DSL Embedded :: New with Linux.. Help?



Hey everyone i'm 15 and I've been interested in Linux for a while now, but I know nothing about it.. Where does everyone think would be a good start for me? I'm currentlly running a Windows laptop (WINXP), any help would be nice! Just tell me what I need to download to get started, and also DSL wont messup my windows operating system will it? Thanks!!
Go here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/

download this:
dsl-3.0.1.iso

Use your CD burning software to make a "CD image" which is different than just making a regular data or music CD.

You can read this for further info regarding making a CD image:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Burning_a_Bootable_CD

Once you have burned DSL to CD as an image, make sure your computer will boot from CD. You can check that in the BIOS settings of your computer. Or, you can just put the CD in the CD-ROM device and then reboot the computer to see if it will work.

DSL will not mess up your XP install. Try not to mount your hard drive (NTFS) and you will be just fine.

If you have 128Mb of RAM or more, you can run DSL in RAM, which makes it lightening fast. To do that, boot with the DSL CD in the CD-ROM device, when it gets to the boot prompt,
type this:

dsl toram

Otherwise, play with the "Live DSL CD" until you get used to the idea of running DSL, then you can start doing other things with it.

Have fun!
Heh thanks for the help, I'm downloading that right now! Also what do you mean try not to mount it, I know you can mount cd images to a virtual drive but, just don't do it with this right? And if I do this will it mess something up? Thanks!
Yeah don't mount it, you have to use a physical CD, I don't think it will damage your computer though  ???

It will not mess up your windows settings as long as you DONT install it to the harddrive. Just run it off the live cd, and play around with it. If it gets a bit out of hand, just reboot.

The entire OS runs off your CDROM drive and ram, and if you have a lot of ram, you can multitask without problems.

So just put the DSL cd in your cdrom drive, and restart, and you should boot into linux, if it doesnt boot, then go to your BIOS and put CDROM as the 1st boot device, and if that still doesnt allow the cd to boot, then maybe the cd is corrupted, so redownload it.

Spidertools.com has a manual for DSL, I purchased it, and found it to be useful. That would be a good purchase after you've used DSL for a few weeks and feel comfortable with it.
Ok awesome thanks! I will be using the 'dsl toram' that the guy before was talking about since I have 1Gig of ram. Thanks for your help, just wanted to make sure I don't mess up my windows installation.

:)

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