Ok, I ordered me the Acer 9300 with the 17" screen, 160 mb drive for 699. It is going to become, maybe, by main work computer, being beat on 10 hours a day.

Step 1. I'm planning to use the stuff on systemrescuecd to back up the original drive, and then partition it so the XP stuff is down to about 10 or 20 gb.

In fact, I'm planning on doing this before I even go the the initial installation when the system first boots up.

Good idea or not? Any links to some clear instructions?

The next question is what linux. I have SuSE 10.2 already installed at home, replacing the Windows 2003 server I was using before.

But media on SuSE really does suck. Even going the the directions on here. Kaffeine is crashing, and I can't play avi files.

So, what about Ubuntu? The main issue for me is I really want to run the compix 3d desktop, which is available for SuSE.

But media is important too. I want the browser to be able to handle anything except active-x.

Any thoughts?

The SuSE forum on this site has a sticky on this subject. You want to add a packman repository for audio and video programs so that you can play DVDs and MP3s. You need this for programs like audacity as well. After adding the repository use that source in the YaST2 package manager to install these programs. Also for DVD playback, you need a library from the vlan website, http://www.videolan.org/, for the libdvdcss2 library.

Yea, I went thru the sitcky. Somehow I hosed Kaffeine. If I play video now, it crashes the entire login session.Sometimes I have to turn the system off and back on. I've never seen a linux program do that!

I think it's because I didn't limit the repositories to just packman and guru when I installed xine. I reinstalled those packages, but when I try to remove Kaffeine for a fresh install I get a bunch of dependancy errors.

VLC is nice but I only get sound on avi's.

I'm wondering if Ubuntu is going to handle multi-media better. However, this is a work computer, and I really like the KDE application suite.

Programs runs as they suppose to when you compile them. Try using Gentoo.

When I play video files, I use mplayer straight from the command line. Kaffeine is xine-lib based, so it is not very tolerable playing back media files. VLC is worst than xine-lib.

I do not recommend any 3D desktops at this time. They are ok here and there, but not for every day use. Use something ligher like XFce4 or Fluxbox. Lighter the resources, the more the notebook computer will last on batteries.

Firefox or Seamonkey can handle mplayerplug-in. WINE could be used to handle stupid sites that require Internet Explorer, but I suggest do not mess with it unless you do not mind losing hair.

The Yast2 package manager has a nice feature. You can select By Installation Source in the dropdown box. Another one will appear allowing a search box. In the RHS pane, you can select "all in this list", update if newer is available. This has helped me update media programs and there dependencies in one fell swoop. Be sure to add the same version of the packman repository as your SuSE Linux version.

The library I mentioned on the vlc site is needed to decrypt DVDs. You don't have to install VLC, although it is one of the better players, especially if you are playing a networked file.

I'm wondering if I should remove the install DVDs from the repository completely? That way I'd always be installing the latest from the online ones.

You don't need to. If there is a new package available it will be downloaded. I kept the iso image that I had downloaded for SuSE Linux and I use the image as an installation source. The online repository is normally the source used for a package.