Why You Should Consider F3OS

F3OS is made up of open-source software.  To many people, open-source software means that it’s free of cost.  While open-source software is almost always free of cost, there’s much more to it than that.  Open source means that the source code, or recipe, behind a program is publicly available for anyone at all to look at.  Anyone at all who knows a thing or two about programming is more than welcome to make their own changes to the code to, among other things, fix bugs, fix security issues, and add new features.  But that’s not all — should a project be abandoned, someone else can come along and take it over and bring things up to date and allow the project to continue.

Also, if one disagrees with the direction that an open-source project takes, they can take the source code and fork it — that is, create their own derivative project from it.  Now they will, of course, have to come up with a different name in order to differentiate it from the original project.  Some examples of open-source projects that started out as a fork from other projects include:

• LibreOffice (included with F3OS) — forked from OpenOffice after OpenOffice was bought by Sun Microsystems in 2010.
• Fluxbox and Openbox window managers — both were forked from the Blackbox window manager.
• PostgreSQL — forked after Ingres went from being an open-source to a proprietary project.
• Apache web server — forked from the now-discontinued NCSA HTTPd.
• Inkscape — a fork of the now-discontinued Sodipodi, which itself was a fork of Gill.
• The Cinnamon, MATE, Pantheon, and Unity desktop environments — all of these were forked from the GNOME desktop environment after version 3 of GNOME, introduced in 2011, radically departed from the usage workflow present in previous versions of GNOME.
• ClawsMail — forked from Sylpheed, due to perceived slowness in accepting enhancements.

 With all of the above having been said, F3OS does contain some software that is not open-source.  These pieces of software are wireless networking firmware (drivers) that are not available under an open-source license.  Historically, many Linux distributions paid little if any intention to these due to them not being open-source, leading to much frustration among people trying Linux only to find that they could not access the Internet, leading some to completely give up on Linux.  I, on the other hand, have set out to reverse that and thus have included as much wireless networking firmware from the Debian software repositories as possible, regardless of what license it is released under.

The Internet is an absolutely amazing tool.  The World Wide Web was introduced in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee (1955-), which led to Internet usage taking off in the mid-1990’s and has revolutionized our lives ever since, making it possible to learn anything you want about anything at all, buy things online you can’t find in stores locally, keep up with news from near and far, reconnect with old friends from near and far via social media, earn college degrees from colleges or universities near or far, and much, much more.

Unfortunately, there have been some who have abused the technology by placing pornographic content online, where it can be viewed without anyone close to you knowing, sometimes for free, thus also making the Internet a potentially dangerous place to be, especially for children.  Such people have, in the eyes of some, given the Internet in general a bad name.  Yet, it’s everywhere, with almost all schools, colleges, and universities requiring its use for classes, as well as almost all places of business relying on the Internet in some way, shape, matter, or form.  That’s where F3OS comes in, blocking the ability to access pornographic and other objectionable websites.

Keep in mind, however, that Internet content filtering is an inexact science.  Therefore, I cannot guarantee that F3OS will block everything objectionable.  But it does block pretty much any pornographic website that you try to access through it.  Therefore, even though F3OS is a filtered distribution, I still recommend, if you have children, placing the computer in a public part of your home, such as the living room or family room.  I also recommend that only parents have administrative (sudo or root) privileges on F3OS.  Or, if a husband has had a problem with porn, I recommend only allowing the wife to have said administrative privileges, or vice-versa.

If you’ve been using Microsoft Windows for any length of time, chances are you’ve been a victim (and likely multiple times) of viruses, spyware, trojans, worms, keyloggers, ransomware, or rootkits, which shall collectively henceforth be referred to here as scumware.  Now of course, conventional wisdom would dictate running anti-scumware software.  While anti-scumware programmers do provide a very valuable service, they can’t predict the future.  In other words, they can only respond to threats that are already out there, which is usually some 2 to 4 weeks after said scumware has infected computers online — and that’s more than enough time for the bad guys to have their way with your computer and your hard drive’s contents.

