well since you have installed Ubuntu the official Ubuntu documentation or the community contributed documentation would be a good start ... there is also a Learn Linux section here on linux.com...

Try to run this command using command line

$ lsmod | grep nvidia

if it comes empty try to deactivate / activate the drivers from the GUI you showed here and restart the computer

As a beginner if you stick with the “big players” you can't go wrong... that would be Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian... as a KDE user I recommend Kubuntu or the Fedora KDE spin … if you can wait the new openSUSE 11.4 will be out in a few hours :woohoo:

Sounds like a samba issue... could you post the output of these commands:

# service smbd status

# testparm 

# netstat -tunap | grep smb

Linux Kernel Crash Book by Igor Ljubuncic at http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/crash-book.html

nvidia driver install on Ubuntu is easy since you don't have to add new repositories... just run the "Hardware Drivers" item from your menu or from a console use the command "jockey-gtk" or "jockey-kde" if you have Kubuntu.

If you try to run Windows games using wine always check the official Wine AppDB as there are many tips, performance tweaks and overrides for each game with ratings for various distros... also check if you have the right wine version

this is the starcraft 2 page: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=20882