One of the features the more advanced user will appreciate is the Security settings available in YaST2. The amount of detail given to security in this release is stunning…but not necessarily built for the new user. I want to highlight the openSUSE security settings so you can see for yourself just how granular you can be with openSUSE security.

Where to find security?

Figure 1

By default, of the security settings you are about to see are installed in openSUSE 11.4. In order to open up the Security Settings window click on Start > Computer > Administrator Settings (YaST). Once in YaST click on the Security and Users section (see Figure 1).

From there you will find a few security features to configure:

• Firewall: Configure your firewall on your system.
• Security Center and Hardening: Configure numerous security settings.
• Sudo: Graphic interface for managing sudo.

I want to concentrate on the Security Center in YaST. Click on that entry in the Security and Users section and a new window will open.

Security and Hardening

Figure 2

From within the Security and Hardening window (see Figure 2) you will have numerous settings available to you. In the security overview you get a good idea of what is enabled/disabled on your system. From that same section you can enable, disable, or configure those options. Some of the more handy options are:

Remote access to the display manager: Allow remote access to KDM.

Remote access to X server: Enable remote access to X windows.

Use secure file permissions: You can set your file permissions from three different levels (easy, secure, paranoid).

Another section in this window that is of great interest is pre-defined security settings. From here you can select from four different settings:

• Home Workstation
• Networked Workstation
• Network Server
• Custom

If you do not want to monkey around with too many of the security settings, I highly recommend you select one of the first three options here.

If you look at the Password section you will be surprised to find you can actually configure password checks as well as password expiration. If you have multiple users on your system, and you want to make sure your users are setting solid passwords, make sure you configure these sections. Here you can set the following:

• Minimum password length.
• Number of passwords to remember.
• Password encryption method.
• Password age (min and max).
• Days before Password Expires Warning.

Finally, you should take a look at the login section. Here you can set the amount of incorrect login attempts that can occur before a delay is forced. You can also enable/disable remote graphical login.

Final thoughts

Although openSUSE is not generally consider among the most secure Linux distributions, if administered properly it can easily stand toe to toe with any distribution available. And having the YaST security options readily available makes configuring openSUSE security a simple endeavor.

What’s new?

There is a lot to be said in this category. The openSUSE 11.4 release offers the following updates:

KDE Plasma Desktop 4.6: openSUSE might well be the first distribution packaging the most recent KDE desktop by default. Although KDE 4.5 probably brought to the users the single most amount of bug fixes ever, 4.6 does a great job of upping the performance ante once again. KDE 4.6 is an incredibly solid desktop that any user would be happy to have as their default.

You will also find better KDE to Firefox integration in the 4.6 release. As well KPackageKit has become the default update applet.

Web browsers: Speaking of Firefox, openSUSE 11.4 ships with Firefox 4.0 and the latest release of Konqueror (The version of Konqueror installed is the Webkit version.)  But don’t think you are limited to those two browsers. You can now easily add Chromium to your desktop through the Add/Remove Software tool! Before you try to add Chromium, you will have to enable to community repos by following these steps:

1. Open YaST2.
2. Click on Configuration.
3. Select Repositories.
4. Click the Add button.
5. Click Community Repositories and click Next.
6. Check Main Repository (Contrib) and click OK.

Now you can search for Chromium and install it.

Office tools: I was pleasantly ssurprised to find LibreOffice pre-installed on openSUSE 11.4. I believe openSUSE might be the first of the distributions to ship with LibreOffice as the default office suite! You will also find the standard KDE office tools along side LibreOffice.

Multi-media: Banshee 2.0 has been added and is used as the default media player in openSUSE. In order to have this on your desktop by default, you will need to download the full DVD install and not the Live CD. If you do install from the Live CD you will be able to install Banshee from YaST2 by simply searching for “banshee” (no quotes) and installing. I would, however, suggest installing from the full DVD, in order to get the complete openSUSE experience.

Over all take

I have to say I was quite pleased with how well openSUSE runs. Not only is it quite stable, it’s also lightning fast. The only problem I came across was with the effects engine. The machine I tested on is able to use all visual effects in both Ubuntu and Elive, but openSUSE seemed to not be able to run KDE with visual effects running. So effects had to be turned off. Outside of that small issue, the experience with openSUSE 11.4 has been quite good.

Who’s it for?