Many people think that this is just the way computers are, that they’re just prone to scumware.  Nope — that’s the way Microsoft Windows is.  Many people think that Windows’ popularity is the reason it’s so prone to scumware.  Microsoft Windows, to be sure, used to have a market share of as high as 95% of all of the world’s desktop and laptop computers, but in recent years, that market share has dropped to around 70%.  And let’s face it — Microsoft has never taken computing security seriously at all.  This is because Windows (first introduced in 1985), as well as DOS (first introduced in 1981) before it, if you can remember back that far, are, at their core, single-user operating systems.  This means that the user had complete and unrestricted access to all of the files on the system, including files critical to the system’s operation.  There was, however, one major problem with this — bulletin board systems, which have been around since the late 1970’s, made it possible for hackers to remotely modify files on other people’s computers.  Of course, the same thing holds true for the Internet, which began to see widespread use in the mid-1990’s.  Even though pretty much all versions of Windows require you to log in to use them, Windows’ heritage as a single-user operating system is still very much present under the hood, still rendering it prone to scumware.

Linux, on the other hand, is an open-source adaptation of Unix, which was first developed in 1969, that is built with security in mind from the ground up, unlike Microsoft Windows.  Linux does this in either one of two ways:

1. By having a minimum of two user accounts, one of which is a root (administrator) account, which is allowed to do anything at all with any file or directory (folder) on the system.  There are also one or more regular user accounts on the system, which only give users just enough permissions to carry out normal everyday computing tasks, such as surfing the web, reading and writing E-mails, writing up documents, balancing spreadsheets, playing games, listening to your favorite music, and the like.
2. The other way — and this is the way I recommend — is, when Linux is installed, the person who installed it, by default, is the only one who has what are known as sudo (superuser do) privileges.  In this scenario, the root account is locked and cannot be directly accessed.  Instead, users having sudo privileges can, whenever they need to do something requiring sudo privileges, enter their password (yes, the very same password they log in with) when prompted, and carry out said task.  Such people can also add other users to (or delete other users from) the system and also have the right to give them sudo privileges or revoke sudo privileges.  This way has the advantages of a) only having to remember one password, b) prohibiting logging in directly as root (a major security risk), c) forcing hackers to also guess the usernames of people with administrative privileges (in the other scenario, the username will be root), d) in a business or organization, you can specify that certain people only get certain sudo privileges (for example, installing printers but not installing software), and e) an automatically-generated log of all activity requiring sudo privileges. That said, I do recommend enabling the root account if you are on a network and use an LDAP server for login authentication. This is because, should the LDAP server go down, you can log in as root and fix the problem.

The main way that scumware affects Windows is that it either 1) masquerades as a piece of software that you just absolutely positively gotta have, trying to goad you into downloading and installing it, or 2) just installs itself onto your system behind your back, without your knowledge or permission.  Linux, on the other hand, requires you to have administrative privileges in order to install, upgrade, or remove software.  Scumware doesn’t have passwords it can enter — therefore, it can’t install itself onto your system.  Another good practice is to stick to only installing software from the Debian repositories (F3OS software repositories will be made available soon at the time I’m writing this), since all software contained therein has been very thoroughly peer-reviewed, tested, and vetted for best quality.

Another thing to consider regarding the popularity of Microsoft Windows is that, unlike desktop and laptop computers, the vast majority of web servers on the Internet run some form of Linux or a related operating system, such as AIX, Solaris, or one of the BSDs.  Yet, you don’t hear of them being infected by scumware, despite being used by over 90% of all web servers, which is a testament to the security and robustness of Linux.

Another thing to consider is that, whenever you boot up Windows, it also takes a little extra time to automatically start any anti-scumware software you may have installed.  Linux, as a general rule, doesn’t need it.  There is anti-scumware software available in the Debian repositories, however, known as ClamAV, which not only defends Linux systems against scumware, unlikely as it is to be affected by it in the first place, but also prevents you from inadvertently sending scumware to your friends still using Windows.

