You'll have to be more specific as to what you mean by "use." To boot it, you need to place the disc in your drive and reboot your computer. You may also need to access your BIOS to change the boot order so that the CD / DVD drive is first.
Most things, like launching and running programs, should be self-evident to anyone who has used a desktop computer - just click. I believe SAM Linux uses Synaptic to install other software if you need it.
Use a boot disc or a Linux LiveCD such as Knoppix
The best known as a LiveCD (as opposed to being the most popular with a LiveCD available) is Knoppix.
Most of the popular Linux distributions these days have a LiveCD portion, including Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, and even Gentoo. The most popular known specifically for LiveCD functionality is probably Knoppix.
The following are designed primarily or entirely to function as LiveCD distributions: * Knoppix * Damn Small Linux * Feather Linux * Slax * Archie The following have a LiveCD component, but were designed more for installation to a hard drive: * Ubuntu (and derivatives like Kubuntu and Xubuntu) * Freespire * PCLinuxOS * Fedora * Mandriva * Pardus
You can: A. Buy a new hard drive B. Use a Linux LiveCD. C. Buy a new computer.
There are many ways to categorize Linux distributions. You can categorize them by their size, whether they run on a LiveCD, whether they are provided gratis, their ancestry of other Linux distros, and the purpose the distro is meant to serve.
No. A L:iveCD will not even touch the hard drive unless you tell it to.
You can't resize a mounted partition, so you can't resize the root file system while the installed copy of Linux is running. To resize it, you should use a LiveCD like GParted that contains a partition editor.
This is an error in your Operating System (Windows), there is no way to 'exit' this error. You can try fixing the error with a GNU/Linux liveCD or with a recovery console from the Windows system, or you can reinstall your OS (which will likely erase your data and applications). Use a GNU/Linux liveCD to boot into your computer and access your files and copy them to an external drive, flash drive, or network drive, to keep them safe before you reinstall.
Supposing that the hard drive is unmounted, you can just install and run gparted or qtparted. If the hard drive is your main hard drive (ie. you cannot unmount it), download a Linux LiveCD, burn it, place it in your drive and restart your computer. Boot from the LiveCD and then run gparted or qtparted. Caution: BE VERY CAREFUL YOU COULD, BY ACCIDENT, DELETE ALL YOUR DATA
No. But it can seem that way, since a LiveCD generally gives you something else to do.
You can use a boot CD to access the files on your hard drive, if it has not crashed. For example, a Linux LiveCD such as Ubuntu, or a windows boot CD such as BartPE (Google them to find them). If your hard drive has crashed, and the LiveCD method doesn't work, you can send it in for repair to one of many data recovery specialists. It can cost from a few hundred to thousands of dollars to recover data this way, so I hope you have a backup.