No such thing as a stupid questionB3gbie said:
As far as antivirus protection in linux...ehh, maybe avg will work, I'm not really sure about free anti virus programs for linux. Mostly because i don't botherto worry about them.
Depending on the type of cpu and the particular os your chosing, you do have the ability to have a customized form for it. The amd's are a prime example. A lot of distro's no have a intel line and a amd line. Partially because of the 64 processor but thats a minor point. The distro your using will help us know if its a manual thing or not.
As far as the formats go, tar and bz are easy to take care of its a tar and whatever the particular format is. As far as bin's they tend to be images ripped from cd's that need to be mounted or put on a cd for you to be able to install (at least thats from the windows side).