Sadly, in recent years, some Linux distribution and software maintainers have accepted software into open-source projects, such as the Ubuntu Snap Store and poorly-done implementations of the Rust programming language and a mad rush to replace tried-and-true tools with Rust-based versions without going through the software vetting process that have wound up undermining the integrity and security of various Linux projects. This is something that I, Fred McKinney, the creator of F3OS, find unacceptable. I will always strive to keep F3OS free of anything that would jeopardize its security. If worse comes to worst, future editions of F3OS could be based on one of the BSD operating systems instead of Linux. It is not for sure that I will do so, but given how some projects are throwing the software vetting process to the wind at the expense of Linux’s legendary security, it is something I am considering if things should go south with Linux.

Have you ever read through the end user license agreements (EULAs) for Microsoft Windows or any other commercial software you use?  In case you haven’t, those EULAs usually state, among other things, that you are not allowed to reverse-engineer the software to see its code (that privilege is limited only to those who work for the software publisher) and that you are not allowed to use the same installation media on more than one computer (they want their $$$, dontcha know).  Moreover, ever since Microsoft came out with Windows XP in 2001, Microsoft and other software publishers have implemented measures to discourage use of the same installation media on more than one computer.  Usually, depending on the publisher, this will be in the form of a popup window nagging you to pay up if you try to do so.

F3OS, on the other hand, is completely free of such restrictions.  Do you plan to use the same installation DVD or USB drive on more than one computer?  Go right ahead — F3OS will never complain.  Do you wish to burn multiple DVDs of F3OS and give them to friends, family members, neighbors, co-workers, and the like?  Go right ahead — in fact, I would encourage you to do this!  Do you wish that some application in F3OS, either that came installed with F3OS or that you added after installation, behaved differently?  The source code for any application that runs on Linux is, in most cases, available for you to peruse and modify to suit your own particular set of needs.

Something else you need to consider:  If you, as an individual, pirate a copy of Windows or any other commercial software, chances are nothing will happen other than the software nagging you to pay up.  But what if you’re running a business?  If you are, you should be aware that there is an organization called the Business Software Alliance, founded in 1998, whose sole reason for being is to curb software piracy.  If you’re using commercial software in your place of business, it is imperative that you keep every receipt for every piece of software you have paid for.  If the BSA should show up at your place of business, you will be required to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have paid for every piece of software used in your place of business.  This is because the BSA has been known to ruthlessly levy very steep fines even for minor licensing violations — and that could even, in some cases, put your company out of business.

However, when you use F3OS, you will never, unless you run Windows software on F3OS (this is possible using WINE), need to worry about this.  If you use nothing but freely available open-source software, you will never need to worry about the BSA harassing you or any fines.  There are, in fact, some businesses that use nothing but Linux and other open-source software, such as Ernie Ball (distributor of guitar strings), the city of Munich, Germany, and public schools in the US state of Indiana.  This has encouraged other businesses, organizations, and municipalities to follow suit.  In short, if you use F3OS in your place of business and stick strictly to freely available open-source software, you will never have to worry about being fined by the BSA.

Yes, you read that right — FREE!  Now we’ve all heard old adages countless times like “you get what you pay for”, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, and “things that are too good to be true usually are”.  Well, F3OS is here to shamelessly and brazenly defy such adages.  Now at this point, you might think I’m crazy for offering F3OS for free.  But it’s perfectly normal for creators and maintainers of Linux distributions and other open-source software to do this.  Here’s more on why Linux, including F3OS, is free:  https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/made-linux-free/.

With all of that having been said, I still have regularly-recurring expenses I need to cover in order to make F3OS possible for you to enjoy.  If you feel led by the Lord to do so, I encourage you to visit our donations page and contribute to the project.  All I ask is that you would give whatever amount of money the Lord lays upon your heart to give.  If you can’t financially contribute to the project, it’s perfectly OK — after all, I do not want one’s inability to donate to be a barrier to being able to use F3OS.  Even if you can’t financially contribute but would still like to help, there are other ways you can do so, by serving as a moderator in the discussion forums, contributing artwork (wallpapers, themes, icon themes, and so on), programming, and more.

