No, I'm on wireless high speed. It's what the computer showed when I wanted to download it. I'm downloading Puppy Linux now. I'll give it a shot. How come you can't start and stop the same download? Like continue from where it left off, I often wonder that. i think I'd still like to run it from the CD for a bit just to be safe.

Thanks Cris.

My computer shows 4GB of ram, does that sound reasonable to run Linux. Would you say Linux streams better than Windows from the hard drive? Is that your experience?
You're right, I'd like to play with Linux and get the basics down before I install onto my hard drive, it seems like a pretty neat OS.

Thanks Johnsfine

Most distros offer torrent downloads for their images. If you have a torrent application, you can use that instead, and you'll be able to pause, resume, reboot your computer, or whatever else you want to do without corrupting the download.

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I forgot to mention that earlier. My home internet is bad enough (won't sustain a connection long enough) that I can't download a DVD image without using a torrent.

So if you (Offroadnt) decide to get a DVD (rather than CD) copy of Linux, I suggest looking for a torrent instead of an ordinary download. A free torrent program for Vista should be easy to find.

4GB is plenty for ordinary home use of Linux. Even with the extra ram overhead of liveCD mode, 4GB should be plenty.

I don't know any details about the Puppy Linux kernel you are downloading. It might be 32-bit non PAE. In that case, it can only use 3 and a fraction GB of ram (not the full 4GB). Even that much should be OK to get a pretty good feel for Linux.

Some computers, either by hardware design or BIOS setting, limit any OS (even 64 bit) to 3 and a fraction GB of ram. Vista is designed to lie in that case and report 4GB of ram even though it cannot access that much (the BIOS will also tell the same lie). Linux will tell the truth about how much it can access.

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The way I learned Linux was that I had an old PC which kept failing and eventually I didn't have either the disks or the permissions to install Windows again. Plus Windows had evolved enough so that all new systems didn't have CDs anymore, it comes pre-installed and has recovery partitions specific to each of those systems. So the option was to discard and buy another cheap system, or try Linux and see if the system would be usable for things like browsing and email. I was fortunate at having known Unix and been around long enough to know that email existed way before Outlook.

I therefore grabbed a Linux distribution and installed it as the primary OS on that PC. Yes, finding one of the popular ones is good. I do agree that Ubuntu has gone a bit far, but I do continue to use it and only upgrade once I see that it is stable. But have also used MINT, Debian, and SUSE. Actually used to use Redhat before they started charging for it.

What everyone is saying is similar. And sounds like you've gotten that. You get a disk image, either for CD or DVD, you burn that ISO to the disk and then boot your computer off of that disk. Many times that image allows you to run Linux off the CD, which is slow and you can't make permanent alterations to anything except if it mounts your existing hard drive. Or you can install it, alongside Windows or in place of Windows. (Sorry, no experience with MACS here, no idea if it even works on those machines, but probably does.) Either case, it's just good to run within Linux because I find it faster, less filled with fluff I don't want or need. However I also still continue to practice the same methods I do with Windows systems. I use a script blocker on my browser and install ad blocker addons, and use Firefox no matter what system type I'm using. You also need to be careful when alerts come up on your browser and not blindly allow permissions to be given, or scripts to run which may be destructive. Many of them are targeted at Windows, but I'm sure that script language based intrusions won't care and try to do damage no matter what the platform is.

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If you want to try OpenSuse then just get the smaller cd image. The DVD is not a live installer, it is the full install. The cd's offered are live cd's that can be run or installed.

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There may be local sources you can get aCD from, instead of downloading eg Linux Magazines often have a CD on the cover.
See also a local LUG (Linux Users Group); just google LUG & your town/area.
Try just googling your area and Linux; there may be a company that deals in Linux; an install set is usually pretty cheap.

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Hey! It works!!!!

Funny thing, I downloaded it yesterday, last night I burned it to disk. Didn't even need Imgburn, it seems the computer downloaded some program automatically... PC something? Oh well, it worked

I rebooted my computer and Puppy Linux started automatically... Cool
I've begun setting it up, so far it has kind of a '90s feel. I got wifi and the Internet working so far but I think I lost my settings, it didn't save to the CD when I shut down. Shouldn't take long to get it going again.

I only have an hour or so day to fool with this right now but I think I'll enjoy exploring for a bit .

Thanks for your help so far everybody.

The CD closes when you finish burning the ISO - nothing else can be written to it.

Booting a Linux live CD is like running a read-only operating system. You can write to it, but anything you write is just going to RAM, which gets lost as soon as you shut down the computer.

If you want changes to persist across reboots, you'll probably want to use a persistent live USB rather than a CD.

How about saving changes to the hard drive, will the computer automatically use it when it boots from the CD?

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Beat me to that. Puppy is a real odd distro. Some CD-RW disks can even be used to save your session info.

As SLW210 points out, the puppy forums and docs cover "how not to install puppy" .

Good to see you got it going!

You can even go to JPC and run DSL linux from a browser if you want. Similar to that would be SuseStudio.

I don't understand the different distros. Does this mean there are a whole bunch of different variations of Linux or is it more of a package thing? Are all the different distros able to run programs from others or how does it work exactly?

I guess the main question will be which is right for me? Is there such thing as basic Linux and you just load what you desire for programs?

I guess first of all I need to have some fun and explore for a bit. Get to know my way around.

"there are a whole bunch of different variations of Linux " Yes, many to choose from. Generally each distro has a target group and has some philosophy to rules for their decisions. A distro is a collection of works.

Problem with basic linux is it is really basic. A very easy and simple way to start out on command line linux may be here. http://jpc.sourceforge.net/demos_linuxdemos.html

I like the web page hosted distro's as a newbie can't screw up their system. Try out SuseStudio also for a web way to run any number of OpenSuse builds.