Canon printers and Linux don't mix well.
My HP Laserjet works fine (via the network) from my Linux machine.
My Canon ip4000 will NOT. Mind you, its Windows drivers are over 50 MB so there's something odd about it.

There are some cobbled Linux drivers that will produce output from the Canon, but it's not to the standard the machine is capable of.

My sincere thanks to all of you who have replied (wipe that smile off your face Wombat!). I have checked out all the links provided and have reluctantly decided not to continue the struggle until I need a new printer.

I still find it very strange that the OS effortlessly achieved what I thought would be problematic and then failed to cope with a printer produced in the tens of thousands by a major manufacturer.

As suggested by Mac The Knife I contacted Canon to point out the lack of a manufacturer's Linux driver and their reply was rather less than helpful.
So, Bill, it looks like the Wombat has the last laugh and I'm back with you.

Shaky
(W3.0 - WXP and still hating it)

I think, if the Windows driver is small, there's likely to be a Linux one. When you get to Canon, things are different.

"If anyone can, Canon can" is a bit of a two-edged sword.

If/when the senior folks hear that customers are complaining, something might happen - as Mac said.

shaky
I am sorry that you have had bad luck.

We take it for granted now that printers will be compatible with a given OS. Unless you are using BGware, that will be the case for some time in the future.

That does not mean that they cannot be used. Before the Intarweb thing really came into being, people like I had to wade through Big Thick Manuals and ask friends how a Thai character set could be put through mumble-mumble systems and produce Thai at the other end. My lead programmer spent 36 hours straight on that baby.

The beauty is that this information is now shared. People whom you will never know have put countless hours' effort into breaking through. Even if it is fruitless, imagine how good you'll feel if did you crack it - and can tell every other MP700 user how it's done - and what you experienced?

You have nothing to lose but your BSODs

BOFH

Turboprint, which rotorcraig mentioned - http://www.turboprint.de/english.html - allegedly supports the MP700 - I don't know how good it is.

Canon give more Linux support than it seems, but only on their Japanese website.

Canon's Linux drivers page is at [3], if you can parse or guess your way through Japanese.

If you can't, there's some discussion at [4].

Debian and Ubuntu (Mepis is Ubuntu based) repackaging of the CUPs drivers by Takushi Miyoshi is at [7]. He's even rewritten the pstocanon[bi]j program and PPDs supplied by Canon, since the supplied ones crashed for him and the source was apparently awful.

[1] http://lists.freestandards.org/piper...04/001528.html
[2] ftp://download.canon.jp/pub/driver/bj/linux/
[3] http://cweb.canon.jp/drv-upd/bj/other.html#linux
[4] http://www.suseforums.net/lofiversio...hp/t16956.html
[5] http://download.canon.jp/pub/driver/...2.2-1.i386.rpm
[6] http://download.canon.jp/pub/driver/...2.2-1.i386.rpm
[7] http://mambo.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~takushi/

You might even try emailing Takushi at the address given in [7]

That's based on half-an-hour of Googling. The long and the short of it seems to be that if you spend a few days hunting and farting around trying various drivers you should get at least basic functionality working and maybe more. Whether you've got the time for that is another matter.

If I had an equivalent Canon printer I'd do it for you, if only to wipe the glee off Gertie's face.

Microsoft's monopoly and their pressure on manufacturers not to support other OSes is the real problem, so Windows isn't much of a solution.

:ok:

While I sit and do the mail, the Linux machine the other side of the study is updating its software and installing a dozen or so packages for me to try out - including Audacity (which I use a lot on the PC), WinAmp, and Bluetooth networking.

All free (sorry, but the authors made them that way), and all automatically downloaded and installed from a single menu listing all the software available from a list of sources.

Not bad, I reckon.

Have you tried Linux?
 

I'm just wondering if any of you have given Linux a whirl at all?

Yes, lots.

I use SimplyMEPIS 6.0 almost exclusively (except for updating the TomTom). Linux is not meant to be a rival to Windows, but an alternative OS.

If Windows does what you want, or you don't like getting your fingers dirty, or PCs leave you cold, then stick to Windows.

If you want control of your computer back, are fed up with viruses, malware, spyware, BSOD, lack of control, costs et al., then seriously investigate the many distributions of Linux.

And it's all comprehensive and free. :ok:

PS - Look at all the OS queries on this forum. What are virtually all connected with? Windows?

Tiggermoth

Use search and you'll find several threads about Linux & Windows and how the differences manifest themselves.