Would I recommend openSUSE for a new Linux user? No. But if you are comfortable in the Linux environment, openSUSE and KDE 4.6 will be a welcome change. If, however, you are a new user who really wants to cut their teeth on something with a bit more power than Ubuntu, openSUSE might be just the distro you are looking for.

In this article I will introduce you to what I consider the OpenSuSE “Welcome Tool”. With this tool you can point new users to help as well as gather information about the system the OS is installed upon and start popular applications.

The Plasmoid

Figure 1

Remember, this “tool” is a KDE plasmoid.  Specifically, this is a Folder View Plasmoid. As you can see, in Figure 1, this Plasmoid contains, by default, five icons. These icons are well thought out:

Firefox: The obvious most used browser for the Linux browser.

My Computer: Find information about your computer.

Office: OpenOffice main icon. The most used office suite for Linux.

Online Help: A link to a web page that will point the new user to popular pages for help.

OpenSuSE: Konqueror page that helps the new user get to know Konquer.

Outside of the very obvious (Firefox and OpenOffice), let’s take a look and see some specifics about what these icons have to offer.

My Computer

Figure 2

If you click (single click will do) on the My Computer icon a Konqueror window will open to the page you see in Figure 2. In this page you will find plenty of information about your setup. Not all of this page is interactive. But you can click on the device links as well as the Common Folders and you will be treated to a Konqueror window of those respective views.

Online Help

With a click of the online help line Firefox will open to the OpenSuSE Help Page. This page offers the following links:

• Documentation
• Chat and Help
• Mailing lists
• Web forums

Of these, the most useful are the Web Forums, Mailing Lists, and (from the Documentation Page) the Official OpenSuSE Documentation. I would highly recommend new users first visit the Official Documentation first. And then, as issue occur, go back to the Web Forums and Mailing Lists.

OpenSuSE

Figure 3

Finally. What you see (in Figure 3) is what should appear on the desktop when a user first logs into their OpenSuSE desktop. Why this is only displayed at the click of a link I will never know. But the OpenSuSE link offers up a welcome screen that gives the user (especially the new user) plenty of information that will help them get started. Within this information is all of the the helpful links in the Folder View Plasmoid. So just get rid of the links and make this window appear upon login. Simple. And, as you can see, this screen also has an introduction to KDE4 – another very helpful tool for the new user (or the new to KDE4 user).

Final thoughts

Of all the distributions, OpenSuSE has come the closest to creating that much needed welcome screen for the new user. It’s only a matter of time before a distribution wakes up and realizes the importance of this tool. Thank you OpenSuSE for helping to open the eyes of other distributions.

I’m sure you have read plenty of my Linux articles that outline how to install with Ubuntu. That distribution takes advantage of apt-get and dpkg for command line installation. In the OpenSuSE distribution the zypper tool is used for this same task. Believe it or not, zypper is just as easy to use as is the Ubuntu equivalent. And in this article you will see just that.

What is zypper?

The zypper tool is the command line interface to the ZYpp system management library. Zypper can be used to install/update/remove software, manage repositories, perform queries, and more. Using the zypper command does require root privileges, so you will have to first su to the root user before you issue any of the zypper commands.

Usage

The basic structure of the zypper command looks like:

zypper GLOBAL_OPTIONS COMMAND COMMAND_OPTIONS

Although it looks a bit complex it’s not. Let’s take a look at the various tasks you will perform with the zypper command.

Installing software

Installing software with zypper is simple. The command will look like this:

zypper install SOFTWARE

Where SOFTWARE is the name of the software you want to install.

Say, for example, I want to install Scribus (the desktop publishing application). To do this the command would look like:

zypper install scribus

Removing software

Now let’s say you want to remove a piece of software. The command structure for deleting software looks like:

zypper remove SOFTWARE

Sticking with our example, if you want to remove Scribus from your OpenSuSE machine you would issue the command:

zypper remove scribus

Searching for software

Figure 1

Say you don’t know what Scribus is, or you aren’t sure if you know the name of the package. You could use zypper to search the cached database for installation candidates like so:

zypper search scribus

The above command would return something like what you see in Figure 1. As you can see, zypper will report back all possible applications for the search string.

Updating with zypper

Updating with zypper is incredibly easy. Issue the command zypper update and if there are any updates available to your system they will be reported and all you need to do is type “y” (no quotes) and then hit Enter to run all of the updates.

