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First, don't bet your life on this technology or OpenSSH or other tech.

Second, rather than run TOR on an everyday personal or work computer (Windows or Mac or Linux) with sensitive data and identifiable traits, I'd recommend booting a LiveCD: TAILS (v0.7.1 is the latest) and Liberté Linux:

http://tails.boum.org/
http://dee.su/liberte

or get Knoppix and harden it:
http://knoppix.com/

Change your MAC and connect at a coffee shop (if paranoid-- on the other side of town, and wear sunglasses in case of surveillance), not from home. Or connect to someone else's open WiFi, or get the key with Backtrack. Less secure is running a LiveCD in a VM (virtualbox or vmware). Another less secure option is running a hardened Linux, or at least running the Bastille script.

What am I missing? The main trouble with the LiveCD/DVDs is the NIC driver/module, but Knoppix is good for that.

integral-fellow

Linux From Scratch would be a good fallback position if building what you want on top of Gentoo or Arch didn't turn out to be as comparatively easy as it was supposed to be. It'll make you do a lot more work, but overcomes the snags through brute force of documentation, assuming little foreknowledge.

For a distro you can actually work in, the minimalist boot options of Knoppix would let you do a quick restart of X and see what your apps do in something like what your final release image is like. If nothing else, it's going to be the easiest way to explore the different minimal GUI's out there. If Monoppix has all the same boot options, it sounds like a perfect fit for the machine you want to do your coding in.

You can get yours here.

Ok. Yes. It was inevitable...
(So mod me an AC Troll, if you like.)

They're still good solutions for this perniscious problem.

http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://fedora.redhat.com/
http://www.mandriva.com/
http://www.debian.org/

or any other flavour of choice:
http://distrowatch.com/

You can even try CD-based versions to see how you really like it before touching a thing on your current system:
http://ubuntu-releases.cs.umn.edu/6.06/
http://www.knoppix.com/

__________

Booting your machine from a CD or DVD ISO to try it out - free.
Selecting your Open Source OS of choice, installing it, and using it however you like - free.
Discovering that, for most things*, it just 'works', will never blue-screen again, and that you've escaped the Microsoft lock-in treadmill - priceless.

* seriously folks, if you want esoterica, it's there too, and yes -- as with all things -- 'your mileage will vary'. But for sane and reasonable interpretations of 'most' this is still true, and not an exaggeration.

I currently carry Knoppix, Berry and Minimax. Berry for fun, Knoppix for work and Minimax for emergency situations.

BTW, Minimax is pretty interesting. It's a 32 megabyte live-cd/initrd image, and it has a whole lot of console tools. The best part of it is you can fit your favorite mp3s on the same disc, which means you can play music while you do data forensics. Too bad it's been discontinued.

Is there any "How to use Unix if you don't want to type a lot of code and basically want windows without the bugs

No. There isn't. Windows programs (e.g. Microsoft Word) can't run natively on Linux. Yes, you can use Wine (which comes in Knoppix) but it isn't perfect.

Do they have firefox for it?

Firefox started on Linux. Yes, it is the default browser in Knoppix. You see it as the firefox symbol in the bottom part of the screen.

Note: I'm assuming you don't want straight GNU/Unix because it has no GUI (X-windows) until you install one. I'd reccomend Linux. So, if you're computer literate, you might be able to use it. You just might not find it worth the hassle though. And by the way, OpenOffice does support Word files completely if that's what otherwise would keep you back.

Try KNOPPIX http://www.knoppix.com/, http://www.knoppix.org/. The live-CD is great and it installs like a champ.

Yes,
and bootable Linux CD's like Knoppix http://www.knoppix.com/ and Ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/ are also good tools. The CD's can be loaded toward Windows, or Linux/BSD tools depending on the system in for repair.Essential for out of the office repairs and analysis but also useful at the bench.

Here's the "give'em what they want in action:

"I want a car with tail fins!"

http://www.openvms.org/ Vintage design, looks a bit strange, but still classy in its own way.

"No I want a car with a bright pink paint job!"

http://www.linspire.com/ It's a real Linux and seems to do the job, but it may be a bit soft compared to the trad distros. Looks a little like one of those "strange" OSs

"I want a car that flies through the air, and swims underwater!"

http://www.knoppix.com/ Frisbeed it at the cat. Dunked it in the sink. Dropped it into the CD drive and it still booted into Debian. Nice.

"Foo to the others. I just want a basic car that goes from point A to Point B!"

http://www.goosee.com/puppy/ This is one quick little puppy. Not much to it, but it goes like a train.

"Nuts to the above. I want a car with a hot tub, and a wet bar, and plenty of space for all the women I'm going to get by driving this pimpmobile!".

http://www1.mandrivalinux.com/en-us/ This sucker's big and fluffy. Has everything and the kitchen sink, and it'll look after you while you install it.

