This is a really good thread. I can see others besides myself have had hair raising experiences in the process of learning Linux. I certainly have had my share.

I started off on Xandros in the fall of '04. I don't know if it was a bad download, a buggy product, operator error, or all three, but I went thru hell with Xandros. I know I made some horrific mistakes. But Xandros wasn't any help. Even when it was working right it was sloooowwww. I finally gave up on it. I could write pages and pages about those experiences but I will spare the group.

I had also been tinkering with a little download called Knoppix. It would always find my hardware, offered my few problems. It was kinda nifty I thought even though it wasn't trying to be the next big thing like Xandros. Then I discovered that it could be installed on a hard drive. Whoa!

At the time, Knoppix was a bunt, after my bad Xandros experiences. All I wanted at this point was a little alternative OS to do net surfing and email as a dual boot setup. My expectations were very diminished.

Yes, I did make more big blunders. Like having to reinstall Knoppix more than a couple of times. I remember try to apt-get something and dumbly ignoring a message asking me if I really also wanted to remove what must have been several hundred files. Now that was REALLY stupid.

At those times I would be ready to give up. But I really wanted to be free of Windows. I would ask myself the origin of these errors. They would always point to ME! So, I would bite the bullet again.

Why all these mistakes? It was new and unfamiliar. I'm not exactly new to computing (since 1984) and my work puts me in charge of 5 ecommerce sites that I manage. But Linux was very different from Windows. With each mistake I would learn something. The forum has been immensely helpful. Now I feel like I know my way around Linux though there is still a bunch to learn.

And Knoppix instead of being just a way to avoid Windoze online vulnerabilites, has become my primary OS!! It's got a lot of nice refinements that XP does not have. It multitasks better! It's safe!

I am now studying how to remaster my own version of this OS.

At this point instead of a bunt I would call it a home run!! So, hang in there all of you who are frustrated. Knoppix is cool!

sakiZ