How to burn a Linux CD under Windows

The fact that Linux is free software is intriguing to many computer users fed up with their current operating systems, but one obstacle many users face when they decide to try Linux is figuring out how get started. Sure, you can run down to the local retailer and drop $29.95 on a retail SKU, or even order a cheap CD from the Web, but that’s not free. A better option for getting one’s feet wet with Linux is to download a distro, burn it to a CD, and install it from there.

If you’re a Windows user who wants to try Linux, this article is for you. If you’re a Linux expert, please skip down a bit, because to finish this article right I need your help.

Okay, newbies (GNUbies?), are you with me? Make sure your computer has a CD-R or CD-RW drive, and made sure you have a blank disc to write. I suggest using an 80-minute disc; I just tried burning Slackware to a 74-minute CD-RW disc only to find that it didn’t have enough space. You also need a broadband Internet connection — cable modem or DSL at home or T1 or better at work — or an understanding friend who has one.

Speaking of Slackware, let’s use that distro for our example. (If you already know you want a different distro, you can probably find it at linuxiso.org or distrowatch.com.) Use your favorite browser to go to Slackware’s download site and click on one of the available links. You’ll see a list of folders, each containing a version of the operating system. Pick the latest non-beta version — slackware-9.0-iso as I write this. Click on the folder to open it, then click on the .iso file and save the file to your hard drive.

The file you’re downloading with the file type of .ISO is formatted according to the International Standards Organization’s ISO 9660 spec for data CDs — sometimes called High Sierra. It contains an image of the software that’s meant to be written to the physical disc.

To actually do the writing, turn to the software that came with your CD-R drive. There are too many packages to give step-by-step directions for all of them, but the general idea is to open the ISO file, specify the CD-R drive as the destination, and say go. Most software makes it just that easy.

If you don’t already own software for burning CDs, download a free trial version of one of the popular packages like Nero Burning ROM, Alcohol 120%, or RecordNow Max. Just make sure the package you choose can handle data CDs as well as music and MP3 files.

When the burning software says it’s finished, all the files you need are on your CD. You still need two more items, though — a computer to install the software on, and a guide to help you over the rough spots.

The best way to try out Linux is on a separate machine whose disk drive you can trash. If you don’t have one available, you can make Linux run side-by-side with Windows on a single machine, but it’s a complex arrangement to set up, involving backing up your disk, repartitioning your hard drive, and installing Linux with a boot manager program that lets you choose which operating system to run. If the link in this paragraph doesn’t give you enough information, a simple Web search will turn up a dozen other how-to articles.

In fact, the Web is a great place to go for all kinds of Linux advice, but I recommend having a reference book on hand too. It’s easier and faster to find answers in a good book. My Linux bible is an older edition of Richard Peterson’s Linux: The Complete Reference. (By the way, if you’d like us to review new Linux books, please let me know.)

Nothing with computers is easy or fault-free, and installing an operating system can be a complex task. But if you’re the kind of user who found this article, you have what it takes to succeed in downloading and installing a Linux distro.

Call for expert advice

A few paragraphs ago I quickly passed over the question every newbie asks: Which distro should I start with? There’s no easy answer to that question, but there are some guidelines, and I hope to address them in a future article. That’s where I need my readers’ expert help.

To answer the question, you have to know what hardware someone is using and what he or she hopes to accomplish with Linux. In as specific a way as possible, I’d like you to share your advice with a hypothetical Windows user of average intelligence and experience (who has a hypothetical friend with Linux expertise). If you find yourself using the word "if" a lot, you’re probably being a big help.

You can post a comment below, but please also copy your comment and send an email to the special address I’ve set up to handle this topic. Let me know if I can mention your name and/or email address in the article. I’ll assimilate all reader input and try to produce some practical advice.