The big thing I would say is that it down to how much you want to use your PC quickly and how much you want to support it yourself. Try Mepis or Ubuntu, you can load off the CD and try it out without having to install on your hard drive to see if you like it.

To give an example the PC I use has Windows XP & Ubuntu 6.10. Win XP loads & I can get the driver support for my Wireless card loaded - time to get it up and running and ready to go was about 2 hours.

Ubuntu took a lot of work to get the wireless adaptor in place, including loading source code and compiling the code. Similarly getting media working took a long time - so time to get it up & running at the same level as Windows was probably abut 10 hours plus I had to have access to the internet in order to get access to the internet.

I've said it before & I'll say it again - if you want an easy life, it can't be guaranteed with Linux to the same extent as it can with Windows. But if you have patience, and want to learn something about computers & software then Linux is a much better place to learn - just be prepared for it to take time.

Yes, I've got a Linux box on my desk at work.

I use it to run various servers that are written for Linux. It doesn't have a keyboard, mouse or screen - when I want to talk to it directly (rather than through the various proprietory protocols to the servers in question) I open up a telnet window on my Windows box, when I want to edit files on the Linux box I use a Windows editor (to be sure, it helps to pick one that knows about Unix line endings).

Actually I do sometimes connect a screen to it, to see why it won't boot, which it doesn't about three times out of four (but the opinion of the IT guys is that that's down to a hardware issue rather than Linux). As it's starting up thousands of lines of incomprehensible gobbledegook scroll up the screen, mostly containing the words "fatal error" ... but once it's started doing that I know it's booting OK so unplug the monitor again.

It works reasonably well (execpt for the booting problem which is probably hardware). Every few weeks something breaks in the networking software, and I have to get the IT guys to fix it (something to do with domain trusts, it needs a network admin password so I can't do it myself), but no big deal.

I've got a machine running Linux in my study. It's my previous desktop machine, now relegated to Linux tinkering box and fileserver. It's never switched off, hasn't crashed or misbehaved since I set it up, and works flawlessly.

It runs Fedora core 5, which seems to be totally stable - certainly far more stable and reliable than Windows on the main PC - and a lot faster, too.

It does have a keyboard and a (very old LCD) monitor, although the monitor is usually in standby mode and blank.

Linux is a bit harder to set up than Windows (or was for me, anyway, although there are those who will tell you I did it all wrong). Once done, it's excellent.

Not a regular user, but I've used Knoppix to save files to a USB drive on more than one occasion when the OS on the primary hard disk has got corrupted, won't boot and needs reformatting... does this count? I don't know much about Linux and needed help when using the command prompt but I loved the Knoppix GUI. When I reformat my other computer soon I'll look at dual-booting it with WinXP and Linux.

I'd like to have a play with Linux. I even have a spare laptop to do it on, and a copy of MepisLite. Trouble is, the laptop - which used to be a W98SE machine - was experimentally upgraded to XP, and now it won't complete the boot-up procedure! It is a bit weedy - 400Mhz Celeron, 256mb RAM and 4 Gb HDD. I'd like - if I can just work out how - to strip Windows off the machine and try Linux just for a bit of fun. But can I format the bloody thing? I probably can, but I haven't worked out how....:ugh:

I've got an Ubuntu Unix server at home to hold my mail, photos, music etc.

The wife & kids access it from their Windows PC, I rebuilt my PC as a Unix machine months ago and have had no reason go back to Windows since.

As others have said, it may take you time to get wireless drivers, graphics accelerators, etc. working and if you're not a hands on PC techy then you will probably need to find a friend who is to help you.

But once it's all up and working you will find it to be very reliable.


RC

Linux tries me every day - but that's my job. :)

Having Exploder run at 20% on a dual CPU machine all day today is also my job. :ugh:

There will be frustrations whichever route you choose, If you care to pay for them, so be it.

BOFH

I had that a while ago. I used the old-fashioned method: a boot floppy with FDISK on it. I can't remember what Win version it was - probably doesn't matter.

Once I'd deleted the existing partition, I set the machine to boot first from CDROM (Press F1 or whatever at boot-up) and installed from a Linux CD.

I told it to configure for multiple boot, using GRUB. There are now 3 hard drives in there, and nine partitions with various stuff on them. Default boot is Fedora Core 5, but there are several other Linuxes. It's a 600MHz Pentium, and runs about as fast in Fedora as the main desktop running XP - that's a 3.2GHz. Such is the Windows "overhead".

