Linux

[Kylearan]

Hi,

I've got Linux drivers for my graphics card and ASDL modem already stored on a USB drive, so that alone should hopefully get me up and running in a good enough state to get drivers for everything else as I need them.

Oh, and another thing, I'll be using the x86_64 distribution of Fedora for what it's worth.

This may be a dumb question, but are you sure the drivers for your graphics card and the modem are 64 bit, too? If you have the sources and plan to compile them, this may be irrelevant, but if you have binaries only, make sure you have the 64 bit version, not the standard 32 bit which won't work.

I don't know what you plan to do with Linux, but you should be aware that you may run into trouble if you use 64 bit Linux if you try to install other software later. For example, some media players (like mplayer, IIRC) like to use Windows codecs, which probably are 32 bit only, Wine may not run, and you might have trouble with software that gets distributed in binary packages only. The decision to use 64 bit Linux instead of 32 bit should be thought through very carefully - but as I said, that depends on what you plan to do with it.

Also, are there any good, freeware firewalls and anti-virus packages out there that I should be using for Linux

You won't need anti-virus software, and Linux has a firewall integrated into the kernel already, which most current distributions should have activated by default.

[...] and what's good for unwrapping tarballs on a Win2000 machine?

Try 7-Zip, it's a free decompression utility which handles nearly all formats (.zip, .rar, .tgz, .bz2 etc.).

-Kylearan