Various questions about Linux/Windows applications.
 

I'm thinking of dual-booting with XP and a Linux distro (haven't decided what distro I might use), but I don't think I'd ever use the distro if I can't do the things I do with XP on a daily basis, so it would be a waste of time and hard drive space to set one up without asking a few questions first. They're probably pretty basic questions.

1) I have a PlaysForSure mp3 player and, though I can put music on there without using Windows Media Player, it's quicker and easier in WMP. Can anything take the place of WMP in a Linux distro?

2) I use Firefox and, though I've already seen that at least one distro supports it, I don't seem to be able to view .mpg or .wma videos in it. Is there a plugin or something that will allow me to view movies in FF? (I couldn't see .mpg's or .wma's in Konqueror, either. In fact, Konqueror crashed when I tried. Maybe it's a live CD thing.)

3) I gotta have my Trillian. Is there a Linux version?

4) I use Azureus and, though I'm not totally married to the program, I'm definitely gonna need a BT client, preferrably that one.

5) I'm a bit of an organizational freak when it comes to my music, and I use a file conversion application to keep all my music in mp3 format at 128kbps. There's something that will do that in Linux, right?

6) I *can* download applications and stuff and install them in Linux just like in Windows, right? (I gotta ask because I've only used Linux distros from live CDs.)

7) I've acrued a couple hundred desktop backgrounds and I tend to add a couple a day. I usually like to Photoshop them before I put them in the rotation to fine tune them just how I want them. Is there a Linux version of Photoshop CS2?

I might think of some more questions later.

Keep in mind that most of your Windows stuff runs on Wine. Otherwise, essentially everything you would use on Linux is open-source.

music players: XMMS, Noatun (KDE), Rhythmbox (GNOME), etc.
media players: Mplayer, Xine, Totem, etc.

You can install Mplayerplug-in and the codecs and it will play essentially everything.

Gaim and Kopete. (think open-source)

Sure, Azureus is free and in Java; so it will work if you have Java working.

I'm sure there's plenty of scripts that do this; someone else can suggest one.

Depending on your distro, preferably you would download packages from your distro's repositories using a package manager, so that it takes care of dependencies and you can easily automatically update or remove it in the future. You can also compile programs.

There's the GIMP.

lame.

not you :P heh
thats the name of a very powerfull tool.
will do the job :)

Thanks a lot, guys.

Yeah... What?

So I could download packages from whoever makes the distro that I have and it would be easy, or I could compile my own, which I take it is more complicated? I'm still a little confused.

Let's say I've got Kubuntu, since it's one of the few distros I've actually used. I can download packages of programs from Kubuntu? Or maybe I can download packages from any KDE OS?

I'm afraid I don't quite get it yet.:scratch:

Kubuntu is in a round about way based off Debian which has a medium-good package manager (flame me lovers I don't care ;)). apt-get is the base package manager and there are some KDE frontends that make it easier. Basically, you don't go download something from a site and install it, that is like the last resort. You want to see if your package manager has it already, that is your first port of call. I don't know of any GUI clients for apt-get, I try to stay as far away from Debian as possible but someone else here will, God only know it has it's followers.

As far as graphical package management under Debian-based systems go, Kubuntu ships with Adept (pretty good) and Ubuntu ships with Synaptic (Haven't used it in ages, it's GTK-based).
From the command-line side of things, you can just use apt-get, with which installing a package is as simple as this:
and removing as simple as this:
Dependencies are taken care of for you.
Packages come from the repositories provided by your distro (*buntu has a very good package selection.)

Hi lazeeboy, if you install one of the big distros (SuSE, K/Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, Gentoo) you have this situation:

- A Package Management program that you can use to install packages of a repository, generally you have binary packages so you don't have to compile them, the big plus is that the Package Management program takes care of dependencies. The best one IMO is dpkg used in Debian and all related distros, including K/Ubuntu. YaST do a good job in SuSE, and yum is also getting better in Fedora.

- In order to use any Package Management program you have to set the repositories for the distro you are using, the offical repositories of Debian, K/Ubuntu are the most complete ones, you have more than 10000 packages, so you can find a myriad of choices for any task you have listed. Keep in mind that these repositories only contain Free Software.

- Then if you want to install other non-free software, you can set other exta repositories. Where you can find extra codecs for multimedia for example.

- You can also install proprietary software in your Linux, for example java from Sun. Normally they have an installer package ready for your distro. Just download them from a "trusted" site and install it acording to the rules of your distro.

- Finally, if all that fails, you can always download the source code of the program and compile it. Normally you don't have to, distros like Gentoo and its Portage Package Management is based on compiling all the programs optimized to your system. This requires more effort of your part but the result is also better.

- Due to the huge quantity of packages that you have in the repositories actually you don't need to look in the internet for the programs you want nor compile them. It's advisable that you don't mix too many repositories and don't install packages that are not in the repositories, unless you really need them. All the packages in a repository are tested and customized to your Linux distro.

Thanks guys, I think I understand it now, or about as well as a person can without actually having done it before.