Ever want to learn linux but you didn't have a second machine to run it on?

You can make a virtual machine that boots from a virtual CD-ROM image and do this in less than 5 minutes.

Here is a great one to start with, it only takes up 50 MB on your machine:
Main Page: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/index.html

Here is a quickstart guide for how to :
1. Download a DSL image that uses QEMU (from here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distri....1-embedded.zip ) If you have a slow download speed, this will take you longer than the previously mentioned 5 minutes...
2. Unzip the file to a directory on your hard drive
3. double click on the file named dsl-windows.bat
4. You should see a window where linux starts up in its own virtual machine. Viola, a second computer running a completely different operating system!

Need to know what you are doing in Linux? Take a quick Linux Tutorial: http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~wolber/courses/11.../LinuxQuick.htm