Funny to hear Ballmer say something like this. Heck - Office for "Students and Teachers" is $129.99 [Blatent link to bestbuy ;)]... Guess we can't have that either. Just buy a bare bones box and a hard drive, put Knoppix on it and call it a day.

1) I'd bet real money that you're not cleaning all the spyware off your parent's PC, which is why it keeps coming back even though they use Firefox. Firefox isn't the problem -- Windows is the problem. Some spwayre leaves pieces on the hard drive, a part of the program you can't remove from within Windows, for the same reason and using the same 'Windows feature' which doesn't allow you to remove the '\System Volume Information' folder from within Windows. Get the connection?

2) Cleaning spyware off your parents PC (or, in your case, the failure to do so), does not make you an expert on spyware or antispyware programming. It only qualifies you to have your comments ignored, which is what I would've done if I'd known you didn't have a clue. Your posts have shown you have very limited knowledge of the subject, and I'm wondering why you even bother posting such ridiculous nonsense. Furthermore, I'm wondering why I'm even bothering to reply to your posts.

Try fixing your parents up with a Linux box, and see whether they get spyware ... they won't! Go here and try this: http://www.knoppix.com/. Linux *IS* usable by non-computer experts. More so than Windows, with its virus/worm/spyware/adware security issues.

Otherwise, just keep doing what you're doing and keep posting useless ignorant drivel to slashdot. You'll be satisfied, and you'll doubtless get lots of comments about your posts.

Get a copy of KNOPPIX. Open up your favorite terminal, hit aa and tab to find what the commands are, man it, and use it.

Before anyone get's their mod points in a twist, let me add that I'm a Gentoo fanboy who has installed Gentoo on a dozen boxen between home and work. I love it. But the latest LiveCDs have been very poor, namely 2004.1. Hardware detection is minimal if it works at all, and there are several other showstoppers along the way too that you won't discover until you hunt them down in the forums.

Let's hope we get these worked out by the end of the year, because this will sour people's impression of a great distro if we don't fix it.

At age 75, my Dad only uses his PC to read e-mail, play a few simple games and visit a few web sites. His PC consists of one of my old systems with 256 Meg of RAM, a CDROM Drive, a Knoppix CD and NO HARD DRIVE. His email account in on one of my servers and he accesses it via Open WebMail from OpenWebMail.org. Running from a "live" CD, he never has to worry about spyware etc. If he "goofs something up" as he would say, a simple reboot puts things right again.

(Just look at how well Knoppix does!)

The funny thing to me about ESR's rant is that I tried running Knoppix 3.x (it's a version of Debian that runs entirely off of CD) on my computer and my wife's computer at the same time, and, lo and behold, her laser printer showed up in KDE's Printing Manager on my computer automagically. (The two computers are networked through a router.) I didn't have to lift a finger. So either Klaus Knopper, who put Knoppix together, made sure it was configured correctly, or the version of Debian he used was configured correctly.

Actually, the advent of CUPS made printing on Linux much easier. I remember trying to get LPRng working on an older version of Red Hat with absolutely no success. (There was this nice GUI-based printer setup wizard that evidently did less than was necessary.) Fortunately CUPS had just come out, and it worked with my inkjet.

(Of course, Aunt Tillie isn't going to know how to download, unarchive, compile, make, and "make install" CUPS.)

- e2g

Any alternatives, or do we wait til the evident slashdotting is over?

One suggestion for you and other "newbies" like you then, Knoppix Just download and burn the iso image to CD (or go to a Linux User Group meeting - someone is sure to have a copy for you)... pop it in your CDROM drive, boot the CD and suddenly Linux with out pain! I've personally added a LOT more "users to the pool" via Knoppix then I ever could have via recommending Mandrake or any other distro including my personal favorite Slackware!

I missed this one Koppix's Homepage

This sounds like a smart move, to segment their markets, and thereby avoid losing business to some of the low-priced alternatives. Assuming they don't cannibalize their higher margin customers, it should be a net positive.

I think AOL might want to come out with a version that boots directly from a CD, and doesn't rely on Windows, etc. This would be a nice turnkey system for those who are not very familiar with PCs. Using technology from Knoppix, I bet they could squeeze in everything into a bootable CD.

Has God given them special rights so they can remain profitable forever? Nonsense. With advances of technology, certain things won't be profitable anymore. And one of these things, is earning money with copies of software. That is, the video, or audio content which is simply a form of data.

Absurd patents granted for 2 centuries are also halting progress to the point of stagnation in a sea of patents. Have you seen recently the Knoppix page? How and when, the people of europe was consulted to make such a decision? Why the so called "representatives" are making decisions while turning their back to the people who put them in there? This must come to a stop.

