Technology:

While most of the hot talk of late has been about batteries bursting into flames followed by Apple abandoning its hardware for Intel processors, some of you might still be curious about Linux, that other operating system.

For several years now, those of us who have shared this curiosity have been aware of DistroWatch, a site devoted to providing a host of information and links to free downloads of Linux and BSD distros where we can learn and try out various brands.

You can download a variety of distrobutions of Linux from the site, including live CDs, that will allow you to experience first hand what Linux is like, without ever needing to install anything to your hard drive.

The process is fairly simple, as long as you have a CD burner with software to change IO images into the format that will make the files viable. To learn more about this process, we suggest Ross Laver's "How to Burn an ISO Image" over at Ibiblio.

You will need a broadband connection for the download, and your computer must be set to boot from the CD drive before the hard drive. This is done by resetting the bios on the computer. If you don't know how to do this, then maybe you're not ready for this techy stuff anyway.

If you are okay with all of this, we can recommend both the Knoppix distro and the Ubuntu distro as good places to start learning more about Linux. If you aren't familiar with what's happened in the Linux world over the past few years, we think you'll be pleasantly surprised.