Hi, I've dabbled with various Linux Distos on and off for a few years,

after initial tasters with knoppix live cd, I went a head with a full install of Linux, dual booting along side windows.

Since I'm called Ian and my partner is Deb. I opted for Debian, great but too technical and after a house move and a swap to wifi internet, couldn't get wifi to work.

Next came K/Ubuntu, great for a while, but then after an upgrade wifi stopped working and defied all attempts to work again. Read somewhere that this was an Ubuntu problem, with too rapid upgrades that fixed some problems but introduced new ones.

Finally after a friend told me about Linux Mint, I've finally been able to ditch windows completely and go totally open source.

As you will notice the heart of everything has been Debian, and my desktop of choice has been Gnome, I have tried others things, like Mandriva and KDE, but returned to where I've felt happiest.

I've long browsed these and other forums for help and info, and must thank posters who have guided me, so now I've finally taken the plunge and posted myself, in the hope that, just as I was, some other Linux newcomers will find a happy home.

So what would make my little corner of eden complete would be advice and recommendations on software.

What have you used and found invaluable?

I use, openoffice, firefox, thunderbird and gimp mainly.

I want help in using all the buttons on my Logitech Cordless Trackman, and communication with my Sony Ericsson W995 via usb, under windows, I could syncronise my phone and thunderbird address book with MyPhoneExplorer.

Any advice would be greatly welcomed

Ian

Fr your MP3 player, there are numerous tools out there, and people will start wars based on who thinks what's best. The big ones are Rythmbox (the GNOME default), Songbird (a little more new, based on the mozilla engine), Amarok (meant for KDE but can run in GNOME) and Banshee (supposedly quite slow because of MONO).

As for what programs to use, just ask yourself, what do you want to do? There are about 18000 packages in the Ubuntu repositories last time I checked, so with linux you can turn your computer into whatever you want.

As for your phone, can't sayy of the bat whether or not it will work, I'm sure someone here knows more than I do. In general, things like that work, but they take a little more work than they did in windows (though things have only gotten better and better).

Best of luck!