There are a number of applications that can do the job that others did in Windows. There are lists to help you choose the right applications, like this one on the Ubuntu forums:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=33183

My advice is to install applications need-based and not greed-based. Install them when you need them since then you're more sure of what functionality you require from them. The basic things you require are, in no specific order are: a)browser b)text editor c)Office suite d)DVD player e)mp3 player f)Mail client g)messenger h)Image editor i)FTP client. Of course you may require other things based on your interests/work/etc.

Among those listed above, (a) and (f) are probably what I am most picky about. The rest do their job and have small functionality differences, especially as they appear to a naive user like me. I'll handle them separately below.

Browser War: Firefox vs. Opera:

 Now your options on Linux are generally between Firefox/Mozilla and Opera. I like Opera. Just to start out, I have to admit I have both Opera and Firefox installed on mine, but I'll come to the reasons to that later on. My reasons for Opera are:
Pros:
1) I like the interface firstly- its crisp.
2) I like the fact that the mail client comes bundled with that n its still pretty light.
3) I like the "wand" function on that for passwords. Its literally like a magic wand; the page loads, you wave your wand and voila. Its a little more convenient than the Firefox way of storing passwords(IE uses the same style as Firefox)
4) I also like the "top 10" feature under the address bar,
MAIN PRO:Mail Client

Cons:
1) I have to admit I havent got used to having the equivalent of the status bar to the right of the address bar. And the status bar at the bottom serves no purpose other than showing you the URL if you hover the mouse over a link.
2) Its missing a few plugins developers create for Firefox.
MAIN CON:plugins

And as I said, i have Firefox too, mainly since I need certain plugins once in a while. The plugins I use are:
1)Torbutton and SwitchProxy tool: both of them are to enable anonymous communication to the Internet. To get them working you do have to install tor(client to anonymous communication system similar in function but much more effective than anonymizer.com) and privoxy(proxy server to )

Of course now I have had a couple of months to reflect on my verdict and I'm not so sure. I love the mail client it is bundles with. In fact if it wasn't there I would probably have shifted away a while back. The ease with which you can add contacts(just type A)and create filters is great. But of late it has become painfully slow. I start it up to download my mails and almost as soon as thats done, I scoot over to Firefox. Speed is a big issue, but I don't really know whom to pin the blame onto here. i used Firefox a lot earlier, and then at some point it got too slow so I switched to Opera, and now its playing the same trick and Firefox seems to have turned into a treat.


Import mail from Outlook Express to Opera/Evolution:

Now this is a real pain in the ass. OE and MS Outlook store their mailboxes as .dbx files, one for each folder. Generally the path for those files on the Windows box is C:/Documents and Settings/uid/Local Settings/Application Data/Identities/{1C46C658-5362-5463-8708-F215FD67238}/Microsoft/Outlook Express
where uid is your windows logon user id, and the numbers are changed :)

On Linux you need to have KMail installed with a plugin called KMail CVT which lets you import OE mailboxes and convert them to the standard linux mbox files.
$ sudo apt-get install kmail
$ sudo apt-get install kmailcvt

You now need to import the necessary files:
Open KMail
File>Import Messages
This opens a dialog box which asks you to choose the program from which you want to import the mails.
Click on the dropdown menu and choose "Import Outlook Express Emails"
Click "Next" and then choose the files
(You may have transferred the dbx to some place on your linux partition or else hopefully you'd have the drive containing it mounted so you can access it, in my case I just have my NTFS/Windows partitions mounted, which the latest Ubuntu does automatically.. Anyways you'd have to do one or the other) If it is mounted it could be at /media/hda6 which is to just give an example of how mine is.

Once you've chosen the folder, KMail downloads the mailbox and organises the folder structure as: Local Folder > OE Import > "foldername"(say Inbox)

Now all you do is go to each folder. Select all the mails in it by <Ctrl+A> and then click on File>Save as
This opens a box to choose where to save the file, choose the path and the filename. You can name the file anything(say example.mbox), unlike what I earlier assumed that you'd have to name it *.mbox.