Distribution upgrade with zypper

If you want to do a distribution upgrade with zypper you would use the dup command like so:

zypper dup

With that single command you will upgrade your OpenSuSE distribution (if the upgrade is available).

Final thoughts

Command line package management in OpenSuSE is about as simple as it gets. If you hesitate to use the command line for this task in OpenSuSE, I hope this article has persuaded you there is nothing to fear. OpenSuSE is an outstanding distribution with a lot to offer and it’s package management is on par with just about any other system.



Although, at first blush, it might seem the YaST Software Installation tool might be more suited for the power user (at least as far as GUIs are concerned), when you finally examine the tool, you will see otherwise. The OpenSuSE Add/Remove Software tool is easy enough for any experience level. So, with that said, let’s take a look at the YaST Package Manager.

Starting the tool

Figure 1

As I said in the intro, there is more than one way to start this tool: From within YaST itself or from within the main menu (Start > Computer > Install Software). NOTE: If you’re looking for the command line tool, we’ll cover that in another article. When you first start the tool you will have to enter your root password and then the tool will start running through a few checks. Once the tool is up and running, you will be greeted with what should be a fairly familiar window.

The tab that gets focus, by default, is the Installation Summary tab. This shows you every package you currently have installed on your system. If you click on a package you can get plenty of information about that package.

But let’s say you want to install a particular piece of software on your OpenSuSE system. How do you go about doing that? Simple. The first thing you have to do is find the package. Let’s say you want to install the game Frozen Bubble on your OpenSuSE machine. You could do this two different ways.

Figure 2

1. RPM Groups. If you click on the RPM Groups tab you will see all packages grouped together by category (see Figure 2). To find the software you want to install first find the main group (or category) it would fall under. In the case of Frozen Bubble, we would look in the Games group. In some cases a group will hold sub-groups.

Once you have found the software you wish to install, mark it for installation and then click the Accept button. Depending upon what you are installing, you might have to accept an EULA or dependencies.

2. Search. This is simple. Click on the Search tab, enter the package your looking for, mark the results for installation, and click accept. Of course you can narrow your search results by searching for any of the following: Name, keywords, summary, description, RPM provides, RPM requires, or file list.

Patterns

The YaST Package Management system also has a handy feature that allows you to view software by Patterns. Patterns are software packages that are grouped together by function: Graphical Desktop Environment,  Desktop Functions, Base Technologies, Server Functions, Proprietary Software, and Development. From these Patterns you can easily select a piece of software (such as KDE 4 or GNOME) and, with a single click select every piece of software necessary to install that pattern.

Final thoughts

You have now seen how simple the YaST Package Manager is to use. In my next article I will show you how to manage repositories in this same tool so you can further enhance the YaST Add/Remove Software experience.

YaST started it’s life in 1995 as a C++ written ncurses GUI and was originally written by Thoamas Fehr and Michael Andres. Believe it or not, YaST has retained that ncurses front end (in case you are without a GUI, this comes in handy) and has a gui for both GTK (GNOME) and QT (KDE). Let’s give YaST a look and see just what it has to offer.

Starting YaST

Figure 1

Naturally you can start YaST from either the menu or the command line. From where in the menu will depend upon which desktop environment you are using. If you are using KDE (as shown in Figure 1), you will find YaST in the Computer tab of the “start” menu. If you are using GNOME, look in System > Administration.

You can also start YaST from the command line. Depending upon which version you need to start you would use one of the following commands:

yast –qt

yast –gtk

yast –ncurses

NOTE: The above commands contain two dashes (“-”), not “em dashes”.

You can run the ncurses version even if you have your graphical desktop open and running. Since some of the tools contained within YaST require administrative privileges, you will, upon launching YaST, have to give your administrator password.

The lay of the land

Figure 2

When you fire up YaST what you will see should immediately feel familar (see Figure 2).  As you can see, the left pane contains categories and the right pane contains the entries for each categories. You will also notice that you can simply scroll through every one of the modules (on the right hand side) without having to select a category. You can also search for a module.

Depending upon your setup you will see different modules. For example, I am running OpenSuSE in a virtual machine (using VirtualBox). Because of this I have no video card or monitor to configure. If I were running OpenSuSE without virtualization, YaST would have been able to detect the card/monitor and offer the module for configuration.

