Puppy Linux: It's just the thing for first-timers

If you've never even seen a Linux desktop before, have a Windows PC and don't want to mess with it, give Puppy Linux a try. It runs as a live CD, meaning you boot your PC from the CD instead of the hard drive, and your Windows setup remains untouched.

Puppy -- now at its pivotal 3.00 release -- is designed from the ground up to be used as a live CD. And since it runs totally in the PC's RAM in most cases, it's blindingly fast. It remains the fastest Linux I've ever run.

And if you're unfamiliar with Linux distributions, you'll learn a lot with Puppy. As is customary for Linux installations, distribution means that in addition to the core operating system itself, there is a complete array of applications, from Web browser to word processor, spreadsheet, multimedia, e-mail program, and all the utilities you'll need, all loaded with the CD.

And one of the great things about using Puppy as a live CD environment is that when you shut down the system for the first time, you are prompted to create a "save" file of up to 1.25 gigabytes on your hard drive. Do that, and all your settings -- as well as any files you've downloaded or created -- will be stored in that single huge file. When you boot into Windows, you can see the pup_save file, but you can't read it until you run Puppy again. And have I said enough times that you won't, in any way, "break" your Windows setup this way?

It's a way to have your Linux cake and eat it (i.e. still use Windows) too. And you'll wonder why a Windows PC comes virtually naked -- bereft of useful applications -- and, in turn, why Linux users pretty much start out with everything they need and then some.