a myriad

I am a self-taught geek familiar with most winOS and apps, can troubleshoot remotely. familiar enough with HW as well to have built what was a respectable system a couple of years ago (p4, dual HDs, 2GB RAM, etc). I am very disenchanted with much of what win has to "offer." most of what I do is music, vid, net/info and communications related. it's been eons since I aced assembly language and many other languages challenge me, but am bright enough to pick them up if need be. (I want to set up a website as well!) I like the idea of possibly setting up my machine to dual boot but don't know what Linux can do "better" than win apps w/o guidance. a live distro may also be appealing. ideally, tho? I have an older system (p3 perhaps) with decent HD space and maybe 512MB RAM that I would like to use as a security cop so to speak, to filter all net traffic for unwanted goodies like viruses, spyware, intruders, etc. lots to consider, I know. I'm open to anyone's help. thank you in advance. peace.

good explanation. thanks for this document.