Exactly! AFAIC the last "good" version of Nero was 5.5. They started down the path of bling-it-up-and-make-it-unusable in version 6, then went the full-hog in 7. Now it's so bloated (even those "free" OEM versions - and mind you you're paying for them, you just don't know it) that you need a top-end PC just so you don't wait 2 minutes for the "wizard" screen to open.

+1 on the CDBurnerXP. It's got the same speed & reliability as Nero had when it was still a "great" piece of program. BTW, even if you "like" nero's wizard interface there's similar (if not better) products. E.g. the all of 930kb install file of BwgBurn.

Anyhow, as for Liux based, maybe look at some of these: http://andrewmc.net/2011/04/14/disc-burner-shoot-out/

Edit: And if you have a Love-afair with Nero, they do have a Linux version: http://www.nero.com/eng/linux4.html

For me, I would like an openbox/icewm desktop with libreoffice, scim, xmms player, audacity, lame, ffmpeg, vlc, iceweasel/midori, gnuEmacs and wine all developement ides with manuals and tutorials and synaptic package manager. I do not like the idea of an OS in a desktop environment that takes away all my memory and tend to hang or desktop environment that cannot be installed in an old computer. My request to developers is that they should forget the existence of Microsoft Windows and its market share and leave all attempt to bring the Windows users to linux or GNU/Linux and pay attention to make better apps which is fast, which has the features an user want. I firmly believe the philosophy of FSF and would like an OS that adhere to this principle. Thank you.

That's all available for Linux, BSD, and some of it for Solaris. There is a man page for just about every app, utility, and function. Often times there are extensive docs for an app online.
http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-doc.html
http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/
http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/docbook.php
Go over to youtube and you'll find Linux tutorials galore.

Stop running a DE and run a window mgr like Fluxbox, LXDE, or Openbox instead. I have Arch installed on a PIII 733, with 384 MB of RAM and a 20GB HD, X, fluxbox, Firefox 5 with flash, Thunderbird, mplayer, gedit, rox, pcmanfm, Abiword, xarchiver... etc. and it runs fine. Now it won't play 1080p video, no OS on that machine would. On xinit, X takes about 160M, fluxbox 6M, Midori with 3 tabs open is at 36M. Quite good for an old 12 year old box I think. ffmpeg, mencoder, rtmpdump, all work fine too.
Mencoder will take care of that task at about 24 fps. And mplayer will play it when it's done using 60-70% cpu.

You get much older than that box and you'll have problems with web content and media today.

Yes, I know what is available in respective websites. And as an old debian user Iknow regarding the desktops and the apps available. But Iam talking of an OS which is not at all resource hungry and at the same time provide a desktop which contain the Apps, developement ides and the manuals and helpfiles so that when one needs them, one can refer to them even if he is without an internet connection. Musix GNU/Linux could do it on openbox, but they also gave baggage of kde along with it. Ihave used and seen what dynabolic GNU/Linux could do which can be run on a PII system and at the same time remain productive and creative. My objection is to the recent trend and a competition among the dominant desktops, viz., Gnome, KDE and recently with Enlightenment desktop builders and most popular Linux distro 'Ubuntu' to create desktops with so much blob just to win away the MS Windows users and the result is you have to buy or upgrade your system hardware to keep pace with these offerings. I should have no objection in someone trying to win over users of other systems. But this way you will be loosing support of your traditional users and contributors. I believe GNU/Linux has been created on the basis of a philosophy. Are we not deviating from the basic philosophy?n And why bother users and tell them to reinstall their system after every six months! Well if the system has bugs , give update and take out a newer version only when you have something totally new and useful to give. Well, I am neither a techi nor a geek but a humble user and therefore not qualified to speak on these subjects and therefore beg apology if I have offended anyone by my unwanted comments.With regards.

I doubt if you have offended anyone. But you don't have to have any of those problems.
Documentation is available to be read offline. Install the docs, read the man pages, go to a web page with the docs you want and print it to .pdf with ghostscript, download the docs, mirror an entire website with wget if you want, etc.

Linux isn't. Some big desktop environments are. Don't use them if you don't like them.

