Join the Linux revolution

Most people will want to choose one of the four biggest distributions, at least to begin with. We would strongly recommend that complete beginners start with Ubuntu. There are many other alternatives, however. Some distributions aim at a very specific need. For instance, the Damn Small Linux (DSL) distribution is designed to run on extremely old hardware –­ it will even cope with a 486 processor with 32MB of memory.

Parted Magic is designed as a partitioning and rescue system, and can help recover data from damaged disks, as well as setting up and resizing disk partitions. Some distros are derivatives of other major distributions: Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu Linux, but has custom tools and themes, together with a different choice of applications.

The Distrowatch website lists many of the more popular, but less-known distributions, as well as all the major ones, and has information about each, together with links to the relevant websites.

Getting started
Netbooks are now frequently sold with Linux installed, but it is otherwise still relatively unusual to find Linux pre-installed on a PC or laptop, and so most people will have to install it themselves. As a result, a lot of work has gone into making this a simple process.

The distributions themselves are normally a vailable to install from CD or DVD. It is often possible to buy boxed distributions or pressed CDs, but the majority of people usually download the CD image from the internet. With a fast broadband connection you can download a typical image in less than half an hour.

For those without a good internet connection, the downloads are also regularly available on the PCW cover DVD.

There are generally two kinds of installation. The traditional, where you boot from the CD into an installer program, select a few options, and wait for the installation to complete; and the so-called Live CD, where you boot a full working desktop system from the CD, and can run an installation program later from within that environment. The latter is becoming the preferred method, and is offered by all of the major distributions.

There are several advantages to this: you can try the operating system before installing, and you can check that everything works as expected on your own hardware. With a Live CD, your hard drive is never altered unless you do a full install, and so it’s a safe way to try Linux without any commitment on your part.

In order to distribute a CD over the internet, it must be packed together in a format that can then be written back out to the blank disc. This is often referred to as a CD image, and more commonly called an ISO image (the CD filesystem is an ISO standard).