For the first time the other day, I saw a windows PC magazine with a 'run from CD' linux distro on coverdisk. I get the feeling that now so many magazines are giving a DVD away with every issue, this sort of thing will become more common, as editors find software to fill the disk.

My problem with this is that many people will try this out, see it runs comparatively slowly as it's running from CD, and be put off Linux for a good while, if not for ever. Thus, a lot of the good work porting Linux to the desktop will be lost for many people...

Any comments?

Knoppix runs pretty snappy on my boxen.

I don't really think that is at all true, they may be windows users but aren't to slow to realise that it might take longer on a cd.... ;-)

Never underestimate the stupidity of people.

Well, this might be true, but then again, most of those users would never have tried linux anyway, so, oh well. And for those that ARE intelligent enough to realize it's going to run slower, then they'll get a good look at just how nice Linux really is. Maybe only an abreviated look, since most of the run from cd distros have only 1 desktop (and it's not a *box, unfortunately ), but they'll still see that there ARE alternatives out there, that can do just as much as windows, if not more, for much less. The only investment required is some time, patience, and brain cells.

I am a true believer that most people can lack intelligence, but I confident that many will know that running from CD is going to be slower.

Are you sure about that? I know someone I use to work with that has dealt with the person that thought the cd tray was a cup holder..

but then you wouldn't want them to run linux anyway.. they'd certainly never survive....

Yeah true.. I don't think these are the one's that would survive without their free ISP phone support using Windows, as most think they are running Internet Explorer 5.5, Office 2000 or Dell (or their PC brand) as their OS...

Despite that note Tricky, I must stand by convictions that there are more smart people than dumb ones. At the very least smarter than the guy that thinks a CD tray is a cup holder.

They have to be smart enough to modify the bios to boot from cd. That takes care of quite a few of them.