Dell gives the go-ahead for Linux
 

I found this interesting. I am a fairly average home computer user. I have never received any formal training, self taught. Use the computer for home use, photography, music, bit of video editing.

I am becoming more and more disillusioned with Microsoft products. It seems hard to believe that a company with this much of the market share, amount of money, amount of resources still puts out products with poor security and loads of bugs like Vista.

I am now certain after recent developments with Vista, and the huge expense of purchasing it along with extremely high system requirements required to run it, and my experiences with Apple after owning two iPods is that my next computer purchase will not be running on Windows.

I feel that it will probably be a Mac but now there is a very real chance of it being a Linux box.

I wonder how many other home users are thinking the same? Is the tide beginning to turn against Microsoft?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6506027.stm

Dell gives the go-ahead for Linux
Larry Ellison of Oracle stands in front of a linux poster
Large firms like Oracle use open source Linux software
Computer giant Dell will start to sell PCs preinstalled with open source Linux operating systems, the firm has said.
The second largest computer maker in the world said it had chosen to offer Linux in response to customer demand.
Earlier this year, 100,000 people took part in a Dell survey. More than 70% of respondents said they would use Linux.
Dell has not released details of which versions of Linux it will use or which computers it will run on, but promised an update in the coming weeks.
"Dell has heard you," said a statement on the firm's website. "Our first step in this effort is offering Linux preinstalled on select desktop and notebook systems."
Currently the company only offers Microsoft Windows on its computers, but sells servers running Linux.
Members of the Linux community welcomed the move.
The fact that Dell is offering a desktop with Linux is no surprise
Nick Veitch
Nick Veitch, senior editor of Linux Format magazine, described it as "significant".
"I think it sends a message in two ways," he said.
"One is that a major company is confident enough to be able to offer Linux preinstalled on a desktop - that sends a signal that Linux is usable to the average user - and I think it shows that there is a growing demand for an alternative to Windows."
'No surprise'
Microsoft is the world's largest software maker and its proprietary Windows operating system is found on nine out of every 10 personal computers.
Dell laptop, Getty
Dell currently only offers Windows software on its laptops
While companies such as Microsoft earn money by licensing and charging for use of their products, Linux code is freely available.
That means anyone can modify it or develop applications for it. As a result, there are many different types, or distributions, of Linux operating systems that offer different functionality.
As Linux is free to download and distribute, the exact numbers of users is difficult to quantify.
However, analysts believe that approximately 6% of computers users run Linux, similar to the numbers choosing Apple Macs.
Big business and governments, particularly in the developing world, are also starting to exploit the flexibility of open source code.
The UK Cabinet Office recently evaluated the operating system and approved it as a viable alternative to proprietary systems. Car manufacturer Peugeot has also rolled it out across its employees' desktop computers.
But until now there has not been a major computer manufacturer willing to preinstall Linux on consumer computers.
"The fact that Dell is offering a desktop with Linux is no surprise," said Mr Veitch.
"The surprise is that it has taken them this long."

Some of us switched quite a while ago......

I don't really have much of a quarrel with XP, despite its insecurities and quirks - my own installations, with a bit of care and feeding, have been very stable - but I really do have a problem with Microsoft's greed, arrogance and truly unpleasant and antisocial business practices.

arcniz put it very well in a previous thread.

<snip> "The net-net-net reason that history will not remember Bill Gates fondly is... that he used the early success of his company to capture and hijack the entire destiny of computing for a period of decades.. the echos will continue into the next century, for sure. In the process he directed a program of obfuscation, disruption and proprietisation of the whole of computing technology - for no purpose other than the financial and commercial benefit of Microsoft. This continues into the present day.

Of all the profit taken in by MSFT, only a tiny fraction - say ten or fifteen percent (of the net profit) has been used to actually make software more productive, more reliable, and more useful. The remainder of those vast profits applied to development have been directed to creating and amplifying methods for making present and future computer programs more dependent on technology owned or controlled by Microsoft. This leads to greatly inferior software, but software that makes its customers totally and perpetually dependent on MSFT for tools, methods, and applications that can only be used under the intellectual property rights controlled by MSFT. One can say much about why this is bad, but in the interests of brevity I will just sum up as follows:

Bill Gates did not single-handedly invent modern computing. In fact, he waged business warfare on other innovators and companies in the early days of computing to the extent that most were effectively prevented from operating in markets that Gates sought to control. The business practices of Microsoft, guided by Bill Gates, have deliberately, methodically, and unnecessarily wasted the time and diminished the efforts of every one touched by them. The social and economic cost of his self-serving (and largely unnecessary) actions has been to deprive humanity of (at least) hundreds of billions of productive work hours, expended for totally unnecessary and wasteful work by the planet's best educated and potentially most productive citizens... for no purpose except to serve the greed of Gates and his cohort. The effect is equivalent, in economic and social cost around the globe, to exterminating millions of people. No small beans. To make recompense for that He'll have to feed a great many orphans."

