what is IDM? no idea about IDM. sorry and pardon my ignorance. and torrent? there are tonnes of torrent programs for GNU/Linux or BSD/GPL/*nix. feel free to use the one you are most comfortable. can you stream? yes, there are tonnes of utils. easiest is vlc server, which will allow you to stream in tonnes of format. and icecast2 for radio and mplayer server for video (i dont recommend mplayer server) its still way too premature. mp4 suite tools got server tools too for streaming. you may use clive to fetch the videos from sites like youtube and et al and then play it in mplayer and or kmplayer or vlc and blah blah media player. you can resume your download also with clive. its a simple wrapper for wget and curl more or less curl in clive. nvidia and ati are mostly annoying. and CUDA can be a real pain if you are planning parallel computing, then you may need to rebuild your kernel and or use dkms to load the kernel modules on the fly. configuration varies depending on hardware. and fine tuning might (not) be necessary. you can use the smallest and lightest and least resouce hogging DM viz "matchbox". i use it in my nokia n900. running custom kernel and debian sid and its snappy and breeze. i dont know your skill set. but if you have prior skills then you can use it extremely efficiently and can squeeze out 220 bucks for every 100 bucks you spend on it. ;-) again YMMV tough question to answer. but your kernel plays a major role and also how you setup the init.d lesser services and functions faster it boots and lesser resources it consumes. there is no such thing as this OS is better than that OS. it leads to OS jihad (sorry pardon my pun) i have seen serious conflicts before. so the bottomline is how you adjust yourself with the system will give you that much optimal performance and for that experience does count. to sum it all up. #1. first "RESEARCH YOURSELF, THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THIS OPTION! SORRY!" #2. go for minimalistic install and/or roll your custom installer/kernel (if you are capable enough) #2a. add softwares based on bare minimum need than GREED. #3. remove all unnecessary services and functions #4. sysctl tuning can be extremely effective. #5. remove redundant kernel modules loaded during boot and blacklist those which you dont use #6. rebuild kernel/modules from scratch #7. trial and error till you get the desired output. hope this helps! thanks! -paul
I just found this thread. I suggest puppy linux - it has worked reliably for me on everything from an old Toshiba 4030(192 meg memory, 4 gig hard drive) to a relatively new HP6450b(4 gig memory, 200 gig hard drive). The beauty of puppy is that you can run it from a CD or better still a USB drive. Take out the CD/USB, reboot and your back in your original OS. On the Toshiba, Puppy ran as fast as Windows 2000 in terms of internet browsing, downloading, playing videa/audio. On this HP I find Puppy to be lightning fast and a real joy to use compared to Windows 7 or 8. As far as utilities go, Puppy comes with just about everything you need - audio/video player, word processor-spreadsheet, and other great to have stuff like a torrent downloader. If you don't like what comes with Puppy, there are hundred of applications(called Pets) you can download and install. Puppy has a couple of excellent support forums where you can get great advice. To sum it up, I've loved it ever since I tried it four years ago. During that time I looked at Ubuntu, LinuxMint, and other flavours but I found them to be real pain to use compared to Puppy. It's become my main operating system.