Bootable Read-only

[Guest Electroguard]

Hi Linux gurus,

 

I spent the entire first quarter of this year trying to upgrade my 8 XP machines to similar Win7 before MS ceased support, and I really need to cut the MS umbilical cord ASAP before it strangles me.

 

I am retired, and on limited income and can't afford to throw out my 8 existing perfectly good pentium 1G ram machines just to keep Bill Gates the richest man in the world, so I've been looking into alternative operating systems, and inevitably keep coming back to one or other flavour of Linux. Trouble is, although I was a Win2K MSCE, I know absolutely zilch about Linux, so I would very much appreciate some advice from those in the know, ie: you guys.

 

I'm too long in the tooth to be learning a whole new realm of command line programs and their options, so I'd be looking for something light with a relatively non-complex installation and GUI, and which I can keep using safely and with confidence without all the ever-growing MS type security vulnerabilities.

 

To that end, I was wondering if perhap there's a Linux flavour available that I can install as read-only to avoid malware, perhaps a CD bootable version which I can install read-only on a bootable USB mem stick, and just have a small writable partition for data and any essential dynamic files.

All I really need for the moment is web-browsing, document editing and media playing, although something with Visio type capability would be a nice bonus.

 

Is this feasable with any of the Linux's?

 

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