Choosing suitable Linux

If you run Ubuntu off a disk you just boot to the disk, you will not have to setup a GrubLoader as it changes absolutely nothing on your hard-drive. If you want to dualboot, you must install Ubuntu to the harddrive (not the LiveCD)
 
...no, you can just get the LiveCD (they are free). Burning the OS to a CD won't make it a "live" version, you're just moving it to a new CD...it will still want to install to your harddrive. The live version is exactly that, a different version. it runs off the CD, not the harddrive.
 
Decadence said:
i want to choose which OS i want to run at startup and boot Ubuntu off a disk. I don't understand any of that "grub" stuff

One way to become familiar with Linux plus using the easiest of the Live distros is Knoppix Live for cd. A live distro runs strictly from a removable disk seeing no direct effect on the drive's current OS. Knoppix is also a great live distro for data retrieval when your MS drive is unbootable. There's a few articles you can find on that usage. Once you have a live version running you simply refer to the Linux tutorials to get familiar with the command structure. Here's a links to hold onto for future reference.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/
http://yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/q/linux_tutorials
 
A great beginner Linux distro is PCLinuxOS.
It runs off a live cd and gives you the option to install it to your hard drive with an easy installer.
For the sake of being able to try more Linux distros, I created a PCLinuxOS Live CD with VMware Player, so once you install it you can run other distros inside it without risk of damaging your hdd (and you'll never have to restart your computer).
It's 714 MB, so it only fits on a DVD and I'm at a loss as to how I can distribute it.
 
Once you burn a distro that size to a cd-r you can easily make backup copies. A dvd-r would actuall fit several small distros to the 4.2gb capacity seen there. For distribution of any particular free to download distro you would simply forward the link to the download page if not the home and tutorial pages as well.

When going to create a live cd you first download the iso image and then use the appropiate software to make a bootable disk from that with a software like NERO or Roxio's Easy Media Creator that recognises that type of file format and can open and write it to disk in response to Decadence's inquiry. Ubuntu also has cds that simply hold the installation files much like a Windows cd while the installation process is different.
 
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