Apple’s computers do, of course, tend to last longer than PCs pre-loaded with Windows — but at a price, typically anywhere from around $1,600 to $3,200 in 2024 dollars. Eventually, replacing those every 2 or 3 years or so is going to get expensive, since prices will likely go up in the future. Eventually, Apple users will find themselves needing to jump ship for lower-cost alternatives, yet will not want to subject themselves to an operating system with an absolutely horrid history of being infected with Scumware. This is where F3OS comes in — it runs well on computers built for Windows, even those that are several years old that you can’t even install Windows 11 on, is WAY more secure than Windows, and is available for FREE, allowing one to do anything they could previously do on a Mac or on Windows, but much more securely and without the price tag.

OK, how many of you can honestly say that you have never, in your entire life, ever ever copied a piece of commercial software so that you could use it for free?  OK, I didn’t think I’d see a lot of hands go up.  The Bible does, of course, address this issue in Exodus 20:15.  But with F3OS, you can download, install, and use a bunch of excellent open-source equivalents of such software without ever having to pay one red cent, as it’s all made available to you for free!

Due to people being used to downloading or buying commercial software for Microsoft Windows or the MacOS that’s not available for Linux, some people think that there’s no software available for Linux.  In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.  Linux has pretty much any kind of software you could ask for that lets you do anything you can do on Windows or a Mac, and for free!  Below is a list of common commercial software, their costs, and how F3OS can save you money with the Linux equivalents that can do everything their commercial equivalents can for free, plus whether or not they’re available for Windows, which allows you to see what the software for Linux is like within Windows before you make the switch to F3OS.

Office Suites:
Leading Commercial Software: Microsoft Office 365 (personal is $6.99/mo. or $69.99/yr.; family is $9.99/mo. or $99.99/yr.; business basic is $6/mo. per user)
Leading Open-Source Software: LibreOffice (also available for Windows)

Image / Photo Editors:
Leading Commercial Software: Adobe Photoshop ($20.99/month or $239.88/year)
Leading Open-Source Software: GIMP (also available for Windows)

Vector Image Editors:
Leading Commercial Software: Adobe Illustrator ($20.99/month or $239.88/year)
Leading Open-Source Software: Inkscape (also available for Windows)

Page Layout and Publication:
Leading Commercial Software: Adobe InDesign ($20.99/month or $239.88/year)
Leading Open-Source Software: Scribus (also available for Windows)

CAD (computer-aided drafting):
Leading Commercial Software: AutoCAD ($245/month or $1,975/year)
Leading Open-Source Software: SolveSpace (also available for Windows)

Media Player:
Leading Commercial Software: Media Player for Windows (comes with Windows)
Leading Open-Source Software: VLC, Audacious, DeadBeef, Parole, MPlayer, and more! (VLC is also available for Windows)

Music Notation Software:
Leading Commercial Software: Finale ($299)
Leading Open-Source Software: MuseScore (also available for Windows)

Video Editors:
Leading Commercial Software: Final Cut Pro ($299)
Leading Open-Source Software: Handbrake, KDenLive (Handbrake is also available for Windows)

There are many other examples I could give here, but by now, I think you get the idea.  F3OS gives you access to lots of great software, without the price tag.  All you do is open the Synaptic Package Manager (in the menu, this is in the “System” category), enter your password (administrative privileges required), search for it, highlight it, click “Apply”, and it will automatically download and install it for you.  Or, if you prefer to use a terminal, you type “sudo apt install (name of software package)”, enter your password (again, administrative privileges are required), and it goes right to work downloading and installing the package(s) you requested.  I have also provided some scripts in the “System” category in the menu that I’ve called “Quick Installs”, which give you a list of pre-defined categories of software you can download and install to see just what F3OS and the world of Linux in general have to offer.

