I'm a bit of loser deciding these things, soI'd liek you people to help me. Basically all I want is a version that will boot off of a CD without installation and runs as like a proper desktop type thing.

One other question: This Live CD version boots off a cd but doesn't install on the harddrive? So does that mean...If I install a Linux only working program, onto Linux it would install on the harddrive but be unaccesible with windows(which is on the harddrive)if I loaded windows up?

Then If I put the Linux CD back in the drive, loaded it up, I would be able to use the program again?

Sorry If I cannot word my question very well. Thanks in advance for your help.

For a LiveCD, I'd point you towards SUSE's. It's pretty, stable, and has just about any application that you'd need. There's an iso up at lqiso.org

Hoewver, the problem with LiveCDs is they don't run off of the hard drive, at all - that's the point of them. They store their working data almost completely in RAM, so if you save a document during one session, it will be gone the next time you boot up with the LiveCD. LiveCDs typically give you a personal, temporary space for a home directory which is writable - because this home directory is usually just a RAM mount (a chunk of your computer's memory that the CD has usurped and mounted to look like a physical drive). That lets you do things like create and save documents, bookmark things in Firefox, and download mp3s. However - remember that it's just a ramdrive, and as such is completely volatile. The minute you reboot, that directory and all of its contents will be completely and irrecoverably gone.

Chances are good that you won't even be able to install any applications - the partitions to which installers need to write (think C:\WINNT\system32) are read-only on a LiveCD, because they're physically on the CD - they're too big to be copied anywhere writable (that would be an installation, and it's what a LiveCD is trying to avoid ^_^). Even if you somehow managed to get an application installed, by changing where it installs its files to your home directory or something like that, it still wouldn't be accessible by windows, because the minute you power down or reboot the computer, all information from the LiveCD would be lost.

This is the default behavior of most CDs - there is usually an option somewhere to burn your home directory to CD, or copy it to a partition on your hard drive to make it persistent. Both of these options require a bit more research, and honestly if you're at that stage, it's probably worth just installing the distro. If you need persistance, you don't want a LiveCD. It's just not what they're designed for.

Not sure whether this makes sense - let me know if you still need help, and I'll try to explain it better

There are a number of live cds which will allow you to couple it with a USB pen drive to enable you to have persistent settings on any computer. Knoppix and Mandrake both have a live cd which will allow this.

No it's ok, I understood what you meant. Can I ask though, what is the use of Linux on a CD when you can't save anything?

I'll look into the USB pen drives as well, thanks very much you two.

A live cd allows you to:

1. test that your hardware is compatible
2. fix a damaged or inaccessible hard disk
3. use Linux while away from your home pc
4. test Linux without installing to see if you like it

and other things.

Using a live CD for day-to-day use leaves you disappointed with Linux. It simply is way too slow, and certainly if you don't have the fastest computer available. A live CD is perfect to test H/W compatibility before installing or as emergency CD.

Since hard disk space is cheap today I cannot do anything else than recommending you to install Linux on a part of your hard disk, after you shrunk the Windows partition. You'd be able to boot in Windows or Linux.

I am sure Debian netinstaller does this flawlessly, but then I would not recommend Debian to a newcomer. Anyone else who can recommend a good distro which installs next to Windows?

jlinkels

I do not usually recommend live CDs either. Instead, I definately recommend Kubuntu/Ubuntu for newcomers, depending on which desktop environment is your favorite. Ubuntu even has a live CD version, I don't know if Kubuntu has that though.

Again, SUSE The default environment is KDE, which most people (especially those new from Windows) seem to like. Its default software selection is pretty darned good (for a 5-cd download it'd better be good) and the installer is truly easy-to-follow. I've installed it several times, and not had a problem dual-booting it with Windows.
It's also got a liveCD, as I recommended above, so you can 'try before you download', as it were

rose_bud4201, just out of curiousity, are five CDs required to install SUSE? I've been looking into maybe trying it one day.