Dave Gutteridge wrote:
I do appreciate everyone trying to steer me right so that I can understand the deal with Linux and CentOS.
A lot of fair points have been made, and I've got to think about it a bit. Some people seem to be saying I can do the things I want to do, it just takes some work. Some people say I should lower my expectations of Linux. I suppose it's a little of both. Manage my expectations and be prepared for things to not be so clear.
We'll see if I can get this dvd-rip software to fly. If so, I may be over the worst of my conversion pains.
I don't see the big deal. There are a number of DVD rippers out there. They'll probably all work with CentOS. Find one that's got a Fedora friendly source rpm and you should be good to go. There is a LOT of information/documentation out there on how to set this (and other) applications up....both from scratch and from rpm/yum/apt repositories. My experience with this list is that people are eager to help out. You might also want to consider doing some basic googling before you ask a gazillion questions here though. You don't want to use up all your "karma" on questions that you can easily answer yourself with 30 seconds of search engine effort.
I normally don't use Linux for desktop usage. However, I recently set up a CentOS 4.1 system specifically to use as a "windows replacement" desktop system. I haven't had a minute's trouble with it and have been happily using it to watch movies, rip CDs, edit/consume M$ Office documents, create some artwork with the Gimp, etc. To date, I haven't found anything I *can't* do with it (except cause it to crash....Windows has that contest locked up...ooh...ugly pun...OK, I'm going now). 8-)
Cheers,