from your CD drive, so when you remove the CD, your windows will boot again, just like it has all along. I promise – I’m not trying to kill your device!

First, head over to http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download, and get version 8.04. (This is the version I used first; it’s one of the easiest to learn with, and there’s a special feature even my expert didn’t know about until I told him. We’ll get to that later on.). At the bottom of that page, there is a choice for 32 bit or 64 bit, choose whatever you need. If you don’t know what you have, go with the 32 bit, as it will work with most systems. This is a free download; don’t ever pay for a *nix distribution. Pay attention as you download this file, as instructions for putting it on a CD are included on the download page.

Now, we’ve got it on CD, right? Time to play around a little. Place the CD in your drive, then restart your machine. Here’s perhaps the most difficult part of this process: you need to catch your machine as it starts up and get to the boot options. On my machine, the option is F2, but that differs by manufacturer, so watch for the choice as the machine starts running and use whatever key you need to enter the boot options menu. You will want to change it so your machine will boot from the CD/DVD drive. After that, let it go ahead and boot, and suddenly you’ve entered the strange new world of Linux!