i just recently got linux 9 running on this computer(thanks to the help on this board ), and so far have been able to connect to the internet and view images. however, when trying to play video or audio files, or run executable files, it says it can't. i'm not sure if it's done differently in linux, or i need additional software to do any of this, but any help is appreciated

you need to give more detail about what you're trying to do. real examples.

sorry,
some examples.. well, playing any sort of audio or video file, for one. i was trying to install the software for iPod and iTunes, but it just says "Nautilus has no installed viewer capable of displaying "/home/james/iTunesSetup.exe""
i also tried to install a version or Realplayer that said it was for Linux, and is a .bin file, but that gave me the same response.
i can't set up any new programs on here

iTunesSetup.exe is a Windows application. It may run in Wine, but you'll have to cross your fingers. Try typing "wine /home/james/iTunesSetup.exe" in the terminal and see what happens. I use XMMS to play audio files (it can play just about any audio file), and mplayer to play videos. I'm not sure how to associate Nautilus with those apps because I don't use it, however to check them out you can just open a terminal and type "xmms" or "mplayer" (you may want to try "gmplayer" though, it's a graphical front end to mplayer, which is command line, gmplayer is ususally easier to use, but doesn't support all the advanced features of mplayer from the command line.) All this applications (wine, mplayer, xmms) are pretty standard and included in most distros, however, if they are not already installed you'll need to tell us what distro you're using so we can help you install them.

Edit: "Linux 9" isn't a distro. Linux is technically only the kernel, and it's current version is 2.6.17.8. Your disto is the kernel with all the software around it, and theres many different ones... common ones are Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Mandriva, Xandros, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. I assume the "9" is the version number of one of those (or another) distro, so please specify.

i tried to download another version of iTunes, but that one didn't work either.. it was iTunes6.0.5.dmg
anyways, i'd like to have iTunes work so it'll run with my iPod, since i thought it was designed to work with Mac software as well
i tried the Wine command, and it said "bash: wine: command not found"
also, i'm using Red Hat Linux 9

dmg... that's an OSX format isn't it?

I really doubt you'll get iTunes working for the file transfers, that's outside of what wine does i believe, but check here for other info http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=3296

if i may say so you seem pretty unsure what what Linux really is... it's not windows, it's not trying to be windows and it's not meant to run windows applications. If you expect to just use the same apps without the OS cost / warez serial, then you'll be very dissapointed in your experience.

as for your wine error... you've not installed wine yet. install it.

additionally Redhat 9 is *VERY* old... get somethign newer, fedora Core 5, Suse 10.1, ubuntu 6.11

Yes, GNU/Linux is designed to run programs, but specifically to run programs designed for it. It cannot (yet) run Mac OS-X programs, and it can run *some* M$Windows programs under Wine, but not all. Also, you could pay for CrossOver which is a more advanced version of Wine, with support.

Viewing/listening to multimedia files requires those files to be "uncompressed" and you need "codecs" to do this. Windows, Mac, and Linux all need Codecs for multimedia files. Its just a fact of computing-life.

I am not familiar with RH9 but in general, most software on GNU/Linux is installed with a "Package Manager." In RedHat i think it is called Yum (the graphical program has a different name, perhaps). SUSE uses YAST; Debian uses Synaptic (graphical version of apt and dpkg). Package Managers keep track of updates and software so that internal things don't get borked like they often do on Windows. A sad reality is that, at this time (2006), software compiled for RedHat probably won't run on Debian, and software compiled for Debian probably won't run on SuSE... This isn't to say that the software itself won't run, but the different Linux distributions package the software differently and often cannot accept a program from another's Package Manager.

The easiest way (that I have found) to get Wine and the various codecs installed correctly is to use Ubuntu or Kubuntu Linux and then follow the instructions for Automatix (this is the Kubuntu version; you'll have to find the Ubuntu version with your own digging, sorry!), which adds additional non-standard software into (K)Ubuntu. With it, you can add Wine, Skype, Google Earth, and other fun programs. You'll have to follow the instructions closely though, and it'll take you a good twenty minutes of work...

This article might help you to understand a bit more about Linux in general.

Always come back to LinuxQuestions for more help as needed, and enjoy using Linux. Its a learning thing!!