I am new to linux and am sick of windows. I am trying to install linux2.6.8.1 to no avail. Can anyone help?

what are you doing? what errors do you get?

I just downloade the version from the Kernel Archive at Linux.org. Now I have an ampty hd to put it on. I am just beginning and am a fast learner. All of the tutorial sight read as though the person has done it before. I guesws you could say that I am a relly new beginner.

You need more than a kernal to run linux.You should just download a linux distro, suse and fedora are good for beginers.I'm a total noob and I use slackware 10 myself, and I had to learn a thing or two to get it running properly.

I would recommend starting with a live-evaluation CD such as MEPIS. Just make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the CD-ROM drive first. Booting your computer from the CD should bring up a linux desktop in about a minute or so. If all of your hardware is autodetected, you can easily install it to your hard drive using an icon which appears right on the desktop. Knoppix is also a great live-evaluation CD, but when I last tried it, I was required to manually partition the hard drive, which MEPIS will do this automatically if you choose.

I would also recommend starting with a CD. I tried downloading isos and buring them to CD in windows but I never got them to boot (though I now find it dead simple in Linux) so I would suggest that you buy some Linux CD's from a website that's close to where you live. Linux is free to download so most of the cost of the Cd's will be postage. Mandrake is easy for newbies (I started on Mandrake 9.1) but is not very stable, so you may find that you move on to a different distro quite quickly. Fedora Core is good too.

Thanks! I'll give it a go.