Guidance

I am planning on migrating from Win7 to Linux after my last online class ends. I am mostly concerned with moving my music and videos from Win7 to Linux. I will gladly upgrade to premium if someone can provide a little guidance. I am highly educated with Windows and can do just about anything but I am completely new to Linux so I want the experience to be a favorable one.

Boot drive will be Seagate Constellation SED (self-encrypting) Hard Drive = ST1000NM0053

What I mostly use on Win7

BitDefender (needed?!)
Firefox (bookmark import?)
EVGA GTX 760
Steam (all my games are Win7 but I mostly play Skyrim)
Skyrim
Internet Spades (built into Win7 - best alternative?)

That would be enough to get me started. Once I become familiar with how to do certain things I will be able to figure it out on my own.

Thank You

Hi, Your hard drive "might" be the biggest barrier (self-encrypting) as you cannot have encryption set at time of install!

Always good to have some sort of AV to check files - BitDefender used to be free - Wolfman and someone else on here gave a link to free access codes - there is ClamAV for GNU/Linux, Zorin comes with a Firewall, and you might want to install 'chkrootkit' to guard against rootkits.

http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/
http://www.chkrootkit.org/

Just checked their site - there is a free one for personal use - requires registration:
http://www.bitdefender.com/site/Product ... erLicense/
Zorin is based on Ubuntu which uses .deb packages for clarification.
Steam for Linux comes with the Ultimate releases but you should be able to install it:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/di ... 113197089/

Skryim answer:

http://www.steamgamesonlinux.com/skyrim ... scrolls-v/

Internet Spades - I have Windows 7 but does not ring any bells - is it a Card (Solitaire) game?

Because I already purchased the Windows version of Skyrim and other games, I was hoping to use WINE/Playonlinux to run Windows Steam. I have about 25 games, I'm not entirely sure how all this works. Also Internet Spades is a built-in Win7 game, opposite of playing hearts. I am highly addicted to Spades so I may have to set up dual boot. With Firefox if I make a .json extension backup in Win7 can I restore on Linux? My Win7 install has not been working right at all. I have not had a normal Windows update in 2 weeks and have to manually install. Tried to repair using different methods but it's screwed up. The folder shell claims that every folder does not exist even when creating a new folder. With the issues, lack of privacy/security I am opting to start using Linux. Can I install from a USB or do I need to burn an .iso?

Have you not got system restore turned on? If you did you could get back to a working version of Windows 7. Sounds suspicious activity that you cannot use as you should - I would download Malwarebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware to check for Malware on your Windows 7 install. You could also download Comodo Rescue Disk and boot off usb or DVD to do a thorough check of your drive - have you ever run chkdsk or defrag?