Hi all,
I'm running XPPro and I'm happy about it. I'm hearing many good things about Linux OS and I want to give it a try and install it on my D: drive. XP running on C:\ . I have following quesitons to you'll:
1./ any site I could download a free/trial version of Linux OS?
2/ some free office automation software running on Linux? comparable to MS Office?
Thx,
Stav
Ok for linux downloads start here Don't know about the other question. One more thing try to search with keywords before asking questions. Just a tip to keep you out of trouble.
you can download full version of lunix
try this site ---> you can found all the versions of linux
if you look for agood graphic disktop on linux go to the suse and download the last version of suse linux
http://linuxiso.org/
about office :---> in the suse linux there is softwere like the offie of microsoft
good luck 
absolutely correct.... do a search before asking. sorry I didnt think about it before .!!!
Also take a look at distrowatch, which contains the multitude of Linux, BSD, and *nix variants that are available. This might also confuse you a little as there are so many ...
The word these days is the Ubuntu distribution is great for new users, as it is highly stable and easy to use.
The Gentoo dist., as well as being pretty stable, has a very large user support forum, 100,000+ registered users, that can help you with most any problem you might have(it helps to have PIII equivalent or better hardware with gentoo, as you will compile most all your packages, apps, as you will likely be running X).
You can also try the Live CD's of any particular distro to get a feel for their interaction. (livecd is a bootable cd that takes you to that distro environment, without installing anything)
Hope this helps ...
/biased gentoo user
They mentioned that an MS Office alternative is available on many of the distributions. You can actually try out OpenOffice.org on your Windows XP machine, which is one of the more popular office applications for Linux. http://www.openoffice.org/
Many of the LiveCD's have a fullblown desktop including an Office alternative as well.
Yes,
I'm using openoffice with windows XP for sometime now and except the initial loading speed of the soft, only good things to say about it. I'll give it a try on Linux too. Thx
Here's a tip to help the paradigm shift... linux has no drive letters, it's one big directory tree. No "D:/", just "/". Partitions get grafted onto directories inside the root directory wherever you tell it to instead of appearing at arbitrary drive letters.
I'm downloading the CDs and I'll try to install. Few questions though: when reboot from CD1 (after maing sure the sequence is CDROM first..!) do I need to have pre-formatted the target HDD in FAT or NTFS?
Also drive D: (target HDD) is the slave in my puter. does it make a difference during reboot and instalation?
Thx for helping,
Stav