I know there are some Windows users out there who are tempted to switch to Linux, but consider that they are not yet prepared to make this somewhat radical move. If you don't want to give up completely to Windows, you can try andLinux, a complete Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, that runs seamlessly in Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista for 32-bit architectures. Windows users might be used to commercial apps, but andLinux is free, you won't have to pay anything to have it!

andLinux has CoLinux at its roots, which is a port of the Linux kernel to Windows. It is something similar to VMware or Virtual PC, which does not emulate Linux, but merges the Linux kernel with Windows. The X server used by it is Xming and PulseAudio is the sound server. With andLinux you can run most of the Linux applications available at this moment on your Windows machine, without any modifications.

The minimum requirements for andLinux are:

￭ One of the Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista [32-bit only] operating systems
￭ at least 128 MB of RAM (192 MB or more is recommended)
￭ Free hard disk space: 2.5 GB for the XFCE version and 4.5 GB for the KDE one
￭ You will need an NTFS file system because you can't create files larger than 2 GB on FAT(32) file systems!
￭ A fast Internet connection (to be able to install further applications)
￭ Some basic Linux skills to proceed once andLinux is installed

The usual Windows desktop will be kept, and a second panel or start menu will be added, from which you can start Linux applications. Another interesting fact is that you can copy and paste data from Windows to Linux apps without any problems. Because andLinux is based on Ubuntu, you will get apt and Synaptic to install more Linux software, when you will need it. The developers recommend that you should use andLinux only on a single user computer, or in a trustworthy environment because the communication with the X server and the launcher is not secured.