By all means get a Mac (they're brilliant), but with every passing day Linux (my machines run either Kubuntu or Mepis as "best of breed" distros) becomes an increasingly compelling (and significantly cheaper) alternative.

:ok:

I run a Dell 9400 lappie...

If i'm honest i'd probably swap to Linux...



...if I knew how and wasnt scared of ballsing up the set up I have now!

Anything not MS must be good though. :ok:

It'll be interesting to see what this does pricewise.

Dell don't need to licence M$ Vista and install a free Linix distro instead = cost reduction that can be passed on to the customer in part or in full.

Dell can't bundle loads of "limited trial period" products 'cos linux users don't need / want this rubbish = revenue reduction that will be passed on also?

RC

Just download the 6.10 version of Ubuntu, burn it to a CD, and boot it. Will not affect your windows at all and you can see if it 'just works'. I cannot see any point in replacing your windows with linux though, you have already paid for it and I am guessing it already does what you want. If you want to mess about, buy the components from a web store, build your own pc and stick linux on it. Make sure you do your research first though and get hardware that linux works on.

Dell can do this as they control the hardware and have the resources to make it 'just work'. Good for them, competition is always good, and I am sure it will put pressure on microsoft to bring down the licence fee that Dell pays.

I guess it all boils down to how much Dell pays for their windows licence, and how much of the savings they want to pass onto their customers, and how much to their shareholders.

I am sure Dell will use this as an opportunity to heavily brand the desktop, try and lock you into their services, and make more money off you in an innovative way. For Dell are just as bad as MS, Oracle, Sun and the rest of them. They all want to 'own' your desktop experience and make it difficult for you to use anybody elses software.

Good advice there from slim_slag

Microsoft will surely attempt to punish Dell in some way for this move. They certainly have a long history of gutting businesses that stray from the party-line. These companies work on razor-thin margins and even a few percentage points increase in the fee that Dell pays for its OEM Windows license could really hurt.

"I am sure Dell will use this as an opportunity to heavily brand the desktop, try and lock you into their services, and make more money off you in an innovative way. For Dell are just as bad as MS, Oracle, Sun and the rest of them. They all want to 'own' your desktop experience and make it difficult for you to use anybody elses software."

A very astute observation. Happily even GPLv2 makes this quite difficult. Of course Dell plans to make money from this and the GPL does not forbid profit at all - it only blocks certain kinds of exploitative behaviour.

Personally I'm not comfortable with the FSF's (Free Software Foundation) political stance [I'm more of an OSS guy myself] and thought that the proposed GPLv3 was ludicrously (and fatally) business hostile. The most recent GPLv3 draft seems to have eased off a bit and hopefully will allow the industry to successfully commoditise Linux on the desktop (as Dell hopes to do) while blocking an effectively proprietary Dell Linux.

While I'm a firm supporter of FOSS (I contribute financially and on various groups) and in particular of open standards (like ODF) I'm not that fussed by proprietary drivers like nVidia and I will buy and use proprietary Linux apps if they work better for me than the FOSS equivalents. Sometimes FOSS coders need a kick up the arse too!

:ok:

Mac

I have had the feeling that Linux has been teetering on the brink of the same problem that beset UNIX last century, when several proprietary flavours of UNIX evolved, making development, portability and interoperability a real pain.

On a different note, I recently tried an experiment to see if I could configure a laptop for work with Linux (Kbuntu) as the OS. Most things I could set up to work (after a fashion), but I was completely stopped by the VPN solution. Yes, I could get a VPN client, but the gateway enforces software compliance, and BlackIce is not available for Linux - yet (I know, it's in Beta, but a very limited Beta).

And while many of our corporate apps have been developed for browser-based access, they only work properly with IE6, not Firefox etc.

Still, it's about 80% there!

"I have had the feeling that Linux has been teetering on the brink of the same problem that beset UNIX last century, when several proprietary flavours of UNIX evolved, making development, portability and interoperability a real pain."

