Trying Linux and amateur radio software without having to install it on your computer.

The topic of trying Linux without having to actually install it on your computer came up recently.   There are several "Live" distributions which can be downloaded to a bootable DVD or USB thumb drive. You can then boot your computer from the DVD or USB drive without having to touch the existing installation on your hard drive.

The simplest approach is to download the DVD .iso, burn it to a blank DVD, and then reboot your computer, telling it to boot from the DVD drive.

The USB thumb drive approach has more steps to create, but can be faster as well as allowing you to save changes between reboots.

Two ham radio oriented builds that have been mentioned:

• KB1OIQ - Andy's Ham Radio Linux (Ubuntu remastered for ham radio)
      http://sourceforge.net/projects/kb1oiq-andysham/
• Chirp Live:
      http://sourceforge.net/projects/chirplivecd/

Both are based on Ubuntu Linux and include software such as FLdigi and Chirp.

If you are interested in trying them, I think there are better tutorials available if you google "ubuntu live" than the instructions that accompany the two ham specific packages mentioned above.