Not sure what ISO is an acronym for
It's an acronym for International Standards Organization. In the context of CDs, it is shorthand for the ISO-9660 CD file system format used on CDs. In fact there are enough limitations to the format that most CDs you read aren't pure ISO-9660, though they can all be read to some degree or another on a machine with no support for the extentions. The most common extentions (that I know of, anyway) are Joliet, which allows long file names and deeper directory nesting for Win95 and later, and Rock Ridge, which allows those plus unix-style file permissions as well as long file names, deep directory nesting, and such. It is also possible to make a "hybrid" CD that will appear to Macs as a native HFS system and as ISO to anything else.
These sets of extentions are not exclusive - I've made hybrid disks with both Joliet and RockRidge extentions, and they worked.
for or how to do this under *nix.
from the command line, use 'mkhybrid'. For graphical apps, there are several, which were discussed here in a recent thread.
I am downloading linux, and I have never burned an iso before.
You don't need to make on, you just need to know how to get Nero to burn one you already have. They hide this option for some reason. Perhaps they think your average user won't be doing anything but copying physical CDs and archiving their data? Anyway, it can be done, that's how I got Linux onto this machine.
- Cancel the "New Compilation" window
- Choose "Burn Image" from the "file" menu
- in the "Open" dialog, choose "All Files (*.*)" from the "Files of type:" drop-down list. Otherwise, Nero doesn't show .iso files, because they decided they had to invent their own new extention for the same darned thing.
- Navigate to your image file, select it, and click "open"
- Click "OK" on the "Foreign Image Settings" dialog
- Check "write" (the checkbox, not the button) and "Finalize CD (No further writing possible)" in the "Write CD" dialog.
- Click the "Write" button.