Linux can't become proprietary, the GPL blocks this absolutely. Dell cannot produce a proprietary Linux. What they MAY do is release binary (non-open-source drivers) to optimise Linux on their hardware. These would be unacceptable to hard-line open-sourcers but of little consequence to Joe User. They might also tweak the kernel to better cooperate with their drivers, but under the GPL any changes would have to be released as source code. The big Linux houses usually tweak the kernel to work better with their releases and this is perfectly legit so long as the changes are freely released and documented.

The sort of proprietisation that nearly killed UNIX just can't happen.

By its very nature GNU/Linux is a do-your-own-thing animal, but most coders/vendors are coming, often reluctantly, to the realisation that working towards a fixed set of Linux standards is the only way to go.

The Linux Foundation set up the Linux Standard Base organisation - http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/LSB - to encourage vendors to follow their guidelines.

"The Linux Standard Base delivers interoperability between applications and the Linux operating system. Currently all major distributions comply with the LSB and many major application vendors, like MySQL, RealNetworks and SAP, are certifying. The LSB offers a cost-effective way for application vendors to target multiple Linux distributions while building only one software package. For end-users, the LSB and its mark of interoperability preserves choice by allowing them to select the applications and distributions they want while avoiding vendor lock-in. LSB certification of distributions results in more applications being ported to Linux and ensures that distribution vendors are compatible with those applications. In short, the LSB ensures Linux does not fragment."

Actually mainstream Linux is quite rapidly evolving towards these standards.

Mac

:ok:

With MS ending support for Win2000, a place where I sometimes work is replacing the machines that run Win2000. They are all pretty old. There is a blanket contract with Dell. There are a number of hardware choices and one may choose either WinXP or Linux as the operating system.

The establishment forbids the use of VISTA on any machine connected to the in-house network for the time being. They expect to approve of VISTA "someday" after they have verified that the main in-house applications can be made to work correctly with it.

Stable NTFS read/write for Linux!
 

With the release of ntfs-3g v1.328 (March 28, 2007) Linux finally has stable read/write support for the Windows native NTFS filesystem. ntfs-3g has been extensively tested and there was no file corruption or inconsistencies. Most POSIX file system operations are supported, with the exception of full file ownership and access right support.

ntfs-3g is 20-50x faster than the commercial Paragon NTFS driver. Curiously, Captive NTFS, which uses the native Windows NTFS drivers, fails all benchmarks with file loss.

ntfs-3g is still unoptimised and further speed increases are likely. It does not yet support compressed or encrypted files, but that is on the way.

Binary builds are available for most ofthe mainline distros or you can build it yourself.

Main site - http://www.ntfs-3g.org/

Test details at http://www.ntfs-3g.org/quality.html#testmethods

FAQ at - http://www.ntfs-3g.org/support.html#questions

Way to go guys!

:ok:

Mac

Hi eveyone,

I just did a search on this and found that Dell has tried this before and previously took LINUX PCs off sale in 2001 becuase of low sales.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/pt...idg/index.html


I'd love to use Linux, out of a bloody minded desire to break my dependance on Windows. But of course it worries me all the same, do you think mainstream software will work seamlessly with it or are there issues that need to be taken into account?

Also I've always wondered how much PC makers pay Microsoft for their bulk purchases of Windows, seeing as you can pick up a PC these days for £200 how much of this do you think is the Windows licence?

Cheers,

MrSurrey

Linux was a VERY different beast in 2001. I spent days getting Debian up and sort of working! I remember Dell's dabble and I'm not surprised they let it slide. Modern mainstream Linuxes are a world away from what it was then.

Best way to try it is to get hold of a live CD (which you can boot from), try it and see what you think. A live CD runs off the CD itself, doesn't touch you current HDD and although its pretty slow (as you would expect) will give you an idea of what its like and how it picks up your hardware.

"....do you think mainstream software will work seamlessly with it or are there issues that need to be taken into account?"

Windows software doesn't work natively with Linux - it's a completely different operating system. There ARE ways to get an increasing number of Windows applications to run but its still a bit of a fiddle. Linux comes with its own big bunch of applications for free to do pretty much anything you want (burn CDs, play music, email, office suite etc etc) and these are generally very compatible with the files/document formats that Windows uses.

Compatibility, especially for MSOffice documents, isn't perfect (complex documents often display differently and macros may fail), but this is hardly Linux' fault - Microsoft keeps their file/document formats a big secret to prevent people switching and to force you to go on using MS. But considering that everything is reverse engineered, the compatibility is remarkably good (and you can save in .doc/.ppt/etc. format so that Windows users can use your documents).

