back track

Backtrack is a security/audit related Linux live CD. Good for things like network penetration testing if that's your sort of thing. It should only really be used in a Live CD capacity, it's not intended to be installed on your PC. If you are looking for an all-rounder Linux distro, this is definitely not for you.

To use products like adobe photoshop and other products which have not been written for Linux you can do one of two things:

1) Cease using Photoshop and use a free alternative, such as the excellent GIMP photo editor.

2) Use something like virtualbox to run a virtual machine of Windows inside your linux installation so you can still access Windows for these few applications. You can also use native Linux applications to do this like Crossover Office - which will run up to Photoshop CS2 relatively well within Linux.

Hope this helps.

also, if you are trying to use backtrack and are on the newbie forums it probably isn't your best bet to get started in the linux universe, you can always come back to it later.

i made the mistake of trying to start with backtrack, and got completely lost very quickly.

if its a live cd (no installation, and boots without touching your hard drives) go for the dvd version of knoppix. has tonnes of useful software pre-installed. and as a bonus if anything goes wrong, just reboot your computer and everything is back how you started.

http://linux.softpedia.com/progDownload/KNOPPIX-Live-DVD-Download-2621.html

otherwise i recommend either ubuntu (they will even send a free installation cd out to you) or mandriva, both of which are available for download on their respective websites.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu

http://www2.mandriva.com/downloads