As I said, YaST is a one-stop-shop. From within YaST you can also manage your system’s packages. If you click on the Software section in the right pane you will find a number of entries related to the installation and management of software. You will also notice what seems like two tools for installation:

• Add-on Products
• Software Management

These are actually very different tools. Add-on products are products that can be added from a CD/DVD (or, in some cases) on-line source. The software management tool, however, is exactly what you would think it is – Add/Remove Software.

Power at your fingertips

There are also some fairly powerful tools within YaST. If you look at either the Novell AppArmor section, the System section, or the Networking section you will find some tools you might not have ever been able to find in another distribution’s control panel. Some of these are:

• /etc/sysconfig Editor
• Boot loader configuration
• System Backup
• System Restore
• Kerberos client
• LDAP client
• Windows Domain Membership

and much more.

Final thoughts

YaST is one of the most powerful configuration tools in all of Linux-dom. Without installing a tool like Webmin, you will be hard pressed to find any other “control panel” as fully realized as you will with YaST. If you have been looking for a reason to give OpenSuSE a try, let YaST be that reason.

OpenSuSE 11.2 has a number of nice features and update, although you may find some of the included applications a bit behind. For example, the included GNOME in 11.2 is 2.28, whereas Ubuntu 10.04 released with GNOME 2.3. Of course OpenSuSE is due for an update itself. 11.2 was released in November 2009. The good news? 11.3 is due to be released in July, which is one of the reasons I wanted to focus on OpenSuSE first – to get everyone excited about this distribution in time for its newest release.

In this article I am going to highlight some of the things that make OpenSuSE unique and why you should give it a try.

Build it

One of the coolest aspects of OpenSuSE is the Build Service. With this service you can build your own, unique distribution based on OpenSuSE. I’ve done this and it works really well. I will warn you, it does take some time and you will find yourself obsessing over the smallest detail. Why? Because you can. You can decide what packages are included, you can even set the backgrounds for boot up, splash screen, and desktop wallpaper. This service alone is worth the price of admission.

YaST

Figure 1

Yet Another Setup Tool is the control center for OpenSuSE. YaST has been around for a long, long time and with good reason – it’s one of the finest control centers you will find in an operating system. When you open YaST (see Figure 1) you will notice it is laid out in a two-pane layout with the left pane being categories and the right pane being category entries. You will not find a distribution with a more robust control center than YaST. I always look at YaST like the Webmin for the desktop. The 11.2 YaST even includes a system backup tool and a restoration tool. I will discuss these two tools in later articles. In some cases you will find entries in YaST that do not effect your installation. For example, the YaST I am using includes a TV card entry. I do not have a TV card. You get the idea.

A pseudo welcome screen

Take a look at Figure 1. In the only KDE plasmoid on the desktop OpenSuSE includes a link for both the OpenSuSE website as well as online help. This is as close to a “welcome screen” as you will see in a Linux distribution. I have been harping on this topic for a while now (and I will until something happens). Linux distributions need a “welcome screen” similar to what Windows offers upon first boot. This is just something that will point new users to an introduction to Linux, to their distribution, and to help. For users that don’t need it, they can just uncheck a box and it won’t show up again. But for new users, this is a must-have. OpenSuSE at least is smart enough to add two of these items in a KDE 4 plasmoid. Smart thinking.

Who should use OpenSuSE?

OpenSuSE is a solid Linux distribution that should be used by anyone who longs for a rock solid desktop distribution but wants to be able to tinker as much and as often as they like. Because of this, OpenSuSE opens itself up to a wide range of users – from new users to seasoned veterans. And with that build service – anyone can enjoy their very own special flavor of OpenSuSE. If you have been using Windows for a long, long time and you think it’s time to migrate to Linux, download the KDE flavor of OpenSuSE. You will feel at home enough with the desktop (especially Vista/7 users) that the Land of Linux won’t seem so foreign. And if you think of YaST as the Control Panel – you’re good to go.

Now let’s begin a little journey with OpenSuSE and discover some of it’s pieces and parts.

And like most popular Linux distributions, OpenSuSE offers a Live CD. Most everyone can stick in a CD, boot it, play around with it, and double click the “Install” icon. But what about the full-blown, standard installation DVD? Is that more difficult than the Live CD? I’m glad you asked, because in this tutorial I am going to walk you through the installation (complete with pictures) of OpenSuSE 11.2.

