Introduction and Question how to load Slax onto a pc

I have an old pc with dvd drive usb ports and need to know how to load .iso onto usb drive to load on pc? This is an ASUS pc. Or load .iso onto pc itself and use downloaded image to load linux os?

I'm going to assume this is a "how can typical windows user try linux fast" type of question.
Lots of reading ahead:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualbox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vmware_player
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_Tools
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_(software)

Is there a reason you're looking at Slax in particular? (Not saying there's anything wrong, just it's not a common choice.)

Originally Posted by pjsicon I have an old pc...

AntiX is a popular choice. Distrowatch lists others.

...how to load .iso onto usb drive to load on pc?

Ventoy is a super easy-to-use tool that reformats a USB drive then allows you to just copy bootable ISOs onto it.

Or load .iso onto pc itself and use downloaded image to load linux os?

In addition to links in previous post, consider QEMU/KVM.

What operating system are you using on your old pc? If any. What OS will you use to create the bootable iso on a flash drive? Try an online search for 'create bootable linux iso from windows', if you are using windows.

Ventoy is one, mentioned above, rufus, unetbootin. Balena Etcher, Universal USB installer and others.

Or load .iso onto pc itself and use downloaded image to load linux os?

You can do that using virtual software such as VirtualBox, VMWare, etc.
You can also boot an iso or an extracted iso from a partition on disk but only if you have a version of the Linux Grub bootloader. I'm not aware of any way to do this on windows. You don't mention which OS you will be using??

Hi pjsicon,

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.

Lots of good suggestions and comments above already ... I am curious as to the age of your PC ... It it's REALLY old, you may have trouble booting from USB. In cases like this, a tool like PLOP burned to an optical disk (CD is fine) can help. Or just burn your ISO to a DVD. Also, however, if it's REALLY old (again), recent versions of many distros may no longer support other components of the hardware.

I also second the recommendation of AntiX for old hardware. I used to use Arch on my oldest, 15-year-old laptop (Arch is my distro of choice), but it is so old that recent versions of the kernel and especially the "weight" of systemd made it unpleasant to use. Since early this year, I've been on AntiX 21, using the 4.x linux kernel option. It made a big difference. Among other reasons, AntiX doesn't use systemd and is pre-configured to use lightweight window managers instead of full-blown desktop environments. I recommend it.

Hope that helps - feel free to ask for further assistance.

Rick