No more dual-booting

Some people are getting more curious about Linux. The distribution that seems to be getting a lot of exposure lately is Ubuntu. Then of course is the talk about that alternative web browser - Firefox. Well, if you are truly curious about giving Linux a try, there's no need to install it on your computer. You don't even need a Live CD. All you need is VMWare Player 1.0.1 and an image file to run the Ubuntu Browser Appliance (a 250MB download).

If you're not very technical, I'll try to be gentle with my explanation. You know how you run a program like MS Word in Windows? Well, VMWare Player lets you run whole virtual computers (running operating systems other than what you're running right now) as if it were just another program window. With the Browser Appliance image, you get to play with (the 5.10 version of) Ubuntu on your computer with the ability to switch back and forth to Windows at any time. The browser appliance is being touted as the safe way to cruise the nasty Internets, because any attempt to affect your Ubuntu computer is moot - it's just a virtual computer with no power to do anything to your real system - and - ready to be killed by simply closing VMWare. This is not only a safe way to browse, but a very unique method of test driving Ubuntu. Oh yeah - it's all free. If you're interested in all the virtual appliances that can be downloaded and run in the player, visit here. The list includes an actual full-blown Ubuntu 6.10 image and other versions of Linux.

Note: the VMWare player will give you much better results if you're running a late model computer with at least 512MB of RAM memory.