Hello! I am trying to give Ubuntu a test drive so that will know whether or not I want when I go to colleage. This is my first time using a boot disk, so please excuse me if my questions have obvious answers. 1. If the disk freezes, or fails to load, can I simply open the CD tray and take it out? 2. Is there any way it could possibly harm the hard-drive in any way? 3. I have dial-up connection. Will this mess up the LiveCD at all? 4. Is there anything I should not touch while running it? For example, if I accidentally click save, will the whole works crash? 5. Is there anything else I should know? Thanks guys! ^_^

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1. If the disk freezes, or fails to load, can I simply open the CD tray and take it out?

Yes.

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2. Is there any way it could possibly harm the hard-drive in any way?

Not unless you explicitly mount hard drive partitions as writable (short answer: no).

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3. I have dial-up connection. Will this mess up the LiveCD at all?

It won't "mess it up." The worst that could happen is that you won't be able to go online.

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4. Is there anything I should not touch while running it? For example, if I accidentally click save, will the whole works crash?

Not really. You can save documents, but it'll save it to ram.

1. If the system has halted due to hardware failure, your CD-ROM eject button may become unresponsive (particularly since Windows gives a BSOD and Linux gives -- I think -- a kernel panic under such circumstances).

2. Impossible. Ubuntu Live doesn't touch the hard drive at all. I had a problem this weekend where my hard drive was unbootable. I had to check a couple things online before I commenced with the fix, so I unplugged the hard drive, and booted up using my 5.10 Ubuntu Live CD.

3. My system is on a LAN, however I believe there are PPP tools on the Live CD. The Live CD is a CD-R, thus is read-only. You can't damage it short of physically harming it.

4. I'm not sure where it would save documents, I'm almost certain it will ask you for a save location, so Caveat Emptor :)

5. The Live CD, for the most part, is designed to allow users to test-drive Ubuntu without committing to an install (e.g. test-drive, remove CD, reboot). If you don't mind configuring the network and personal settings (e.g. Firefox plugins) each time you boot up, it will serve your purposes. If you have the option, however, (and because it sounds like you have a Windows install that you want to preserve) I'd recommend using something like Partition Magic to create a small (~2-5gb) partition on your Windows drive, and installing a proper Linux OS. It comes with a boot manager (can't recall if it's LILO or Grub) which allows you to select either OS at startup.

It's a common practise to create 3 partitions on your hard drive; one NTFS drive for Windows installation, one Ext3 partition for Linux installation, and one FAT32 partition for user-files. Once you have both OS's installed, you can simply map your home directory / My Documents to point to the other drive. Then, your personal files are accessible from either OS. Perhaps this will serve your purpose.

Thanks guys! ^_^