It should go without saying that the first step is to download the ISO image, burn it to disk, put it in the DVD drive, and boot your machine. Once you have taken care of that you are on your way to installation Nirvana. I say that, not necessarily because the installation is the simplest installation you will encounter, but more because it is the cleanest and well thought out installation you might see.

Figure 1

Step 1

The first step (see Figure 1) is to choose the language and the keyboard layout. On this page you will also have the opportunity to read the license agreement. Once you have made these selections, click the Next button to move on.

Figure 2

Step 2

This next step (see Figure 2) will not require any interaction from you. What this step does is analyze your system to gather information that will be pertinent to the installation. There is nothing required of the user here, so just wait until the analysis is complete and then click Next.

Step 3

Figure 3

The next windows (see Figure 3) wants to know the type of installation you are attempting. If you are new to OpenSuSE, most likely this will be a new installation. If you have downloaded either the Non-OSS CD or the Extra Languages CD make sure you click Include Add-on Products before you click Next.

Steps 4 and 5

Because these steps are so simple, there is no need for a screenshot. What you will take care of in Step 4 is to select your time zone. In Step 5 you will select which desktop you want to install. Your choices for desktop are: KDE, GNOME, or Other. If you select Other you will have to install a desktop later on.

Step 6 and 7

Figure 4

The next window (see Figure 4) requires you to select your partitioning. Unless you have a need to use LVM (Logical Volume Management), select Partition Based and click Next. Depending upon the type of partition mode you select, the next window will vary. Most likely you will use Partition Based, so you will only have to select the hard drive you want to use and then click Next.

Step 8

Figure 5

The next step will list what OpenSuSE will be installed upon (see Figure 5) and give you a couple of options. The first option is to have the /home directory placed on a separate partition. This is a good setup if you know there is a chance that you might relocate or share out your /home directory. The second option is if you want to reconsider using LVM and to encrypt your home directory.

Make your choices and click Next.

Step 9

Figure 6

Now it’s time to create a user for your OpenSuSE system (see Figure 6). The only option that might seem different is the ability to use your user password as the system administrator password. If you are of the paranoid mind you most likely will skip this option. Click Next to continue on.

Step 10, 11, 12, 13

Figure 7

The final steps of the installation are all either summary windows or progress windows (see Figure 7 as an example). These do not require user intervention.

The results

Figure 8

Finally the system will be installed and you will have a brand new OpenSuSE Linux desktop system (see Figure 8). You will find that OpenSuSE has tweaked the GNOME desktop to look and feel a bit differently than the standard GNOME desktop. This is more in-line with the Enterprise desktops you will see with SLED and RHEL.

Congratulations, you are the proud owner of an OpenSuSE Linux desktop. I have a feeling you will enjoy a long, happy life together.

Amazon.com not only has an outstanding collection of digital downloads in their music section (as covered by Martin in his insightful article “Amazon DRM Free MP3 Store“), they offer a completely cross-platform tool to make this process simple. The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a very simple (as well as required) tool that enables you to purchase music from Amazon.com and use it at your leisure. And since the files are DRM-free, you aren’t limited to putting them on one device and only one device. Instead you can download your music, burn it on to CD, copy it to your device, copy it to your friends device…what have you.

But in order to take advantage of this service, you MUST have the MP3 downloader installed. That’s where this tutorial comes into play. Here you will see how to install and use the Amazon MP3 Downloader on your Linux box.

Getting and installing

Point your browser to the download page and download the proper file for your distribution. As of this writing you have the choice of files for the following distributions:

• Ubuntu 8.10/9.04
• Debian 5
• Fedora 10
• OpenSuSE 11

Yes, Amazon is a bit behind the times, but you can get around this (at least on Ubuntu 9.10). Below you will find the steps to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader on Ubuntu 9.10.

Download the .deb file for Ubuntu.

Open up a terminal window and issue the command (from within the directory the file was saved) sudo dpkg -i amazonmp3.deb.

You will see a bunch of errors that will end with the warning: Errors were encountered while processing: amazonmp3.

• Issue the command sudo synaptic.
• You will get a warning that you have 1 broken package.
• Go to the Edit menu and select Fix Broken Packages.
• Click Apply in the new window.
• Close Synaptic when the packages have been fixed.

