<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.16.1"> </HEAD> <BODY> On Wed, 2007-11-28 at 22:23 -0600, Hal Davis wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> <PRE> Read the PCMag article on Linux, and decided to download Ubuntu, because they said it was good for newbies, and it came with a reliable partition utility so I could make my laptop into a dual-boot device. Completed the 20-minute download, and I now have a 700 MB .iso file on my Windows desktop. Trouble is, I try double-clicking on the file and nothing happens. I get a message about an external file needing to be opened, and I tell it, sure, whatever, and nothing happens. How do I make the magic happen? Hal Davis </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> You need to burn the ISO to a blank CD, not as a file, but as an image. If your burning software doesn't have the capability to burn an image, try InfraBurner ( <A HREF="http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/">http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/</A> ) which is a free CD burning utility that will let you get this done. After that, boot from the CD by rebooting your computer with the CD in. You may have to go into your BIOS setup or boot menu to have it boot from a CD. </BODY> </HTML>