I downloaded and burned redhat linux 9 and slackware linux 10 iso's and when i go to install them everything goes good for about 30 seconds, then i get "error 1 invalid compressed format" can someone please tell me if this is a bad burn, or if the file was currupted, I think it is just my comp. and not the file or burn but im not certian.

Welcome to LQ. After you downloaded the ISO's, did you also validate them by running the MD5SUM's? MD5SUM is basically a utility program that runs a checksum on the downloaded image, and the output of running it will be a long string of letters and numbers. As long as that string matches the published one, you know your image is OK. If the numbers don't match then the image is corrupted, and you'll need to download it again. Along those lines, there's no point in trying to burn the image to the CD until you have validated the MD5SUM.

Assuming that the numbers do match though, be sure to burn the ISO using the "Burn as an Image" option. That should put you on your way. -- J.W.