ISO Problems can occur.  I recommend you actually purchase the CDs if you want to get going with Linux.  

For instance, my Icepack ISO download was my first effort with Linux.  The download went without any problem.  The MD5 "checksum" was correct.  I successfully installed Icepack two or three times.

Everything worked fine.  However, when I wanted to install new programs, I hit a wall.  The RPM package (file installer) system would not work.  I could not "compile" and make programs from source code.

Why?  Well, apparently in making my CD, at least one of the necessary files got corrupted.  So, some key files did not install.  (Also, there was no message warning me they did not install.)  It took some effort to figure this all out.

Now, this does not necessarily happen.  I also downloaded Mandrake Linux.  Mandrake takes three ISOs instead of the Icepack one.  

I had some other issues with Mandrake that I will describe somewhere else.  But in any event, the Mandrake ISOs successfully ended up on CDs and I have Mandrake Linux running one computer.

A "Who'da guessed" ISO issue:  I ran into a funny (okay, not so funny at the time) problem with my Mandrake downloads that I will mention here.

After you run the ISO, you need to run the MD5 checksum program to determine whether the download is "okay."  In a twelve hour download session, it's pretty easy to get a few bytes wrong, I suppose.

After I downloaded the three Mandrake ISOs, none of them checked out.  I downloaded them again -- still didn't check out!  I said to myself, "this can't be right."

Now, I don't know much about MD5.  But what I figured out was that the MD5 checksum files for the Mandrake ISOs had a two spaces between the name of the file and the checksum.  There can only be >one< space.  (I guessed at this.)  I removed the extra space and Surprise! -- The Mandrake ISOs turned out to be A-Okay after all.

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