im trying to put redhat or Suse and stuff but my question is where do i get software from and can i put it on a cd so if i want i can put it in redhat,Suse or whatever i get. Does linux software work with every Distro. And what are something i should probabily get for linux in genernal.

Linux software can come in four different formats.

1. .tgz which is a targizzepd file. These are only used in Slackware by doing installpkg or removepkg.
2. .rpm which a red hat package. These can be used on any RPM based distro. Suse, Red Hat/Fedora, Mandrake...
3. .deb is a debian package. These packages can only be used on Debian and Ubuntu/Kubuntu.
4. .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 or .tar are just source packages. These are universal and they need to be built. The installation procedure may vary depending on distro due to dependencies and such, but they will work on any distro. You will need to extract, then in the directory created do 1) ./configure 2) make 3) make install.

.tgz is/can be a normal tarball like .tar.gz
However, it's usual to have .tgz denote "slackware packages" which are tarballs with a script telling pkgtool how to install it.

BUT not all .tgz are slackware packages.

well what r u trying 2 do?> i mean i used to have back ups of almos all of my windoze software. if that's what u want then saving all of those rpms or tar files are not really necessary dude.

But if not then, rpms will work with rpm base distros dude
some other distros like gentoo use the source code in order to install programs.

however most distros have a lot of softwares in their install cds like mandrake or fedora (rpm)