SCO dumps Linux development, threatens Linux users

The SCO Group is getting out of the Linux business and into the legal arena. That’s the message the company is sending to customers with a letter this week. It said it is suspending its “Linux-related activities” while aggressively protecting its intellectual property rights in Unix. At the same time, SCO is implying it could sue anyone who uses Linux, saying “legal liability that may arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end user.”

How wrong-headed can one company’s management be?

Two months ago SCO filed suit against IBM, charging the computing giant with “misusing and misappropriating SCO’s proprietary software; inducing, encouraging, and enabling others to misuse and misappropriate SCO’s proprietary software; and incorporating (and inducing, encouraging, and enabling others to incorporate) SCO’s proprietary software into open source software offerings.”

It’s true that Unix owns the rights to Unix System V. Caldera, SCO’s prior incarnation, acquired them from Novell in 1995, two years after that company had purchased them from AT&T, where Unix originated in the 1960s. And it’s true that a company has to enforce those rights if it hopes to maintain a business advantage from them.

It’s not clear, however, that IBM has done anything SCO accuses it of. Linux is a clone of Unix. That doesn’t mean it uses the same source code. There’s a long, clear history in business of companies reverse-engineering successful products. In this case, IBM is using the work of thousands of open source programmers — all of whom are too numerous, and too poor, for SCO to hit with a billion-dollar lawsuit.

A judge will have to examine source code and listen to arguments about what constitutes misappropriation. If the court decides SCO is in the right, determining an appropriate penalty could take years. (Can you say “Microsoft antitrust”?)

In addition to its legal implications, the latest statement is a stinging attack on open source development itself. Consider:

Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software. This process is designed to monitor the security and ownership of intellectual property rights associated with the code.

By contrast, much of Linux has been built from contributions by numerous unrelated and unknown software developers, each contributing a small section of code. There is no mechanism inherent in the Linux development process to assure that intellectual property rights, confidentiality or security are protected. The Linux process does not prevent inclusion of code that has been stolen outright, or developed by improper use of proprietary methods and concepts.

SCO is correct that there is no corporate process designed to prevent theft of intellectual property. Instead, there’s a stronger force at work — pride. Open source developers have only their reputations on the line — not their income, not their jobs. Pride in doing a job well, pride in not stealing work that rightfully belongs to others, does more to keep open source developers honest than any corporate policy ever could.

It’s hard to identify what SCO ultimately hopes to accomplish. Many companies turn to lawsuits as a last-ditch attempt to find revenue after they realize they don’t have any hope of maintaining their existence any other way. That may be the game SCO is playing. The company is increasingly unprofitable, though it is expected to announce a profitable quarter at the end of this month.

A Gartner analyst posits that the BIM lawsuit is a way to make SCO more tempting as a takeover candidate. That’s unlikely though — everyone in the open source community, which is far larger than the SCO customer base, now views anything associated with SCO with scorn. As for the likelihood of IBM buying the company to dispense with an annoyance — fat chance.

SCO’s annual shareholder meeting is Friday at the company’s headquarters in Utah. It should be interesting to hear how the company handles questions about these moves it will surely get from press and customers alike.

SCO has little reason not to put its Linux business on hold. I suspect it has had a hard time selling any copies since it announced the IBM lawsuit. Current OpenServer and UnixWare customers should view this move as a wakeup call. As SCO Linux goes today, so will the other operating systems go tomorrow if long legal battle drains the company’s coffers while customers stay away in disgust. Investigate options for server platforms now so you can be prepared for a transition later, if necessary.

Review: Sharp Zaurus SL-5600

I’ve tried PalmOS-based PDAs and I’ve tried Pocket PCs, so I was excited to get my hands on a Linux-based alternative — the Sharp Zaurus SL-5600. While this revised version of last year’s SL-5500 has a lot going for it, it isn’t the killer product one might hope for.

