Haha techno trickery works for once

Hello there,
This week i bought a massive hard drive for my 'ps triple' upgraded it (resulting in the terrifying experience of nearly fudging the entire thing up) swapped it round, and installed Yellow Dog Linux 6 on it. Now i have dabbled in linux distros before and found the hardest part of using them is getting out of your mind the things you take for granted whilst using windows. For example, nearly every video player on the web uses flash, or some version. Linux comes with one version called 'gnash' which kinda half works, but not with youtube. But instead of simply going to adobe.com and downloading the new one, you have to do all kinds of fairly complicated stuff for a windows users to get it to work, unless your lucky and there happens to be a .rpm to download.

But, overall, I'm pretty happy with hows its gone. I have the wireless internet working with it, I did some coursework yesterday, have browsed the net, used IM and even done some image editing on it. And I'm writing this blog on it. The good thing is that this linux distro does come with all the open source alternatives to microsoft products, many of which i use anyway. The IM client is quicker than WLM if less flashy, Open office has impressed me and the system is quite stable.

There are a few issues with it. It uses virtual desktops, which are great as you simply switch between them using either the hotkeys or your mouse, but can often get unorganized. I have already managed to create a undeletable folder and the 'shelf' which acts like a very customizable start menu (similar to a mac OS) sometimes gets in the way and no matter what i change, it wont act right...But i reckon these problems will dissapear the more i use it. I still will rely on my windows PC for some things, but this works quickly and efficiently. I'm (slowly) learning more about how all this command line business works, but damn it takes some getting used to, I admit I'm a complete n00b at linux!

The main problem with doing this is you have no times to actually play some games rather than do homework on your playstation (oh the irony). I've completed pretty much all the Orange Box, played TF2 for a bit, blasted around paradise city in burnout and now have bought Unreal Tournament 3. I know for you to enjoy online games you need to put time into them but currently i want to play online:

• Call of duty 4
• Warhawk
• Team Fortress 2
• Unreal Tounament 3
• Burnout: Paradice
  
• And other games to go on occasionally,,,,

Its impossible for me to have time to play on all these games, but will be probably be trying to grab half an hour here and there in order to get a bit more time on them.
Apologies for the geeky post, I'm in a geeky mood!
Josh