"Also I've always wondered how much PC makers pay Microsoft for their bulk purchases of Windows, seeing as you can pick up a PC these days for £200 how much of this do you think is the Windows licence?"

PC makers actually don't pay MS that much - FAR less than the cost of buying Windows in a shop. Still, there are enough of them to make MS very rich! But part of the agreement in their bulk purchase of Windows is a clause that says that all PCs they sell MUST have Windows installed - they're not allowed to sell PCs either with no operating system installed or with another OS. This dodge is one of the ways that MS has maintained its unlawful monopoly on operating systems and its stranglehold on the industry.

Linux is, can I say, "different" - modern Linuxes generally install seamlessly and for quite a few folks it just works "out-of-the-box" - for many a bit of tinkering is requires, but the reward for a few days messing around is a fast, flexible, stable OS that is very secure and works well on older hardware too.

Oh, and it's all FREE....

Thanks Mac the Knife,

I think I'll be supporting LINUX the next time I get a computer then, provided I can find a way to run Dreamweaver on it! It's great to see the project gaining momentum and if it can reach critical mass on the PC I guess there's little reason for people to turn back to Microsoft in the future?

Progress :)

MrSurrey

Here you go mrsurrey, Codeweavers, - http://www.codeweavers.com/main/ -who make Crossover Linux ($39), have supported Dreamweaver and Flash since 2003.

http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=5796

http://www.codeweavers.com/site/abou...s/?id=20031027

Not free, unfortunately, but you get the ability to run an awful lot of other Windows apps and games as well.

:ok:

Thanks a lot Mac the Knife! :} Goodbye Mr Gates :p

Problem formatting a Linux HD to Win XP
 

I've just attempted to re-format a Maxtor HD that once contained a Linux installation. The system comes up with a error when I try to format the now unallocated disk space to either FAT32 or NTFS.

I vaguely remember that it is necessary to do a bit of fiddling with the boot sector to remove some Linux-related infor from the HD's 0(?) sector. However, I don't recall what it is I have to do.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction?

Try the Micro$oft Support article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314458

Hope that helps.

RC

How did you install your Linux distro in the first place? If from a LiveCD, boot with the CD and use the included disk partitioning software (GParted or suchlike) to wipe and reformat to whatever you want.

If you can boot to Konsole, and understand zeroing a disk, you can try this:
[as root]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda(b) conv=sync,noerror count=x

where x = number of LBAs

Maxtor = 320173056
WDC = 16514064

cylinders * heads * sectors

Of course you'll need the number of LBA's for your own HDD. Google turned it up for me easily, or you can work it out from your BIOS.

Pray what possessseth thou to want XP back? :p

Many thanks to you all. I've now got it working.

Linux Options
 

Right, here goes.

I want to give Linux a shot, but my hard drive space is a bit limited. So I'd prefer to play around with a Live CD version till I get my hands on a new HDD. So far I've heard of Knoppix and something called SLAX. I've also heard that Ubuntu (which seems to be popular) released their latest version (Feisty Fawn??!!) but it doesn't seem to be able to run off the CD directly, at least it does not say so.

So has anyone here tried a Live CD version, and if so which would you recommend?

Note: I'm not going to use it for anything serious - I just want to get my feel of something non-Windows without having to go and buy a Mac. Internet access and ability to handle MS Word and Excel files (OpenOffice, I guess) is all I need.

I have used two "Live CD" versions of Linux. One was Knoppix and the other Mepis.

Knoppix and Mepis have very similar sets of included software, as do most Linux distributions. QTpartid, a substitute for Partition Magic, is almost enough reason, in itself, to have a Live CD version of Linux in one's toolbox. It works with both Windows and Linux disk formats.

Mepis is described as a nicer face on Kubuntu (Ubuntu) and I agree that it seems more friendly than Knoppix. I haven't tried Ubuntu nor Kubuntu themselves.

I think you'll find more online info about Knoppix.

I regularly use Open Office with Windows XP and it also comes with most Linux versions.

I use Ubuntu and find it to be very good. I very rarely find the need to use the kids Windows PC these days - have everything I need (including Open Office, Firefox browser and Thunderbird eMail) on my Ubuntu PC.

When I first installed Ubuntu they were on the "Dapper Drake" release which definitely came as a Live CD. I'm on "Edgy Edge" now and will upgrade to "Feisty Fawn" over the weekend. Not sure whether they've dropped the Live CD now - but if you burn it to a CD and reboot it will quickly become clear!

RC