Okay, I am probably even ruining whatever the checksum system is called. I downloaded 3.2. It ran fine on my e-machine (2.2 GHz, Celeron processor) and an older packard bell. (300 MHz. Cyprix processor.) But not everything on the disk ran. Just well enought to make me keep trying. So I downloaded Knoppix 3.3. Runs fine on the e-machine, with a few things that don't seem to work. On the packard bell, which is where I hoped to explore Linux before I did something critical to the other machine, I get as far as the boot prompt and the screen goes grey. And that's it.

I thought checking the quality of the download was the best place to start. Any suggestions where to learn more about how to use the checksum system?