Do I have to partition the hard drive?

[KShef]

I'm currently running XP on the computer I want to use to experiment with Linux. I was told that I could download a distro of Linux to a CD and boot into it without disturbing my hard drive and that whenever I was ready I could eject the CD and reboot into XP. When I read the Introduction to Linux on LinuxISO.org I found no mention of this. The info there only suggested that I'd have to install it and mentioned nothing of running it from the CD.

Am I misunderstanding something or is there more information than I've found so far about this?

[lo_tek]

I believe there are linux distros which you can simply boot from cd, try out and then decide whether you want to run a full fledged linux system (which will very happily work alongside windows). I believe the knoppix distro allows you to do something like this (try without install). Corel (back in the day) also did something similar, only you installed it onto your win partition and ran it like a program, then removed it.

So yeah, look up knoppix... and if I'm wrong, it'll be made apparent soon

Good luck

[whiteknight]

Yes you can. They are called live CD's. One note is that they will be slower then using Linux normaly because everything has to be loaded off the CD whenever you want to do something. Knoppix's website is here: http://www.knoppix.org/

[KShef]

Thanks fellas!