It's possible to play all of those things perfectly legally on Ubuntu. I suppose MP3 is the one most people will need. Luckily, a nice company called Fluendo have partnered with Ubuntu to provide free and legal MP3 decoders for all Ubuntu users. It's been a while since I did a fresh install but I believe Ubuntu offers to install these automatically when you first try to play an MP3 with RhythmBox or Totem.

DVD and WMA are more complicated and, yuck, who uses WMA anyway? But, again, Fluendo offer a fully licensed DVD Player for Linux for a pretty reasonable €20. They also offer fully licensed codecs for other formats like WMA, etc.

And all of this will soon be a moot point as some of the MP3 patents have expired already and the remaining ones should be expiring pretty much everywhere in the next couple of years.

As a Ubuntu user, I can say precisely 0% of the software on my PC is pirated AND I have no issues with malware, viruses, trojans, etc. (according to ClamAV anyway). In fact, probably 99% of the software I run is free & open source. The only proprietary software I use for the time being is Adobe Flash and the ATI Radeon driver, both legally obtained.

I know we'd all like to say that there is no link between illegally copied software (I refuse to use the word "pirated") and malware, but I'm sure we've all seen instances where relatives' PCs got infected by software downloaded from Kazaa, etc.

What really surprises me is that, when given the choice between maybe catching viruses or getting prosecuted for downloading/installing illegal software and using the free and legal open source equivalent, so many people still choose to download their software illegally. I have to say, as a full-time user and software developer, Ubuntu's offering is really, really well put-together and a pleasure to use.

Alright, I'll bite. When was the last time you used Linux? Every modern distribution has some form of package management. I'm a Ubuntu user. Here are the steps I used to install GTKPod:

1. Start Synaptic (it's under System | Administration | Synaptic Package Manager)
2. Find GTKPod in the list of installable applications and check a checkbox to indicate that you want to install it.
3. Click "Apply". At this point, the programme is downloaded to the computer and installed.

Now, please remind me, how is this more difficult than Windows? The same process under Windows is longer and less secure. All packages from Ubuntu's repositories are digitally signed. Can the same be said for the random executable you just downloaded from a web site?