Linux for Windoze users

So I was chatting with a friend one day online and I learned he's been using Linux for ~10 years now. I've had a number of friends who used that OS but I've never chosen to take the plunge myself. Part of the reason was that I never had more than one computer and I didn't want to accidentally screw one up if I didn't have a backup to download stuff off the Internet if necessary.

Well, this friend mentioned Puppy Linux, a very small, standalone version that you can boot off a CD. He said it was a good place to try Linux out and become familiar with it. That sounded good to me. So this morning I went to the site and started poking around.

It was then that I remembered another reason I've never used Linux before. Over the years, I've used Unix and became relatively familiar with it such that I could get around. Unfortunately, I've always been somewhat annoyed with the "cryptic" way Unix (and Linux) people tend to write help files. They give you everything you need to know but you have to concentrate on all the verbiage on the page in order to find exactly what you're looking for. And that assumes you can find the help information to begin with.

Now, to the engineering types (I'm a software engineer) who write this stuff, it is apparently intuitively obvious. Unfortunately, I just don't like concentrating on the details. I just want to find what I want and move on. Yes, I'm impatient.

Anyway, I went to the site and since I wanted to download a copy, I clicked on the download link. The first thing it says is to "read the release notes" so I click on the link. This is exhibit A: the page is full of acronyms and notes about what has changed since some previous version--doesn't apply to me it appears. I just want to get a copy that I can try out. So I go back...

Next, I start looking for an actual download link. Right after the "release notes" message, I see some funny looking text that sort-of looks like a link, so I click it. It takes me to what looks like a directory structure with a bunch of different versions of, presumably, Puppy Linux.

Which one am I supposed to download? All of them? I don't know. I just want one link that I can download whatever the latest stable version is and try it out. I don't want to download an entire directory structure. What is wrong with these Linux types? Do they expect me to know everything?

Now, I mentioned earlier that I'm a software engineer. My experience has mostly involved writing C/C++ code on Windows based machines. I've also done a fair bit of programming on Unix machines but it's been a few years since I last worked in the Unix environment. My point is that I do have some experience reading technical stuff but for the most part I find it very dry and I get distracted easily. I was once told I may be ADD, so maybe this is evidence that it's true. At any rate, I don't like reading what other engineers have written because it's boring.

Eventually, I finally found out that I need to only download one file that ends in ".iso" and burn it onto a CD. Presumably, once I do that, I can boot from the CD and try out this new "Puppy Linux" for my self. I don't know yet because by the time I figured out what I was supposed to do, I had run out of time and needed to go take care of other things that were more pressing.

Maybe I'll get back to this later. For now, I've got the download downloaded--I think....