It's useful to group the distros into three categories: commercial, noncommercial, and "loopback." The commercial products install either in place of or alongside the operating system currently on your system, and include some very complete packages, particularly the "big five": Caldera OpenLinux, Corel Linux, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, and TurboLinux. The commercial distros can be overwhelming because of the many applications and utilities they include; SuSE 6.4, for example, is on six CDs.

The noncommercial distros, such as Slackware and Debian, tend to be more popular with longtime Linux users, because they make it easiest for knowledgeable users to retain complete control over the entire system. But these packages provide the least in terms of handholding during installation and administration, so there's a clear trade-off. Note that most distros require either their own hard drive, or the repartitioning of your drive to make room for Linux alongside the current operating system.

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It's useful to group the distros into three categories: commercial, noncommercial, and "loopback." The commercial products install either in place of or alongside the operating system currently on your system, and include some very complete packages, particularly the "big five": Caldera OpenLinux, Corel Linux, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, and TurboLinux. The commercial distros can be overwhelming because of the many applications and utilities they include; SuSE 6.4, for example, is on six CDs.

The noncommercial distros, such as Slackware and Debian, tend to be more popular with longtime Linux users, because they make it easiest for knowledgeable users to retain complete control over the entire system. But these packages provide the least in terms of handholding during installation and administration, so there's a clear trade-off. Note that most distros require either their own hard drive, or the repartitioning of your drive to make room for Linux alongside the current operating system.

The loopback distros are an exception, since they don't require hard drive partitioning. Instead, the entire distribution, including applications, utilities, and graphical interface, is stored in about a dozen files and is simply copied to a directory onto the hard drive containing your Windows system. One of those files is several hundred megabytes and contains the entire file system for Linux. When you want to switch from Windows to Linux, you shut down to DOS mode, switch to the Linux directory, and then run a DOS BAT file. Once inside Linux, you can use what's encapsulated in that huge file, as well as all the files on your Windows configuration. Loopback distros, such as Phat Linux, are a terrific way to test-drive Linux without disturbing your Windows configuration.

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