Now that you’ve decided to try Linux, you might be wondering what applications are available to perform all the tasks that you used to do on a Windows or Mac system. We’ve compiled quite a few of them at TechRepublic, so I rounded up some of the best lists to share with beginners...

I’m primarily a Linux user (mandriva on laptop and ubuntu on desktop) though I do have a Windows dual-boot option for those occasions that it’s necessary to use Windows. Not that I’ve ever actually found it necessary to use Windows yet - 99%+ of my time is spent using Linux. (At work though as with most companies, I use Windows XP and haven’t had any issues with it in a business context.)

One of the better features of Mandriva Linux is its updates notification tool, which not only alerts you when there are available package updates, but also notifies the user when a new version is available - a distribution upgrade. This article documents my experience upgrading Mandriva One 2010 and Mandriva Free 2010 to Mandriva One 2010 Spring and Mandriva Free 2010 Spring respectively.

Mandriva Linux 2008 is a very capable desktop operating system ideal for beginners as well as Linux power users. Those minor glitches that I have encountered were overshadowed by its rich features and outstanding performance. But, I do hope that those problems will be fixed on their next release. I intend to keep my Mandriva 2008 partition on my back up computer because I’m beginning to love it. I will be tweaking it and further use it for productive purposes.

So, you have a large collection of mp3 or ogg files and you want to share it with your buddy in your working place? Or perhaps you want to share it with your neighbour? Whoever you want to share your collection with is not the matter that we want to discuss here.

The second pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring is now available. This alpha 2 version provides updates of major desktop components of the distribution: KDE 4.2 RC 1, GNOME 2.25.4, Xfce 4.6 Beta 4, X.org server 1.5, Python 2.6.1.

If you’ve always longed to be a disc jockey — or at least to play one on Saturday nights — some new, highly portable D.J. gear could bring that dream much closer....Tonium plans to make the Linux-based software on the Pacemaker public, so users can innovate and share their improvements with others, Mr. Sars said. - NY Times

Being worked on as part of Mandriva's next Linux distribution update is a technology they are referring to as Speedboot. In essence, the user is logging into their Linux desktop even before the system is fully booted. We have some timed results of Mandriva's Speedboot along with videos showing the differences.

Many moons ago I tried using Windows for a week to see how the other half live. Despite my thorough openness and fairness, I still got criticized! (Well, it wouldn’t be the free software community if people didn’t, I suppose!) So, when I needed I new PC I decided to take the plunge and buy one.