Hi, everyone.

Im a linux newbie like my profile says.

LINUX DISTRIBUTION

Im a Windows user exploring the possiblity of switching to linux. I wonder though, which linux distribution is as user-friendly as Windows. I just installed RHEL WS4 and find it user-friendly but not for my wife .. I have also tried Mandrake and Solaris but, again, they are not as friendly as Windows. Or is it just because we're used to it?

I have a concern about RHEL though.. What does the linux community say about Red Hat abandoning support for open-source RH9? Will fedora follow? will the commercial Enterprise Linux reduce the number of users of Red Hat? If it will, then i'll probably look for another linux distribution.. that will be "forever" FREE. What would it be?


FILE FORMATS

DOCUMENTS

Open-Office has remarkable job of allowing users to export and open several file formats like MS's .doc/.xls/.ppt files. So i don't have any questions or comments about it.


AUDIO

I have hundreds of cd albums ripped to both MP3 (to create smaller files) and WMA (-lossless to back up entire CD) formats. Before i do the ripping again, i would like to ask your opinion as to which is the best portable audio format?

I tried APE and also think that its better than WMA lossless in terms of compression. In Windows, only (?) WinAmp supports the format and i find it inferior relative to WMPlayer10. In linux, which player can i use? Or is there anything better than APE?


VIDEO

Similarly, i also created back up of my DVDs using DVD-Shrink (in windows) and play it using VLan. But now, i'm not sure if the ISOs that i created can be used with the linux version of VLan. Which linux software is comparable to DVD-Shrink in creating DVD back-ups as an image file?

And what is the video format recommended by the open-source community?


DEVELOPMENT

I have written many programs in C/C++ and have distributed softwares developed in Visual C++ 6.0. I'm now starting to convert some of these applications to implement wxWidgets to make them portable. My questions is: which IDE should i use that is as powerful as MSVC's?


I know many will say that I need to decide first as to which OS i intend to use, but I think it's BEST to be able to switch between various OS including Windows.


Any comments and suggestions will be appreciated.

User-friendly is a fairly broad an ill-defined term.
Any linux distribution can be as comfortable as an old pair of slippers, if one takes the time to become aquainted.
To answer this question as best I can, I can think of two fairly logical directions you could take.

The frst direction you could go is to limit yourself to the GUI environment. Limited use of command-line and that sort of thing.
For this you could look at suse, ubuntu (or kubuntu) or xandros.

The second direction is one of soul-searching self-discovery. This way you will be almost forced to don your cybersuit from time to time and delve into worlds hitherto unknown and wonderous fraught with peril and deferred hope. You will need to build command-line skills and you will learn much about the underlying creature that lives in your computer.
For this you could look at debian, slackware or, if you fancy yourself truly brave, gentoo.

RedHat never really abandoned the community, it simply restructured it's operations. Fedora is the community-centric version of RedHat.
The commercial 'versions' of linux will more likely bring new users to linux than cause existing users to migrate elsewhere. As for remaining free, Debian is the bastion of free-ness, and there is, more than likely, always going to be a free linux distribution.

Open-Office.org is really great.
You could also look at Abiword for a nice word processor.
You could check out LaTeX (using LyX as the front-end) for serious flexibility and power with the written word.

MP3 is supported on linux, very very well. WMA is a little mystery to me as I never liked using it, thus I have no idea how well supported it is. I would have to comment that it most likely is very well supported in some fashion or other.
If you are looking for a better codec, I could not look past Ogg Vorbis. It's got great compression and excellent sound quality. You can also look at using FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), it's supposed to be very good as well.

I never used ape. However the XMMS (X Multi Media System) is brilliant. You can use many video players like totem and Xine to listen to audio files as well. Rythmbox is a gnome-based application which is a whole lot more than just a player.

As for ripping DVD's, the bast option I have ever come across is DivX. It even has hardware support in many DVD players. I don't know how to rip to DivX (but there will be a lot of info on that elsewhere, I'm certain) but I do know that when it's done right, it's a very close match to the original.
DivX is also supported on windows, so you have a very portable format there.

Anjuta is a very good IDE for C/C++.
It's probably going to be most familiar to visual studio. There is Kdevelop, a KDE-based ide, as well.
I have used these two, and both are really good, but then I hated the VS stuff post VS6.
If you don't mind a slightly steeper learning curve, and you are into being retro (or are so obsessed with speed that you only use the command-line, splurging on the odd occasion with an ncurses app) you could try motor. Jed has some very tasty features too, but it's not an IDE.

If one said 'choose your OS first' on the topic of portable formats, they'd have missed the point.
Not all that I have mentioned is portable though, this I know but I do hope it has helped.

yes, indeed a lot of helped.

I will try to rip an audio CD later in linux using FLAC. i just found a plug-in for me to play it (and also Monkey's Audio APE) in WMPLayer10.. Now these formats are PORTABLE. Thanks!

As for the video: I have tried to rip my dvds to DivX format using DvdX but the quality is nothing compared to the original dvd. I tried the DivX High definition 2-pass but i was disappointed with the result. That is after more than 6 hours of ripping. I was quite happy though that many recent hardware/players support the format. But then again, i wanted quality more than anything..

so, from the 2 replies i received from this wonderful site i will try
Suse 10.0
Open-Office.org (i'll try to use LaTeX when i'm starting to write a technical paper)
FLAC codec
Anjuta/KDevelop

Thanks again.