Either they win and instate a police state world where everyone must be a subject of corporations (Fascism) and then a major portion will be forced into outlaws, or we, the people, get our voice heard and declare them with their stupid laws obsolete. I am sure not all the countries of the world will accept Washington's views, even with all their strong influence.

In my country IP concerning medicine is officialy ignored. National health has priority over the greed of foreign industries. I think Brazil and some country in Africa also proceeded like this. Of course, many foreigners also come to our tropical jungle to steal the knowledge of our natives regarding healing properties of herbs or other plants and they go back to their home countries and then patent their drugs as it was their property. Its an absurd pillage of the wealthy against the poor, and our people is not tolerating this any longer.

In practice, no one respects any copyright here either. 80% of the software used here is not "legit". Who cares? You can't enforce property laws on "fictional objects". You can not equate stealing (as RIAA loves to) with copyright infrigment. When you steal, a physical object is removed. When you copy, the source remains unaltered. How then, can you call people making copies "Thieves, Pirates, etc" when there is not any murdering, violence or lost of REAL property involved? Its a NONSENSE invented by THOSE WITH POWER so they can maintain their BUSINESS.

Well, i say, THEY HAVE TO GO, NOT US. They can eat their IP and copyrights and patents and scream bloody murder pirates till they exhaust in desperation, WE DON'T CARE. "Copyright infrigment" will NOT STOP, EVER.

Unless they realize this and adapt to the new era, they don't deserve any consideration.

I've downloaded gigs and gigs of stuff.

This is the case now, but it is changing as many linux distros are making themselves more accessible to the end-user and/or more desktop-friendly. Heck, you can download a fully-functional Linux distro like Knoppix or any of the many others, all of which work very well as desktop environments and many of which would be comfortable to M$ users. Indeed, working at a University as I do, I already see more and more students using Linux on the desktop, and that's encouraging. University environments can sometimes portend future technology trends and I'm hoping this will hold true here. However, this means that more and more the "average" user may be getting put onto Linux. And it won't be long, then, before I think we do start seeing Sobig-like fun in Linux. This will be furthered as well when, as was stated somewhere in this thread, Linux gets used more and is therefore a useful platform for making a "big splash" via mass-infection.

Heres one that doesnt even need installing!

...Now maybe we can fit GNOME onto Knoppix!

So tempting to mod you down like the troll you are but why not bite instead.

If you just go to this little link right here you'll find a very easy to use Office app that you can install in a few clicks on Windows, Solaris or Linux. And not only does it not have to be compiled, it doesn't cost your money or freedom either!

Or perhaps you'd like the entire linux OS, free of licensing, without having to compile a single thing. Here are just a few examples.

And that's why Knoppix is so cool. You can hand someone a burned CD, say "just pop this in your drive and check it out." Chances are pretty good it will work, right off the bat. No partitioning is needed, no setup is needed, and when they're done, they simply take out the CD, reboot, and they're back to Windows.

It's a great way to show people that "Linux is cool" without having to worry about losing data, formatting disks, partitions or any of the other typical difficulties in using a new OS.

If your Windows-using buddy hands you back the CD and goes "yeah, well it was ok", that's fine. If he/she insists on keeping the CD and wants you to show him/her more... well that's when you can pull out the razor and start shaving legs (to mix some biking metaphors in)

I can't even get gnome to work properly with my new intel motherboard with the sound and graphics all combined and sharing memory. Naturally intel doesn't want to admit that anyone would run anything but windoze on their system. Bleck. And I had trouble persuading the machine to cough up its personal details even with win installed (as well as Freebsd). Freebsd is quite happy, it's just the GUI layers that won't speak to me.

I would love a "default" install that just runs, offers me choices that are available instead of expecting me to know how the intel board understands itself (when intel won't tell me either). Then I'd like to be able to go back and tweak things later.

Knoppix: IQ test1: Find a page in english
Knoppix: IQ test2 (tech knowlege): Figure out how to fix the frame representation so that the page is not at 110% (ie no matter how much screen your browser takes up, you still have to scroll to see the last couple of words of every line).

And that's just their web page. Not very encouraging. I don't think either group (Knoppix or Debian) are very focussed on non-geeks. Perhaps if they imagined that undirected computers were going to use their operating system. Ie build an interface a moron could use.

Missing FAQ:
What's the difference between Knoppix KDE and Gnome?

How do I know I'm getting an english language gui install cd image (and not german)?

refs
google Knoppix
First result German
second result page overwidth
at last, just right, sort of

Debian is a superior distro in many, many ways. I can't argue with your points b) and c), but a) is wrong. Debian is a pain in the ass to install.

I'm sure I won't be the first to suggest you install Knoppix (here and here) instead. You can run it from the bootable CD or you can install it to your hard drive following the (relatively) simple how-to.

