Navigate to the Boot menu and make sure that the first device in the list is your CD/DVD Drive. An example is given above.

Once you have this figured out, reboot the machine with the Mepis CD in the drive. You should see a screen similar to the following.

The password for the demo user is "demo", and for the root user it's "root". (Type these without quotes). Login as the Demo User. After logging in, the Mepis desktop appears...

Congratulations! Now you have a fully functional installation of Linux running. Now that's it up and running, what can you do with it? Mepis comes with a full set of necessary software. The bar at the bottom has icons to some of the more commonly used software. From left to right, these are:

1. K Menu – Similar to the start menu in Windows.

2. Show Desktop.

3. Home – This opens your home directory.

4. Internet Dial Up - This is a shortcut to Kppp, an Internet dialler. In case you have a dial up connection, you'll need it.

5. Mozilla Internet Browser.

6. Mozilla E-mail Client.

7. Kopete Instant Messenger – This is a sleek little multi-protocol messenger that lets you connect to various IM services. Yahoo, MSN, and AOL are supported, as are ICQ, and many others.

8. Open Office Writer- This is the freeware equivalent of MS Office. OpenOffice is a fully featured Office Suite, which is mature enough to be  used in a work environment. It opens Word (.doc) files with ease, and has some unique features like built-in export to PDF.

9. Text Editor – A notepad like text editor.

10. XMMS - The X Multi Media System is a Winamp Clone for Linux. Anyone who has used Winamp will be perfectly at home with XMMS.

11. K3B - This is a very user friendly CD/DVD- Writing Software. The interface is similar to Nero Burning ROM and is easy to use. 

The K menu contains all the software included. If this is your first time using a CD based Linux distribution, you are bound to be surprised by the amount of stuff they manage to pack into one CD. Mepis comes with around 1,000 packages. You can really get the feel of working with a full install.

The possibilities of using it are limitless. We would suggest that new users take it easy and explore the interface, the menu's and so on, safe in the knowledge that if you don't like the system, you can simply reboot the machine and go back to whatever OS you were using previously.

Take some time to look around and generally see what a good Linux distro looks like. In the next article, we will be looking at installing a Linux distribution to your hard drive. We hope you enjoyed your first step into the world of Linux.

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