Ever since Windows 98, Microsoft has implemented automatic software updates.  However, those updates are only for software that comes with Windows. As for everything else, well…you’ll need to go to the websites for each piece of software you have installed and check to see if they have any updates and then spend the necessary time to uninstall the old versions and install the new ones.  But that can quickly turn into a real headache just to have all the latest features and the best security.

F3OS, on the other hand, not only updates all of the software that came with it, but every piece of software on your system if you downloaded and installed it from the Debian and F3OS software repositories.  This is done by going into the Synaptic Package Manager (as stated in the last entry, this is in the “System” category of the menu) and clicking “Mark All Upgrades”.  If there are updates to download, the “Apply” button will cease to be grayed out, allowing you to click it and download and install the updates.  Or, from a terminal, all you need to enter is “sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade”, and it will download and install your software updates (the first command checks for newer packages, while the second one downloads and installs the updates for you).

If you’ve been using Windows for a long time, chances are you’ve seen Windows gradually slow down after several weeks or months.  Eventually, things can get to where you may have to wait for 30 seconds or longer just for Windows to respond to your last mouse click.  Now of course, conventional wisdom would say to back up all of your files and reinstall Windows, and that does work — until the next time Windows gets unbearably slow.

F3OS, on the other hand, will always be just as fast and as spry months and even years from now as it was the day you installed it.  You’ll never experience any slowdowns in performance — F3OS will keep right on running at the same speed as it always has.

If you’ve been using Windows for any length of time, chances are that you’ve been working on an important project, playing a game, what have you…and then, next thing you know, Windows wants to install an update — and rudely interrupts you in the process, rendering your computer unusable while it updates.

F3OS, on the other hand, is much more polite when it comes to upgrades.  Upgrades can be run from the Synaptic Package Manager, as described above, or from the terminal — and you can continue working, watching YouTube, playing games, what have you, while your updates are being installed.  With F3OS, you’re the boss regarding software updates.

Windows 11 has Copilot in it, which you cannot uninstall or get away from in Windows. Apple has announced that it will be including its own form of Artificial Intelligence sometime later this year (2024), making the presence of AI difficult if not impossible to get away from in commercial operating systems. Yes, some believe that AI has its place in an operating system, but others don’t want it (I, Fred, am among those who have no use for it, by the way) — and F3OS does not force it on you, making it strictly your choice on whether or not you wish to have AI-powered this or that on your computer, and respecting your wishes on the matter.

If you’ve been using Windows or a Mac for any length of time, chances are that you’re already aware that you can change your wallpaper and change the highlight/accent colors in your application windows and whether you’re using light or dark neutral colors.  Other than that, though, you’re pretty much limited to what Microsoft or Apple think your desktop should look like regarding icons, application window titlebars, the login screen, and the like.

F3OS, on the other hand, lets you do all of the above and much more.  Not only can you change your wallpaper, or what your application windows look like, but you can also change what your icons, titlebar, mouse cursor, login screen, and even your GRUB splash (boot-up) screen look like.  There’s literally no limit if you’re into tricking out your desktop.

By default, F3OS, at the time of this writing (August 2024), comes with your choice of the XFCE or Cinnamon desktop environments or a window manager known as Openbox.  XFCE is a desktop environment that provides you with everything you need to have a fully functional desktop while using low enough memory resources to make it usable on older computers that you can’t run Windows 11 on.  Cinnamon is a fully-featured desktop environment that offers lots of neat extras for the ultimate in convenience and tricking out the way your desktop looks. The Openbox edition is built for old computers that are limited on memory, but it will also happily run lightning-fast on newer computers, too. These are just three examples of dozens of graphical desktops that are available for Linux.

 Since Linux and most applications for it, including graphical desktops, are open-source, anyone at all with the necessary programming chops is more than welcome to create their idea of what they think a graphical desktop should be.  As such, there are graphical desktops for Linux that offer you all the bells and whistles you could ask for.  And then, at the other end, there are lightweight window managers that use very low amounts of memory which can be used on computers that are 10 years old or older.  As I have the time to do so, I do plan to release other editions of F3OS with other desktop environments.