Bluefish, Eclipse, Code::Blocks, kdevelop, there's a bunch.

Yes, that what repositories are for. Debian's is huge. So is FreeBSD's. Arch's isn't bad. The rpm distro's have everything that you could want. Then there is wine.

You have a choice ranging from everything to everyone Ubuntu, all the way to Linux from scratch. Rolling releases like Arch to rock solid Slackware and BSD. KDE and plasma for a quad core to TWM or fluxbox for a PII. You don't have to reinstall every 6 months if you don't want to. If you don't like that then don't use Fedora for example.
With a rolling release like arch
Will update the whole box, kernel, apps, dependencies. You never have to reinstall, and it works darned well. There might be a hiccup every now and then. Updating a Microsoft box isn't always uneventful.
On a FreeBSD box
Will update all ports
Will update the system.

I doubt it. If you don't like bloat then try Slackware, Debian, FreeBSD, etc. Build your system, install X, install a WM, install some apps, install the docs, install the kernel sources etc.

I appreciate your comments but traditional Linux hasn't gone anywhere. You can run Fluxbox, TWM, IceWM etc, no hal, no udev, no auto nothing. All you have to do is build it. The popularity of Ubuntu kinda shows the desire to have a "do it all for me" flavor of Linux.

Thank you for an enlightening reply. I am highly obliged for the you have given to my useless thread. What I was talking of is a complete OS keeping the needs of users of oldPCs in mind. Of course there are systems based on openbox, LXDE etc but I believe there is space for one OS considering the needs of learners with minimum resources. As it is I have been using debian since 2002 and now I have debian-squeeze with xfce and icewm on my old PC and EEEPC. I was fed up with fedora and could not like ubuntu. I liked slax, but Ihave never tried slackware or Arch.
Thank you again for your enlightening comments.

Not sure if I'm on the right forum spot but how about making picasa install easily in linux? or should it already..? I'm just trying linux out before switching but so far I keep hitting brick walls..should add.. using UBUNTU

Far Manager. The only normal file manager and editor for me (Midnight is petty, really) and now it is free and opensource. Currently I'm running it on wine but sometimes it is not the same as natively. I think it's not impossible to port it...

It would be nice to see something like Beholder's native TV Tuner application to listen/watch and capture FM/TV including hardware MPEG encoder.

Also I'm not aware of any free MPEG video editor of Womble MPEG Video Wizard quality for frame accurate cut and join videos without any re-encoding.

Well, also we're luck of uTorrent.

Far Manager:
I looked at screenshots of it. Have a look at
midnight commander
http://www.midnight-commander.org/
http://www.icewalkers.com/scrshot/469/
http://alternativeto.net/software/midnight-commander/
Have a look at mplayer, mencoder, ffmpeg, ffplay, Xine, Kaffeine, MythTV, MythBuntu, xawtv, v4l, plus lots more.
ffmpeg
http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-doc.html
mencoder
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html

uTorrent:
transmission, deluge, rtorrent, ktorrent, bittorrent, etc.

picasa:
never used it, found this
http://picasa.google.com/linux/faq.html

Picasa runs very well in Linux,

http://picasa.google.com/linux/

I am using pclinuxos and picasa is in the repository. just a couple of clicks to install. Ubuntu probably has similar. Always check the repository for your distro before throwing in the towel. Lots of surprises.

thanks for the advice and I'll try and install it again. also look for the "repository" and "distro" I guess it's a new learning process..

A distro is just short for distribution, which is the flavor of Linux you're using (Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Red Hat, etc.).

A repository is a place where you can find software installation files for your distribution. In Ubuntu your repositories are managed by the Software Center or Synaptic (both come pre-installed with the operating system). This is very similar to Apple's "App Store", in fact, as far as I can tell they got the idea from Linux.

I really wish Adobe would port Photoshop to Linux. I know it's wishful thinking on my part but it would be very nice if they did.

Thanks again for the help, my wife and I are struggling with linux I must say, I've installed it on four different computers in the last three years and each time I gave up because of issues like the one with Picassa.. I still can't see how to get it , I think we are past it!! love the idea of open source though and I use Open office with windows..