Using Amazon MP3 Downloader

There are two ways you can use the downloader. The first is to start up the application by clicking on Internet submenu of the Applications menu. From within this menu click on the Amazon MP3 Downloader entry.

When you first launch it your default web browser will start up with a “congratulations” page informing you that the Downloader will launch the next time you download a song from Amazon.com. You also will get the chance to download a free song. When you click on the button (on Amazon.com) to download a free song you will taken to the Amazon.com login page. Log in and then you will have the chance to download your free song.  Go ahead and download your free song.

What you will download is an .amz file that links to your download. Your browser, by default, will ask you what to do with the file. Go ahead and let the Amazon MP3 Downloader open that file and the download will being.

But where did that file go? The Downloader will, by default, download all files to ~/Music/Amazon MP3/. If you open up that directory (after you download your file) you will see the sub-directory containing your new download.

Figure 1

Another way to use the Downloader is to open up the tool and click the

Configuring the Downloader

There aren’t many options in the Downloader’s preference window.  From within that window you can click the button “Shop Amazon MP3 Store”. This will automatically open your default browser to the store.

In order to configure the tool click on the File menu and then select Preferences. From within this window you can configure the following:

• Download directory.
• Automatically check for updates.
• Proxy settings.

And that’s it. But what more would you need to configure for such a simple tool? The only option I always change, by default, is the Download Directory. I tend to change this to the directory used by my multimedia player so I don’t always have to add the new media to the player when I download something. Of course, in order to have this work you have to have your media player set up to automatically scan for new files.

Final thoughts

If you are a Linux user, and a purchaser of digital music, you should do yourself a favor and give the Amazon MP3 Downloader a try. If for another other reason, all Linux users should give it a go in order to show support for Amazon’s support for Linux.

What exactly is a Live CD? A Live CD is a CD (or flash drive) that contains a complete and bootable operating system that is run directly from the CD and not the hard drive. There are many types of Live CDs that serve different purposes. There are live distributions for repairing Windows or Linux systems (such as SystemRescueCD). There are live cds for nearly every Linux distribution that allow you to test and/or install the distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuSE, Mandriva, ELive). You can even do stress testing and benchmarking with Live CDs like Inquisitor. Or what about a complete, embedded firewall distribution m0n0wall.

Why Use a Live CD?

The main purpose of a Live CD is to test drive Linux. A Live CD runs directly from the CD and the PCs RAM and does not even need a hard disk to run. Because of this, you can rest assure that a Live CD is not going to alter your hard disk unless you actually choose to install the Live CD onto your drive.

There are many reasons why a Live CD would be preferred. For instance, hardware diagnostics. I have employed Puppy Linux on numerous occassions in order to get information on a piece of hardware or test to see if a piece of hardware is working. I have also used that same Live distribution to run older machines where only certain functions are necessary. Live CDs are also great choices for cafes where you want to start with a clean slate every day. Another great use for a Live CD is when a machine has no mutable storage (a hard drive) and you want to run the computer as a pseudo “dumb terminal” or “thin client”. This would allow users to execute certain tasks so long as they didn’t need to save any work.

But what if you want to save information? For that you can use the flash drive-based Live distributions. With a large enough flash drive the user can also save data as well as run the operating system. If you’re looking for a pre-installed solution Mandriva has the Mandriva Flash Drive which has 6 gigs of free space for data.

One of the best reasons for using a Live distribution, in my opinion, is testing to see if that distribution works well with the hardware you have. I have one particular laptop that, when it comes time to upgrade operating systems, I wind up burning numerous distributions onto CD and running each one of them until one of them can work with the finicky hardware on that machine.

Drawbacks

One of the biggest drawbacks of using a Live CD is the speed. Remember, you are running this from RAM so the amount of RAM the machine has (as well as the speed of the CD drive) will determine how fast your Live CD distribution will run. So a machine with low RAM will run poorly. This isn’t such an issue if you are planning on installing immediately. But using the Live CD on a low-RAM machine will be painfully slow.

The other drawback was already mentioned, unless you are using a flash drive-based Live distribution, you can not save data. If you are only testing the distribution out to see if you like it, that’s not a problem.

Final Thoughts

Live CDs are here to stay. They have many uses and few drawbacks. If you are hesitant to use a Live CD because you don’t want to lose data, you shouldn’t worry about that (unless you accidentally click the installation button and accidentally click through all of the steps to install the operating system.)