i am NOT an uber programmer. just to let u know

1. i really miss windows picture and fax viewer becuase it was straight to the point, is there a linux alternative?

2. how do i lauch windows apps that i installed

Never used it, but you will very quickly learn that Linux is all about choice. I personally use gqview for image viewing, but there are many image viewers out there. You probably want to do a search on www.freshmeat.net.

I assume you mean Microsoft Windows?

There are several ways to do this, aside from using the Microsoft Windows operating system. Apps for Windows will not run on Linux natively, but if you're using an i386 series processor, then you can run Windows code natively using Wine (www.winehq.org). However, you should note that Wine is still very much in beta, so some things in Windows programs don't work in Wine and others need configuring. If you look on winehq.org there's a database of supported (and partially supported) apps.

If you're looking for a more complete solution, try looking at Cedega, which is commercial software (you have to pay for it) but has a much more complete implementation than Wine, particularly for DirectX which is used in many games and some 3D modelling / video manipulation software.