General Purpose 64studio

Hi I am currently a Windows XP user, but looking forward to switching to Linux. After spending some time surfing and reading about it, I think that Debian and Debian based distros are more to my liking. Besides sound engineer (in PA mostly) I am also a PC gamer, and I have found also a couple of titles that are ported to Linux, like "X2 The Threat". Before I get to my questions my hardware is this: MB: Gigabyte K8NS Ultra - 939 (nforce3 ultra) CPU: AMD Opteron 170 dual core Graphics Card: GameCube X1950XTXseries 256MB AGP8x RAM: OCZ PC3200 1GB Platinum Edition x2 modules in single channel mode (Don't ask, this is Relic's Company of Heroes' fault, as it refuses to play right in dual channel mode.) OnBoard devices & controllers: (as seen in Windows Device Manager) Marvell Yukon 88E8001 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller NVIDIA nforce Networking Controller 1394 Net Adapter (Texas Instruments), (in the MB specs is referred as 1394b) Realtek AC97 8channel (sound controller) NVIDIA nForce3 250 serial ATA controller Silicon Image Sil 3512 SATALink controller HDDs: WD Raptor 36GB (SATA0) WD Raptor 74GB (SATA1) WD WD800JP 80GB (IDE0) Optical Drives: Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1712 (IDE1) Plextor DVD-R PX-760A (IDE2) TEAC CD-W540E (IDE3) Well I hoped I did not forget anything. And now the questions: 1)Can 64studio run proprietary ported for Linux games and in which version 32(i386) or 64(AMD64), if not 64studio what about Debian? 2)Does it support joysticks (I own the Saitek X52) 3)Can it be used for general purpose applications? I am currently downloading the Live CDs to test my hardware and later on the installers for a deeper testing, I will come back as soon as I have results. Thank you for your patience, greetings from Greece!