I want to try Mandriva Linux

[Unforgiven2644]

This will be my first time operating on linux so I have a few questions.

A. Is it a good distribution to start on and is it user friendly and fairly easy to get used to?

B. What programs do I have to use do things like CA security suite plus work on Mandriva Linux? Same question for Word and Power Point and so on?

C. Will it be any different downloading torrents and using bittorrent?

D. can you open .rar files in linux and use programs like VSO Convertx to DVD and WinRar and Daemontools?

E. Can you mount an image to DVD?

Any help would be much appreciated thanks couldn't find answers to these questions anywhere else so I figured I needed to seek the experts.

[techieMoe]

A. Is it a good distribution to start on and is it user friendly and fairly easy to get used to?

This is not really something we can tell you. It varies from person to person. The major distributions (Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu, openSuSE) spent a lot of time and effort making their distributions accessible to a large number of people, so they're certainly the most likely to be "easy" to you.

B. What programs do I have to use do things like CA security suite plus work on Mandriva Linux? Same question for Word and Power Point and so on?

I'm not familiar with CA security suite, but there are several kinds of firewalls and antivirus software available for Linux, though for the most part they aren't really needed at the moment.

C. Will it be any different downloading torrents and using bittorrent?

You'll use a different torrent client, but no, torrents should download just fine. Some distributions like Ubuntu include a torrent client by default (Transmission).

D. can you open .rar files in linux and use programs like VSO Convertx to DVD and WinRar and Daemontools?

Opening archives should be no problem but I'm not familiar with VSO ConvertX. As far as Daemontools, you can create and mount ISO images in Linux.

E. Can you mount an image to DVD?

I'm not sure what you mean by that. You can mount a DVD image, certainly.

[Unforgiven2644]

thanks techie moe I had a few other questions about your answers if you don't mind.

Why do you not need security on linux at the moment?

ConvertxtoDVD is just a program that allows you to convert .avi files and other video filetypes to DVD as well as create a menu for that DVD. Will Ibe able to find a program for linux that will do the same thing?

And if I have Vista is it hard to get rid of it and put on Mandriva Linux?

Is there any distribution of Mandriva Linux that is more geared toward mainstream/general public users than others?

Thanks your help is much appreciated

[techieMoe]

Why do you not need security on linux at the moment?

Don't get me wrong. Security is important on any operating system. A solid firewall is essential and antivirus is still a good idea. However, that being said, there are really no major virus threats for Linux and as far as I know zero adware/spyware programs for it right now. The main usefulness of antivirus on Linux is to keep from spreading Windows viruses to unsuspecting machines on your network.

ConvertxtoDVD is just a program that allows you to convert .avi files and other video filetypes to DVD as well as create a menu for that DVD. Will Ibe able to find a program for linux that will do the same thing?

I'm not sure, since I don't really do much video editing myself, but there are video editing suites like Kino that might do what you want.

And if I have Vista is it hard to get rid of it and put on Mandriva Linux?

Not at all, but you don't *have* to get rid of Vista if you don't want to. You can have both installed at the same time. It's not as easy to do with Vista as other versions of Windows because of some weirdness with the boot sectors, but it can be done.

If however you just want to do a clean install of Mandriva that's perhaps the easiest install: simply tell the installer to use the entire harddrive and it will delete and set up all the partitions by itself.

Is there any distribution of Mandriva Linux that is more geared toward mainstream/general public users than others?

Not really. Take a look at the most popular distributions on DistroWatch. There's a list on the right side. Those distributions became popular because a wide variety of people found them useful, so there's a safe bet they'll work for you. There are more specialized distributions available for certain groups, so you might also find you like one of those better. The good thing is, almost all of them are free of charge so you can try as many as you want.

[reed9]

Be aware that with almost all linux distros, you will have to take steps post-install to enable do things like watch commercial DVDs.

Docs/Desktop/Multimedia/Video - Mandriva Community Wiki

There are programs in linux to convert video to different formats or author DVDs. Check out these threads:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/gam...anscoding.html

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...-software.html

My experience has been that mandriva does not have as good a selection of multimedia apps in their repositories as do debian based distros, but they should have a decent amount of stuff, still.