Hello everyone I am a linux newbie and I'm getting fed up with vista so I wanna try out linux but don't know squat about it. This is not a how to use linux thread just some general questions about the programs I use and will they work on linux and a few others. Also can someone point me in the direction for a linux for dummies tutorial.

First my system specs.(built myself)
nVidia 780i mobo
Dual 8800 gt
4 gb ram
q6600 (OC @ 3.2ghz)
Windows Vist Ultx64

1. Which linux will be right for me?
2. Antivirus program. I read about alot of people don't it for linux but
I rather be safe than sorry; so what is a good program to use.
3. Games. I know I would have to run a windows emulator to run games
just want to know how smooth is the emulator. Also are there any
drivers for my 360 controller for linux?
4. Will linux file share with windows? I have TV shows on my PC that my
mother watches on her PC.
5. Programs. Here is a list of my fav programs I use and wonder if they
work for linux. Don't worry not alot of them. (Will it be easier to
use my programs in a windows emulator?)
- Azureus, My favorite BT program
- Total Video Converter, favorite convert program
- DVD burner and Iso Program for linux. Remember seeing nero for
linux but not sure.
- Emulators, nes, snes, psx, and no$gba
- PC monitoring programs, ex like real temp and CPUz
- VLC, Firefox3, and thunderbird(heh Iknow they work for linux^^)
- Winrar and Photoshop
- A program that would let me use my TV tuner card to watch my
satellite on my PC.

I have a few more programs but these are the ones I usually run on daily bases. They are audacity, axialis icon workshop, CCleaner, Rocket dock, and messenger live . These are my only concerns I have before learning and switching to linux. I would love to use linux for everything but games(ty Microsoft monopoly) but I don't think its possible.

Thanks

for the nvidia card, you need to get some drivers
in this case, suse would be better

1. Which linux will be right for me?
i would recommend maybe mandriva or opensuse, they have a pretty simple interface, but suse is more powerful
take this test is you are unsure
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

2. Antivirus program. I read about alot of people don't it for linux but
I rather be safe than sorry; so what is a good program to use.
you could use panda anti-virus, but i have been running linux for a 5 years, never a problem and i have never had an anti-virus program or firewall running.
suse does come with a firewall though


3. Games. I know I would have to run a windows emulator to run games
just want to know how smooth is the emulator. Also are there any
drivers for my 360 controller for linux?
playonlinux which is wine based should do it. as for the game controller, it should work ok without much trouble

4. Will linux file share with windows? I have TV shows on my PC that my
mother watches on her PC.
yes, the service samba will allow you to connect to windows shares and share files

5. Programs. Here is a list of my fav programs I use and wonder if they
work for linux. Don't worry not alot of them. (Will it be easier to
use my programs in a windows emulator?)
- Azureus, My favorite BT program
ktorrent is aright, i do think azureus has a linux version though

- Total Video Converter, favorite convert program
probably have to use wine, a layer that allows you to run windows programs

- DVD burner and Iso Program for linux. Remember seeing nero for
linux but not sure.
use k3b, it works very well
you might need to get something called libdvdcss in order to copy encrypted dvds

- Emulators, nes, snes, psx, and no$gba
not going to work well with linux
you can try and use wine, but no guarantee

- PC monitoring programs, ex like real temp and CPUz
superkaramba it does all that and more

- VLC, Firefox3, and thunderbird(heh Iknow they work for linux^^)
yeah, they firefox and thunderbird are suported, not sure about VLC

- Winrar and Photoshop
use wine for winrar, you can try to use gimp instead of photoshop

- A program that would let me use my TV tuner card to watch my
satellite on my PC.
suse should support tv cards right out of the box

windows messenger i think could be replaced by pidgin
http://pidgin.im/

in short, if you use suse, just use yast2 to find the programs
it pretty easy to switch, takes a little time, but trust me, its worth it

i switched 5 years ago, thinking the same thing you were,
but i can personally tell you, once you switch, you will never go back

welcome to Linux, enjoy the ride

good luck,

rabbit2345

1) Try several distros, most recommend Ubuntu, but I personally hate cuz it's too much like Window$.

2) Try clamav it works well, once in a while I do run a scan and it does find stuff. I would recommend more programs like rkhunter and chkrootkit as these are more important.

3) You mean Window$ games ? Many you can run through wine. It's not an emulator btw. Check for apps that work here: http://appdb.winehq.org/

4) Yeah, you can use samba to access Window$ SMB shares and vice versa.

5)
azureus - I know it works as I've used it and it's written in java
video converter - try avidemux if you want a GUI, or just ffmpeg and mencoder from the command line
dvd burner - try k3b, there indeed does exist a nero for linux, but it doesn't have many more features over k3b
emulators:
snes: I strongly recommend zsnes it is better than snes9x (both work on Linux)
psx: I don't like any of them but epsxe is the only one that works at an acceptable level
Here's a good list of emulators:
http://linuxemu.retrofaction.com/links/index.php
monitoring apps - I recommend gkrellm
Photoshop - try GIMP and there are plenty of plugins that really make it very powerful
winrar - it's available for linux, but I don't see any using in being able to make rar's, 7zip is much better in every way (and it can extract rar's)
tv tuner - it depends on if the tv tuner is supported, see here: http://www.linuxtv.org/v4lwiki/index.php/Main_Page
ccleaner - is a Window$ only program, but serves no purpose on Linux
messenger - try kopete or pidgin (I don't like it)

VLC is supported in linux as well as the vlc plugins. VLC can also be used as a file converter for videos, watch dvds, rip dvd titlrs, listen to shoutcast radios and tv, you can also watch tv from your tv tuner and you can even stream the videos and tv to another computer.