Recent versions of Windows have begun putting ads, of all things, into the operating system, such as in the start menu. My thoughts on this are, “isn’t Microsoft already making enough money without having to resort to such nonsense?” Rest assured that this is something you’ll never run across in F3OS…well, with the exception of banner ads that you may see on some websites, but that’s been around since the 1990’s and is, of course, beyond F3OS’s control — but then again, we’re all used to that by now, too. But my point here is that you’ll never see that being generated by F3OS.

Recent versions of Windows now force you to have an online Microsoft account. To be sure, it is a convenience, where everything you save is also automatically backed up in your online Microsoft account. But at the same time, this is also considered to be a breach of privacy, not to mention Microsoft reserves the right to terminate your account at any time for any reason. Moreover, with Windows’ already pathetic lack of security, this also opens up your data to possibly being accessed by hackers and other unauthorized parties. F3OS, on the other hand, doesn’t force you to use any kind of online account to back up your files, although there are plenty of third-party online services that offer this, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and many others, all of which are perfectly usable with F3OS.

If you’ve been using Windows for any length of time, chances are that you’ve had to reboot your computer for various reasons, such as:

• Installing software
• Uninstalling software
• Installing updates
• Installing drivers for new hardware you’re about to add
• System slowdowns / crashes / that infamous blue screen of death

F3OS, on the other hand, very rarely if ever needs to be rebooted.  When running software upgrades, you may see F3OS mention something about a reboot.  Usually, this only happens if the Linux kernel (the heart / engine of the operating system) has been updated.  Strictly speaking, however, this isn’t really necessary, as you can continue using your system without rebooting.  The only thing rebooting does is it allows you to use the newer kernel.

In fact, when you consider how many servers run Linux, this is where Linux’s reliability really shines.  Typically, servers running Linux can go for months or even years without needing to be rebooted.  This also plays a role in why each of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers all run some form of Linux.  As for server editions of Windows, the most they have ever been able to go without being rebooted is just under one month.  Now of course, since F3OS is targeted at desktop and laptop users, chances are you probably won’t normally leave your computer running all the time, and that’s perfectly OK — but it is possible to do so without experiencing any performance degradation.

Oh, and I’ll also let you in on a dirty little secret here — even Microsoft uses Linux on their servers!  In other words, even Microsoft knows full well that Windows can’t hold a candle to Linux in the reliability department — and that ought to tell you something.

Do you remember when you bought your current computer?  Do you remember taking it home, unboxing it, hooking it up, and then turning it on for the first time?  Now, do you remember being bombarded with popups trying to get you to download this or that, usually with a free trial or some other strings attached?  The reason for this is that computer manufacturers often include this software in exchange for special deals with the software publishers.  Yet, the end result is usually a bunch of annoyance.  Moreover, going ahead and installing such software has been known to cause brand new computers to run sluggishly only a few hours after unboxing it!  Now of course, once those are uninstalled, it greatly speeds up the system — but why deal with that nonsense in the first place?

Hypeware is something you’ll never see in F3OS.  F3OS lets you run your computer your way, with the applications you want, never trying to push you to download or install something you don’t want or need, making for a much less annoying computing experience — with no strings attached.

OK, this one I’ve never actually seen listed as a reason to switch to Linux, but I’ve run across this one many times on a personal basis.  Back at a time when I worked in the library at Missouri Baptist University in St. Louis, I cannot tell you how many students whom I had to assist with wireless networking connections on their Windows laptops.  Fast-forward to 2023 — my elderly mom, who now lives in an assisted living facility as of last winter, for a long time, resisted switching to Linux.  That is, until she had only a wireless networking connection where she now lives.  Her computer, which originally came with Windows 11 pre-installed, kept dropping the wireless connection.  Finally, she, purely on her own, asked me if I could put Linux on her computer (this was before I created F3OS), so I backed up all of her files and did, and voila — no more dropped wireless connections!

