A few Linux questions

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I gave away a Pentium 4 with 512mb ram, running xp. Soon enough it was full of viruses and whatnot, So I installed zonealarm, No more viruses but now the slow pc runs even slower.

I don't know much about Linux and there are so many distros, I need some help making a choice. My friend mostly surfs the web, burns cds and edits photos with picasa.

I Also have a old laptop, I'll have dig dig it out to get the specs, I do know It came with windows 98. I was thinking about turning it into a dedicated "legal" torrent downloader running Linux. What distro and software would be good for that?

Is there a firewall for Linux that has a simple UI like zomealarm with program control that can give programs internet access but block them from acting as a server?

What would be a good choice for.. virus scanner, music player, dvd/movie player, photo editor, email manager?
 
There are many good linux distros for the desktop, many here choose ubuntu and that would be a sound choice for your friend as well. Personally I have opensuse at the moment and I have my own reasons for that choice but the latest one is not what I would call "lightweight" when you have X running (which I will assume your friend will). Fedora 9 is decent although I would recommend that while installing it he takes care to choose the more conventional partition based method. Another alternative is PCLinuxOS which is probably what I would choose in this case but make sure the hardware works first using the liveCD.
 
DVD Movie Player - VLC
Burning Application - K3B
Music Player - Amarok
Photo Editor - Gimp (included in base install of Ubuntu)
Email Manager - Thunderbird

My distro of choice - Ubuntu.
 
1) in terms of Distros zegenie Studios Linux Distribution Chooser this distro chooser might be a good starting point. Although I was and still am a HUGE fan of PCLinuxOS PCLinuxOS

2) as for a distro to run on an old laptop any of these should work fine

Vector Linux
Welcome to VectorLinux — VectorLinux.com

DSL
DSL information

Slackware
The Slackware Linux Project

you can find more here

Linux Links - The Linux Portal: Distributions/Mini_Distributions
Linux Links - The Linux Portal: Distributions/Floppy

or you can always look up your model laptop and see what others have done

Linux on Laptops
TuxMobil: Linux With Laptops, Notebooks, PDAs, Mobile Phones, PMPs & GPS


3) DVD/Movie player Kaffine Kaffeine - KDE Media Player

Music: Amarok (have not used it recently, don't listen to much music)
Amarok | Rediscover your music

Photo editing: Gimp GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

Virus: you won't need to worry about this but if you really want one take a look at clamAV Clam AntiVirus

Firewall: firestarter Firestarter

for email I'd just stick with something simple like thunder-bird Thunderbird - Reclaim your inbox

Hope this helps,

Jake
 
Oh right yeah, I forgot to answer any of the application questions.
For surfing the web I use opera, it's not open source but I find it the best and it's free.
I don't burn CDs very often so go with K3B as suggested by jayce.
Picasa appears to have a linux version but I have used GIMP and found it very good, even I was able to get to grips with it.
For additional security there are linux firewalls and selinux but honestly I just find that these get in the way. You could set up a hardware linux firewall with ipcop, it's a very easy thing to do.
Virus scanner as jake said, you shuld not need to worry about it.
VLC is a pretty amazing app all round.
I hear that evolution is an excellent email client but I wouldn't know because I use the rubbishness that is web email.
 
Ehh, I'd like to share some disagreement with Evolution... I tried to set up Evolution with my Gmail accounts, along with my work email, and it just gave me such a hassle. I posted on Ubuntu Forums and a lot of people asked me why I was even bothering with it, because my settings appeared to be right, yet it didn't take them.

I installed Thunderbird and highly suggest using that. There's been an ongoing debate on the Ubuntu Forums about why Evolution is still the default email program and why Thunderbird hasn't taken that place yet. After all, Firefox is the default web browser... Firefox/Thunderbird = great team.

Just my 2 cents... If Evolution works for you, go for it! I just ran into a lot of trouble with it and found Thunderbird to be easier. In fact, if you use Gmail, they even have a setting built in. I just put in my email addy, password, hit 1 or 2 more options and bam. I was done.
 
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