Anyways you're done. If you want to use KMail as your mail client that is. I dont like it much, I prefer Opera Mail cos it has everything you want and not much more. So if you use another mail client you have one step more.

Open any program you want: Evolution or Opera Mail or Thunderbird or anything else. Choose to import files of "generic mbox type" and choose the file you saved earlier(in our case example.mbox). You're good to go.


How to setup Email Client to check Hotmail inbox:

TO COME...

How to play with GRUB: 

A lot of times I wanted to play with GRUB, maybe you did too. Not some major revolution, just change a few things like the GRUB llist at the start n all. The bootup list is stored at /boot/grub/menu.lst, so you can go in there and play around. You can change the order uin which they appear, change what appears on the screen at boot time, change the default boot OS, change the time the list is displayed before it resorts to the default boot OS. Just very small things that make you feel at home when you boot. Of course a simple gedit to call the file will not work, since you need admin pribvileges to change the file. So you'll have to do a
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

I've had a few problems with GRUB, especially when I tried to change a partition to install Gentoo. I have the notes written down, but it'll take me a lill time to go through them and make a sensible passage, so till then I guess adios.

Upgrade from Dapper to Edgy:

Dapper of late was becoming a pain in the ass.. The desktop froze and was responsinsive to no set of key combos. I moved onto XP for the timebeing, and kept looking at the forums for some solution, but it seemed a problem not widespread enough to get too much attention from the real problem-solvers...so we scavengers were left to just tolerate it or move on.. I have no great love for any so as to stick through such irritations, so XP it was...
The other day while I was browsing Digg, I saw this article- basically a HOWTO on upgrade from Dapper to Edgy.. I was ecstatic- I saw some hope for me. Ubuntu had my configured Opera mail client and thats what I missed most on XP. Anyways the steps are generally pretty simple an are listed here:
This was the Digg article I read from:
http://www.arsgeek.com/?p=597

Ubuntu has it too:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EdgyUpgrades

But of course things never work easily, do they? As soon as I restarted I knew I was in for some problems, when I saw the initial screen which has the progress bar through the booting, there were a lot of odd geometric shapes on it, squares and rectangles with diagonals, the progress bar itself had it coordinated written at the vertices, odd stuff really! Sure enough at the end it said it couldn't start Xserver.
hey but I've been through that before: The command to reconfigure xserver is:
> sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

So I go through that and ecpect it to work like a charm rite, hell noo! I've learnt a few things about expectation in the past. I try
> startx

to see if it worked ..sure enough the same problem.
Lemme write the error down just so people in the same boat can share the misery:
(EE)module ABI major version(0) doesn't match the servers version(1)
(EE) Failed to load module "ati" (module requirement mismatch, 0)
(EE) No drivers available

Fatal Server Error
no screens found
X10:fatal IO error 104(Connection reset by peer) on XServer ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining

TheOtherShoe on Ubuntu forums had the solution. He wrote: "I think this is because the packages with the video drivers have been renamed, but the dependencies have not all been sorted out yet.For example, the old vesa driver package, xserver-xorg-driver-vesa, is now called xserver-xorg-video-vesa. Install the new package and everything should be fine.The same thing happened to me using the radeon driver. So to fix it I installed xserver-xorg-video-ati.

Sure enough it worked. My Ubuntu is up n running again. I am overjoyed to be honest. So overjoyed to be honest that I feel like calling some of my best friends and shouting it out, but then decided against it. I mean its like rubbing it in, anyways I'm almost the worst good friend to have, you get no gossip about girlfriends n stuff, n when finally I call excited, its about my desktop working OK.. dang! thats just a bad deal for them. Just so they dont realise it, I won't call them. I'll shout it out on the web instead and assume(statistically proven assumption by the way) that noone reads my page :)