Knoppix is based on Debian so you get all that tasty Debian flavor.

If you want a recruitment tool, try Knoppix. If you don't know, it's essentially a Linux distro that boots cleanly off of a CD, with no install required. An easy way to nudge people onto using Linux is to just hand out Knoppix CDs at school. It's about in the technical range that most highschoolers can understand.

Just in case your serious, Slackware 9.0 would be a good choice - one of the oldest of the disto's and still going strong (new release this week!) www.slackware.com or try Knoppix if you want to try Linux without installing it on your current system www.knoppix.com it's a "live" cd distro that is great at auto-configuring for most hardware!

You don't have to install it, just burn to CD and boot. "It just works."

tried booting Knoppix off of a cd-rom and mounting your external storage from there?

Knoppix is a full featured linux system on a bootable cd-rom that does not require any writable storage (but can use it if you've got it).

yeah, but mod me up too!

Karma starved whore, goatse.cx free since last week whe i hit the 'new' link by accident.

www.knoppix.com

www.knoppix.com, go ahead and check out http://www.knoppix.com/ and get a cdrom iso image .

This was you can try before you buy and see how 'cool' it is. No need to format your hard disk, no need to know linux.

Knoppix lets you put in the cd, and reboot and SEE AND TOUCH AND FEEL linux before you ever make a change to your system. Although you may need to enter your BIOS and make your CD-ROM a bootable device prior to your harddisk...

While this is not what he wanted, a book, it is better, because you can run linux without having to commit to it, which is what I bet many people stumble on.

I run Knoppix off the cd and off of my harddisk on an older system (p-300) and it is worth trying if you are a newbee.

-mod me up, i need the karma, please!

Its been mentioned alot lately, but I think Knoppix is the exact answer for this question. The entire OS is contained on the CD, and it boots without a problem detecting most hardware automatically. CDs like this would be a great way for people to experiment with Linux without worrying about partitioning, installing, and possibly screwing up their system. Of course, I wouldn't recommend this for any longtime use, since you can't change much in the OS, and you're CD drive is always occupied, but its a good way to start.

I'm wondering if Debian was ever really meant to be a finished, polished, complete distribution- instead, maybe we should consider it raw material from which more polished distributions can be built- like Linux itself. Debian just takes Linux a little further- then leaves it for others to finish.

I say this because there have been some really nice, slick distributions based on Debian. Corel was the first I can remember. It wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but it had a slick installer that did everything automagically, and some desktop enhancements to make it easier for the average Windows user to handle. Storm Linux was another that was pretty nice- again, a slick installer almost anyone could use, plus some nice system management and configuration tools, similar to Mandrake's. Now, Libranet seems to be doing good things with Debian also. You can read about Libranet here. Finally, I tried Knoppix the other day. It's a neat distribution that runs live from a CD, so one can try Linux without actually installing it. It has all the basics, and a nice KDE desktop. It's incredibly slick- installing, configuring, and loading itself from a CD faster than any of my Linux machines have ever booted. It detected all the hardware and ran perfectly on my laptop, with the nicest KDE desktop I've seen. I've been a Win2k hostage lately, so I've been loading Knoppix to netsurf and use some of my favorite programs, like Lyx. I urge everyone to try it, just for kicks.

All of these distributions are Debian, with the finish work being done by someone else.

So maybe we shouldn't think of Debian as a finished distribution, but as a toolkit- raw material for other distibutors to work with. Some have, and have done a good job.

If you just want to get familiar with GNU/Linux then try a CD based distro like Knoppix. Just pop in the CD and restart the machine to boot from CD-ROM drive. It works like a charm and comes with ton of software (almost anything you can think of) in every category. Play around with it and see how you like it. I use it (even run Apache, Squid and other stuff) and I love it (no, I don't work for them or anything). Once you are ready to take the next step and install GNU/Linux on your hard drive you can try Debian (Kmoppix is based on Debian), Mandrake, ELX for starters. They have most user friendly installation and configuration.

- Jalil Vaidya

If you want to check out Linux without potentially killing your computer (and if you're a linux newbie this is very possible) either download Knoppix or something like Suse LiveCD. These run directly off the CD and do not require you to repartition your hard drive and the like. If you don't like them, take out the CD, delete the temp files (if you choose to make any), and go back to Windows.

Just an addendum, a lot of older CD-writers (like mine) will not burn Knoppix since it is 700MB.

Or try the new Gentoo and play some UT2003 while you're at it.

The only real windows attachment for many people are the games. If you show that Linux can run somee current games too, then they will be more open to trying Linux. It will also help encourage game developers to port to Linux.

If you want to show someone the power of the Linux Desktop, grab Knoppix