Five years ago today, I gave Mr. Steve Ballmer his walking papers. I told him that the services of his company's operating system were no longer required or desired. Since then, I have never looked back. I have learned how to do everything that I used to do in Windows on Linux. I have also learned that some of the things that I used to do on Windows were not really that important that they REQUIRED me to remain tethered to and dependent on Windows. I gained my freedom first by way of RedHat 9.0. I later graduated to Fedora. Linux often seems to scare Microsoft, and perhaps rightfully so. Once people get used to Linux, most of them realize that they don't really need Windows at all. In fact, paying for Windows when Linux offers all of the same functionality for free is starting to seem downright wasteful to some people. For those of us that spend most of our time surfing the Internet, checking our email, creating office documents, chatting, instant messaging, and listening to music, Linux does everything that we need exceptionally well. I have learned to avoid software and hardware companies that encourage a Windows-only environment. This freedom has made my computing experience more secure and more satisfying. I hope that you come to experience the same freedom that I have. Linux Live USB creator is one of the tools that you can use to help you to gain your freedom too.

Linux Live USB Creator is otherwise known as LiLi USB Creator, and what it basically allows you to do is to create a bootable live USB key that you can then use to install Linux on your desktop, laptop, or netbook computer. LiLi USB Creator is very well suited to netbooks which normally do not have an optical drive from which you can install Linux from a cd or dvd. It is free software licensed under GPL version 3. The software also has virtualization built in, allowing you to run Linux from your usb key on Windows. This allows you to try out Linux on your Windows computer before doing the right thing, wiping Windows from your hard drive and installing Linux. All kidding aside, some people are forced to use Windows due to circumstances beyond their control. However, if you are in a situation where you are curious about Linux and you want to give it a try, LiLi USB Creator's built-in virtualization is a really nice feature.

You can create usb flash drives with many of the best Linux distributions: Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Puppy Linux, and others. Another nice feature is that the data on the USB drive is persistent. In other words, if you save a file to your desktop when running Linux from the flash drive, it will still be there the next time you boot Linux from the drive, as will any other changes that you made. I just got a free netbook as part of a promotion at my college, and one of my first tasks will be to remove Windows XP from it and install Fedora on it using LiLi USB Creator. It really is a great piece of software, and I think that if you give it a try, you will find it to be a very capable and worthy software package. You can research and download Linux Live USB Creator here:  http://www.linuxliveusb.com/