Reply #5: my suggestion

[Syrinx]

Start with Ubuntu, but give "/home" its own partition, or even its own disk, to live in. That way you can try as many different distributions as you want, and still be able to access your data from all of them.

I've got an old 80 Gb disk that I use for my OS's. I allocated 10 Gb to Windows XP, which I never really use, and a few Gb's for swap space, and then Ubuntu comes next. I intended to try other Linux distributions when I set this machine up, but I've been pretty happy with Ubuntu, and haven't got around to trying that. Ubuntu is currently taking up about 15 Gb of space, I see, but that seems a little high. Probably because I've installed a lot of stuff, like the Apache webserver, that I never use. Just installed it to play around.

Then I've got a 1 Tb disk that I use for /home. So I can add OS's, or reinstall the ones I already have, without wiping out my data. (If I'm careful, that is.)

So I'll be able to try out, if I ever get around to it, at least three or four different distributions at the same time. Or dozens of them if you don't have an old 80 Gb drive around. ;)

I think Firefox is pretty much the de-facto standard on Linux boxes. It's what I use. VLC is included in Ubuntu, but I generally prefer mplayer for watching videos. I think it is good for streaming too, but I'm not sure. I'm still stuck with a slow connection.

I generally use mpg321 for playing my music, just because it uses almost no system resources. But there are more advanced solutions like Rhythmbox, that do lyrics and cover displays and such. I was just appalled when I saw how much memory and cpu they use. I only use those when I have company. :)

I can't say for sure, but you may be able to do without a Windows 7 partition at all, and install that as a Virtual Machine. I think your games would work that way. And photoshop too. And GIMP ain't that bad either.

And lastly may I suggest that if you come to like the Linux way of doing things, you should eventually try installing Linux From Scratch at least once. It's fun and educational as a weekend project. It's very informative to do, though it can quickly get to be a headache as you try to keep your apps and libraries up-to-date and synchronized.

Good luck!