Hi,
I need some good programs for emailing, burning my CD-Rs, watching videos, etc.
I already heared of Mplayer and want to know who it is.
Are there any good alternatives?

thx for help

mplayer is the best video playing software bar none. everything else is down to what you prefer. are you an all-singing-all-dancing-please-make-my-pc-really-slow gui person? you prefer super fast and lightweight console (text based) apps?

I think I am something between those two kinds of users. I prefer programs that are fast and good I do not care much about how a program looks like. I do not fear to use the console as long as the program is good. But I am a newbie to the world of Linux that's why I have chosen Mandrake to be my first distro.
A friend told me to use some of those easier to install and handle distros and change to another distro after I got some experience. I think he did not want me to become too frustrated or something like that, because he knows that I need at least a bit convenience.

Most times a Linux Distro will include 3-4 different apps that all do the same thing so I suggest simply going through your menu and opening everything to check it out. If a program is a GUI frontend for a console app it will usually say, so then you can check out the console app itself.