I'm a big fan of the Linux operating system, and specifically the Fedora. The latest at the time of this writing is the Fedora 12, which you can download for free from here.

As I was trying out Fedora 12, like I usually do, I don't really like to mess up my hard drive, so I go for the very rich options in the Fedora, I either use a Live CD, Live USB, or VirtualBox.

Live CD is amazing, you can boot from the CD and don't have to install anything, it boot entirely from the CD, and works from the memory, it creates a RAM drive, to run the applications installed, you can browse the internet, with the latest Firefox browser, but you have a little problem with that, you can't save anything, when you turn off your computer, it goes back as it was with whatever operating system it had, and none of your documents, bookmarks, or anything you did is saved.

Another solution is to use Live USB. You can download the Live USB Creator from here and get an empty USB flash drive, not less than 1 G.B. so you can install the Live CD image on it and at the same time you get some space to save your preferences and data on, in my case I used am old 2 G.B. Kingston, all you do is insert the USB drive, run the application, select the ISO image you downloaded from the Fedoraproject.org site and click the Create Live USB button, in few minutes you're ready, reboot you PC, select the USB as your boot device, which is available in almost any PC now, and it will boot in the Fedora linux, again without touching your hard drive, you can enjoy the Fedora, and save your work, and even take the USB drive with you and use it in any PC that you like.
It was a very nice experience for me, as i got to try out all the features, and they are many!
It has detected all my hardware, in my HP DV6000 laptop, except the Nvidia, which needed a driver, I boots very fast, as it was on the main features they were trying to accomplish in this release (under 20 seconds), and finally, I thought to try out my Vodafone mobile connect USB modem, last time I tried it it was on the Fedora 10, and I had to do a lot of work to make it run on the fedora, which made me go back to windows eventually as I need it so much in my work, I like to work on the beach, or while I'm driving (no not really, and don't try to use the computer while driving!!), in this release of Fedora all I had to do was to insert the VMC in the USB port, and it was there!!, it appeared in the list of connections, I clicked it, and it was connected in no time.

Finally I tried to install it on a virtual machine, so my favorite virtual machine software is VirtualBox, it is free and have very much features, and you can enjoy the Fedora without having to mess up you existing OS, but I had a problem with it that I couldn't adjust the screen size in the virtual machine, and after some little googling around, I reached this post on the VirtualBox Forum and proble was solved in no time.

I intend to switch fully to Fedora soon, but the problem is I work most of the time on Windows, so maybe I will do it the other way around, make my main OS Fedora, and install a Virtual Windows within.