The new Zaurus offers all the personal information manager basics — a calendar, address book, to-do list, calculator, memo pad, voice recorder, and multimedia player, all part of the Qtopia application environment. It offers Web browsing with Opera version 6, and Microsoft Word and Excel compatibility with Hancom Word and Hancom Sheet. And it comes bundled with seven games, though not my favorite handheld time-wasters, Reversi and Mancala.

Zaurus’s screen layout is fairly intuitive and makes fairly good use of the limited screen space, though the scroll bar on the right side of the screen is much thicker than it needs to be. You can move between open applications by clicking on tiny icons at the bottom of the screen.

Synchronizing with a desktop computer is simple and standard. Put the device in a cradle that’s attached to a USB port on the desktop, press a button on the cradle, and presto — the device will synchronize its address book, calendar, and to-do list with the information in Microsoft Outlook, Palm Desktop, or Qtopia Desktop. Oddly for a PDA based on Linux, there’s no Linux desktop software; Sharp expects its customers to be running Windows. Transferring files happens in real-time and not as part of a synchronization operation, which I found surprising at first but ultimately logical and preferrable. There’s no need to perform a full synchronization when all you want to do is move a file or two to the device.

You can easily install new applications to the Zaurus. I downloaded the OpieReader book reader, transferred it to the device, and used the Add/Remove Software application to install it with no trouble. I found a great collection of applications at http://killefiz.de/zaurus/, a less comprehensive repository at zaurus.loveslinux.com, and a suite of commerical products at theKompany.com. Add-on applications are in the ipkg packaging format and carry a file type of .ipk.

Under the applications is a fully functional and highly customizable version of Linux, Embedix Plus PDA, based on the 2.4.18 Linux kernel. It’s really Linux — you can enter terminal commands if you install the terminal application from the product’s installation CD.

The hardware itself is pretty impressive. Built around a 400MHz Intel Xscale processor (twice as fast as its predecessor, the SL-5500), its subjective speed is comparable to the HP iPaq 3835 running Pocket PC 2002 on a 206MHz StrongARM CPU. Internal memory at 96MB is more than adequate, and the Zaurus offers built-in expansion slots for both Secure Digital and CompactFlash memory cards. A 1700mAh lithium-ion battery gave me enough power to get through a day of fairly heavy usage, but wouldn’t go much longer without recharging. The 240×320 backlit screen displays images crisply in 65,536 colors.

Below the screen are the typical four hardware buttons for invoking applications, which can be customized and mapped to other applications. There’s also a Home button that takes you to where you’d expect, cycling through the five Home screens that show all the available applications and the file manager. You move the cursor by pressing on a ring that circle a Select button. On the right and left of the cursor keys are OK and Cancel buttons, the latter of which also acts as the On/Off switch.

The Zaurus, like RIM’s BlackBerry, offers a tiny built-in keyboard that’s accessible by sliding down the lower part of the device. I found the keyboard keys too tiny for speedy touch-typing. I couldn’t type any faster than I could pick out words on a screen image of a keyboard with the stylus, and since you need to use the stylus (or a fingernail) for many operations on the touchscreen, I didn’t find much value in the keyboard. The one place it came in most handy was in editing document, where using the Shift key and tapping the end of a long section of text let me easily select large sections of a document to format or delete.

Because the Zaurus can hold its own against Pocket PC devices (and beats the pants off PalmOS), a potential user’s subjective reaction is probably the deciding factor in what PDA to purchase. I found Zaurus’s form factor, which is slightly narrower and longer than that of an iPaq, to be more comfortable, and its hardware button layout is the best of any handheld device I’ve tested. But the Pocket PC platform has a wider variety of ebook readers and a broader assortment of available third-party applications.

With a list price of $499 and a street price as low as $445 the Zaurus SL-5600 is in the same price range as new Pocket PCs. I’d like to see Sharp offer a low-end Zaurus without the keyboard and one of the memory expansion slots, but with a built-in 802.11b network adapter, at an aggressive price. That kind of networked handheld could make a lot of customers happy.