I'm interested in using Linux instead of Windows, mainly because windows has a habit of keeping logs of everything I do, which is a little too Orwellian for me. I'm curious if these apps will run: iTunes, Sims Online, Windows games, Microsoft Word, etc.

Also, is it nessecary that I re-partition my harddrive?

Here is a link about iTunes: http://www.codeweavers.com/site/store/ads/itunes?ad=8. None of those programs will work in Linux normally, but Codeweavers makes a program that can run Microsoft Office programs, etc. Although there all Open Source alternatives to most Windows programs. OpenOffice is the best word processor, it can even save files as MS Word docs. And yes you'll have to re-partition your harddrive. Unless you just get rid of Windows altogether...

Cheers
Quimby

cedega will run windows games (half life 2, medal of honor, etc).

wine will run microsoft office and games, although not as many and not as well as cedega. I not sure but i think cedega will run office too.

yes, you have to repartion your harddrive unless you have empty parition for linux, two min. one for root partion and one for you swap (virtual memory).

if the partition thing is not something you want to do yet, download knoppix. It will run off cd, slower but it will run, settings and anything you install though will be deleted at reboot of course.

i always wondered why microsoft logs so much sh*^&. It keeps logs of completely irrelavent shi*^. in index.dat is a list of every web page you ever went to. and when you tell explorer to delete it. it lies to you and doesn't really do it? it even locks the file so you can't delete them manually unless you boot into dos or some other os. wtf! piece of sh*^&. you have to think it slows your computer down logging all that irrelevant bullsh*^. I hate micorosoft. I wish someone would take some unix core like apple did with FreeBSD, and burn microsoft already. I'm really getting sick of them. Them and there dot net bullsh*^. their platform was already insecure, now they are creating the dot net crap which will give anyone access to the win sdk over the internet? lol. it's completely ridiculous.

Look here for native Linux games:

http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php

Look here for games that run under Transgaming's Cedega:

http://digital-conquest.ath.cx/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

For office docs, use OpenOffice (a Win version available as well, so try it out). For other stuff, there are usually open source equivalents.

As for log files, Linux has them too. The difference is that they are documented, and can be edited/erased manually if you need to. They won't, however, be transmitted to anyone else unless you e-mail them to somebody.

For drive partitioning, I recommend Partition Commander. It's very good and supports several types of Linux partitioning schemes (file formats) such as EXT2 (virtually obsolete, but still used), EXT3 (Standard), and ReiserFS (Very nice alternative to EXT3). Make sure you go with a Linux distro based on the 2.6 kernel, for the latest in hardware support and pre-emptive kernel support (better multimedia response).

You might want to duel boot to start. In that case, make sure XPee is installed first (be careful if you have a Dell, they put an extra partition on the drive).