What are people using for:

File sharing
Email
Playing MP3s
Playing Videos (DivX, XviD, MPG, AVI, DVD, etc)
Burning CDs
Burning DVDs
Recording Audio
MIDI Sequencing
Virus Scanning
Personal Databases
WYSIWYG Web Editing

Thanks!

for filesharing i use giFT with giFTcurs as my interface, i use the OpenFT Gnutella and FastTrack plugins so i have a wider base of users than kazaa or similar windows programs

playing mp3 if you like a winamp style app then use xmms if your using redhat make sure to get the mp3 plugin as they are no longer allowed to bundle it or something like that but ive also heard very good things about rhythmbox

for video use mplayer

burning cds i use cdrecord which is console based but ive heard good things about k3b (never tried it though)

i think dvds should go through cdrecord or k3b you might search on www.freshmeat.net for an app like that though

i dont do audio recording and midi so i dont know again search freshmeat.net or sourceforge.com

virus scanning tends not to be necessary search the forum for numerous discussions on it

the rest i dont know about for a personal database you might look into mysql?

File sharing -->mldonkey
Email-->gnus
Playing MP3s-->xmms
Playing Videos (DivX, XviD, MPG, AVI, DVD, etc)->mlpayer
Burning CDs -->dont have cdr
Burning DVDs--> dont have dvdr
Recording Audio--> grip
MIDI Sequencing-->never tried
Virus Scanning-->no need dude you are on linux
Personal Databases-->mysql
WYSIWYG Web Editing-->i use plain editors like emacs

Is there a program similar to mIRC for linux? I'm familiar with the text-based programs like ircII and BitchX, but is there a windowing IRC client?

Any other apps that are a must have?

gkrellm, who doesnt want a program that monitors everything you never knew your system had? plus it has all sorts of nifty little plugins which are useful especially volume control and a plugin to control xmms

mozilla is my favorite web browser

gaim if you do im stuff its multi-protocol supporting just about everything under the sun

the gimp is nice for photo editing

i suggest looking into an alternative term such as Eterm for some really nice effects (dont know which distro/wm your on so this may be moot) especially transparency

make sure to try out lots and lots of different distros and WMs as there are lots of different solutions which work differently for different people

Gentoo... I also kinda need a windows manager... something ultra super duper minimal.

wonderful choice, super minimal...i really like enlightenment and that very lightweight in comparison to kde/gnome...but ultra-light...fluxbox blackbox window maker tab icewm one of those should be good

btw all of my software suggestions so far are available as ebuilds and just a time saver if you do use gkrellm also run emerge gkrellm-plugins and you will recieve all gkrellm plugins and make sure to execute gkrellm2 instead of gkrellm as gkrellm is slightly less advanced