In light of this thread, the fact that my desktop PC won't support gaming in any meaningful way right now and my lack of cash for a Win7 monster, I'm considering what tinbath would call "the light side".

It needs to run Amarok, Ktorrent (unless you have a better idea), some form of 720p divx etc. capable video player and browse the web. The machine serves as day-to-day PC / media server for my approx 2TBs of TV, movies and music. It also needs an email client, (preferably one that can read .pst files). i can't think of anything else right now. Hit me....

Kubuntu 9.10
Restricted Extras
VLC
Amarok
KTorrent.

Win.

Questions:

What are the specs?
How do you serve your media files at present?
How much Linux experience do you have?

Asus A8N-Sli Deluxe
skt 939 Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (stock 2.0Ghz)
2gig RAM
Samsung Spinpoints:
1 x 500gig (currently 70 odd gig system partition and the rest in data)
1 x 750gig
1 x 1TB
all NTFS
nVidia 6600GT 128mb PCI-E
Plextor (early SATA) DVD burner
Internal and external tv cards from Hauppauge and Avermedia

When I say "server" I actually mean I watch/listen to stuff from that PC via my 20" Samsung and hi-fi. Some other people in the house occasionally browse my files from their Windows XP machines over 100mb cabled LAN. I have gigabit in my room for transfer to my laptop, but rarely use that these days.

I am a total Linux noob and my only experience amounts to trying a Ubuntu Live DVD a while back and commenting on how pretty it looked, but couldn't understand any of it. I suppose that's just my lack of patience though. The apps that came with it (mostly browser I think) worked fine, but I couldn't figure out how to install stuff or view files or whatever.

Everything except the .pst bit should be doable out of the box with linux Mint. I'm languishing in Windows atm so I can't say exactly which torrent apps it offers, but they are in there.

The .pst might be ball ache. There's a few options for handling it here, including some tools that may make it easy for the version of pst you have, or might [LIFTED] it right in the ear. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Import_.pst_files

I haven't seen the Mint implementation of KDE, is it any good?

SuSE 11.2 is also a contender. For the moment I'd be looking at Kubuntu rather than Mint, as Mint is now a full version behind due to Kubuntu's 9.10 release this Thursday.

if you use/install Mozilla Thunderbird on the win system you can import the .pst into that which will save the import in mail.import folder
this folder can then be saved and imported in to Evolution on a linux box …

a backup of the .pst file would also be a good idea …
http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/ ... ution.html

just to add
a bug fix for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic has been release for the import of .pst into Evolution …
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/349312

If I were you, I should download Ubuntu 9.10 when it is released tomorrow and try it to see whether everything works. As long as the browser works we can help you with most other things.

Once installed we would need to help you tweak things a little so that MP3s etc. work properly. Sadly these proprietary codecs are not legally allowed to work out of the box in free distros. It is pretty easy though and should provide some good lessons in using the OS. Again, though, we can walk you through it.

Personally I'm waiting for openSUSE 11.2 in November.

I'm also looking forward to SUSE 11.2, though I've got Kubuntu 9.10 working so beautifully at the moment I'm almost tempted to keep it.

And perhaps some sort of MSN client (probably Pidgin) and a few select people from here for instant support may be a good idea?

emesene! emesene!!

Though Ubuntu does come pre-installed with "Empathy", which works.

What's R/W support for NTFS like nowadays in the Linux world? It's been about [n] years since I've needed to use NTFS with an install, and back then it really only supported reading so far as I could tell.

Lo' and behold:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS-3G

It's pretty damned good - I've never had an issue with reading or writing.

Thanks guys. I've installed Thunderbird on XP and I'm fiddling with it to see it I like it and it works as well as Outlook. If that works, presumably my mail will by in the same format on Linux?

Maybe I'll try an install over the weekend/next week. I'll keep you informed.