Use your package manager to search and install vlc and vlc plugins.

I personally use mplayer and the mplayer plugins for my browsers.

Good luck

Thanks alot everyone
Gonna back up my files and read about using linux.

Yeah, do some reading first. It helps out a lot. When I first tried ubuntu I hated it because I didn't know how to do anything, but then I read some more about linux, and tried out debian. Now it's basically my main OS.

I say just install any of the versions (distros) listed in the top ten on the "Hit List" at http://distrowatch.com.

Depending on you disk space, you can install several different distros and alternate between them to try different things.

After you have dabbled a bit, THEN start some serious reading.

To add some more info:
Distro: Chose anything except ubuntu (and the other ubuntuish distros). Again. Don't use ubuntu. It will disapoint you after some time. Some recommendations: Mepis, Debian, SuSE, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, etc...
winrar: There is a native rar linux package that allows you to create rar archives under linux. No winrar and emulation stuff needed. But as H_TeXMeX_H said, 7zip is better than rar and it's completely free, not as rar, which you need to register. In the same time you don't have to worry that others won't be able to use your 7zip archies, since it is available for Windows too.
MSN Live: Well, there are some IM apps in Linux. The multi-protocol ones: Kopete or Pidgin, and the apps only for MSN: like aMSN or kmess (aMSN looks the most similar to msn live).
PhotoShop: if you really don't want to try GIMP, than you can run photoshop under wine. It will work perfectly, since the developers of wine use photoshop for their windows test app.
Azureus: has a linux version (because it is java based), will run without problems. You can also try the latest ktorrent for a P2P app.
SNES: check out ZSNES. It has a native linux version.
audacity: has a native linux version.

An important thing: don't want to import every windows app to linux, instead try to search the linux alternatives for them. Usually they are as good as the windows progs.
Good luck!

And the award for best answer so far goes to ... pixellany. If you are going to base your choice on other people's opinion, you may as well stick with windows.

You can use iZarc instead of winrar. I wrote to the developer to ask whether he had considered a Linux version. He doesn't but he told me that it works perfectly if you use WINE. And it does. Winrar and 7zip, by the way, are not as good on Linux as on Windows. There is a reason that I installed iZarc, try splitting a file and rarring only the first part - won't work with anything but iZarc half of the times.

For video conversion, I use Avidemux and Cinelerra.

A hardware monitor is built into the major desktops (Gnome, KDE) and for temperatures, you can set up sensors.

Azureus works fine but is quite a resource hog. Not a problem if you have a system like yours but you may still want to explore Transmission as an alternative.

Support for TV cards should be provided by kernel modules so it should work out of the box on all of the major distros.

I agree with you on that, you should definitely read up before installing it, read as much as you can on it, it will avoid both frustration and disaster. At least skim through see what might be useful to know. And one last tip from me: If you try every distro and you think they all suck, and you want to go back to Window$, try Slackware, it may make you stay with Linux as it did with me

On many of the distro forums on this site, such as the forun for SuSE and Fedora Core, there is a sticky on the top of the forum with a post on installing repositories for proprietary media not supported by the distro.

If you choose SuSE, you can select "Community Repositories" in YaST's Add/Remove Repository sources wizard. The main ones are the packman and video lan. For Fedora Core, add the livna site.

Good Luck.

Why not RHEL ?

Fedora is good BUT , here is the catch and it is a big one Fedora is a Fast development distro .This means that each release is supported for only one year . It also means that it might not work correctly " out of the box " .But it might,I have not had a major problem ( except for a simple fix to get the sound working on fedora 8 ) since i installed Fedora 4 then 5,6,7, and now 8 .
So if you install fedora be ready to " get your hands dirty " to fix something . However learning to fix it will teach you a lot .
Fedora is #3 on http://distrowatch.com/ top 10 ranking.
as to AV i run ClamAV but have never found anything on my linux hard drive ,however it has found things on my windows xp drive that Norton missed .Fedora uses SELinux to help secure the system see: http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/ ( yes that is N.S.A. - National Security Agency )
most new linux distros use it ,some don't but they run i think it is AppGuard .

Games:
windows games on linux is hit or miss if there is not a linux port of the game .Some run in wine some do not .But there a lot of games for linux
I like Virus killer http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/virusKiller.php
and BZFlag http://bzflag.org/ http://bzflag.org/screenshots/
and from my sig Celestia a 3d space simulator .

Torrent:
I use ktorrent ,the kde desktop bittorent client while running The Gnome desktop.
speaking of kde and Gnome have a look at
http://www.gnome.org/
http://kde.org/

- Winrar and Photoshop
winrar is not needed there is unrar that will plug in to most if not all archive managers
and use The Gimp inplace of photoshop http://www.gimp.org/

"A program that would let me use my TV tuner card to watch my
satellite on my PC."
most should have support for the drivers .I know that MythTV can run on Fedora 8,9
http://www.mythtv.org/

for video conversion, Dynebolic includes soemthing called "gtranscode" as far as I remember - maybe you could try that.
as for photoshop, try Gimp and Krita as replacements.

Some useful websites:
www.zsnes.com for ZSNES, www.snes9x.com for Snes9x.
Try MAME for more emulator games.

Thanks all for your help and replies. After taking the test (thanks rabbit2345) I've decided to go with opensuse. As for playing games I might go with dual booting option instead of wine. I read that wine doesn't play all windows games and how greedy M$ is they are probably purposely doing that. Thinking of installing opensus on my PS3 first and doodling with it there. As for the programs haven't read anything on them since they aren't a big issue atm. Again I would like to say thanks for all of your info