Yes, you read that right.  Whenever you donate to F3OS, order live/installation DVD’s of F3OS, or decide to use our installation services, 20% of all money you give to F3OS goes to help fight the evil of human sex trafficking.  F3OS has partnered with two Christian groups dedicated to fighting the sickening practice of human trafficking, with 10% of your money going to the Springfield, MO-based Project Rescue, which fights human trafficking here in the Ozarks (where I live) and another 10% going to Agape International Missions, which fights human trafficking on a much larger worldwide scale.  With F3OS, you can both help fund a Linux project designed to glorify God as well as take a bite out of human trafficking.

Yes, you can try out F3OS for yourself without needing to first commit to installing it to a hard drive!  All you do is download our ISO file, and then either 1) burn it to a blank DVD-R or DVD-RW, or 2) write it to an empty USB drive.

To burn it to a blank DVD, in your DVD burner program, you will need to make sure and burn it as an image (look for something like “burn image” or “burn ISO image” — this is the way you burn ISO files).  If you did it correctly, you should see a series of files and folders, and you’re good to go.

To write it to a USB drive, you can’t just copy the ISO file to the drive — it doesn’t work that way.  Instead, you will need a special tool known as a USB image writer, such as UNetBootin, Rufus, Balena Etcher, or USBImager.  Once you have downloaded and installed your choice of any of those, plug your USB drive in, have it use the F3OS ISO you just downloaded and your USB drive you’ve plugged in, click the button to start the operation, and it should be done in just a few minutes.  WARNING: Make sure there’s nothing important on the USB drive, because this operation will erase everything on your USB drive!  Back up any important files on there somewhere else first!

Once you have done that, it’s time for the fun to begin.  When you have finished burning your DVD or writing to your USB drive, leave them in the CD/DVD tray or plugged in, whichever applies.  At this point, you will need to restart your computer.  When you reboot, pay very close attention to your computer’s bootup screen, because you will, depending on your computer, see a certain function key briefly mentioned on-screen during the bootup process.  Be sure to press that button while its key is shown on-screen, and it will take you to your computer’s BIOS or UEFI settings screen.  From here, you will need to look for something like “boot order” or “boot sequence”.  Since the exact keys used to access these settings will vary from computer to computer, it is not possible for me to tell you what keys to press here.

If your computer does not tell you what keys to enter to access your computer’s BIOS or UEFI settings, it’s possible that you may have to access the BIOS or UEFI settings from within Windows.  If that’s the case for you, here’s a YouTube video that tells you how to access them.  Note:  Toward the end, you’ll see “Boot Sequence” in the list in the upper-left-hand corner of the video — that’s what you’ll need.

In either case, once you’re in the boot sequence settings, set your computer to boot to the CD/DVD drive or your USB drive first.  This setting is, by the way, something you can leave set that way permanently, as it causes no damage to your computer.  It will simply look for something to boot from in the first location mentioned and, if it doesn’t find anything there to boot from, it simply goes to the next item in the list and repeats the process as needed until it finds something to boot from.

Once the booting process as completed, you’ll find yourself booted into the F3OS login screen. The ID and password to log in is “demo” for both, sans quotes.  Here, you can see what F3OS is like for yourself as well as see if it works perfectly with all of your hardware.  Note that if you’re running F3OS from a DVD, it may seem a little slow — this is due to the slow read/write speeds of CDs and DVDs and is not the fault of F3OS.

Should you decide to install F3OS alongside Windows, you’ll need to run Gparted or another disk partitioning utility to specify how you want your hard drive’s partitions laid out. F3OS can either be installed alongside Windows or it can completely replace Windows (your choice).  Even if you do go with the former, it’s very highly likely that, sooner or later, you’ll find yourself using F3OS more and more and using Windows less and less — and then eventually decide that you don’t need Windows at all anymore. :-)

When you decide that you’re ready to install F3OS, you will need to, from the live session, reboot and, when presented with the choices to run F3OS live or install it, select “Boot System Installation”.  During installation, you will be prompted for what time zone you are in, and what you wish to use for your computer name, user name, and password.