Downloading streaming media on Acer Aspire One with Linux. I'm going insane!!

Help anyone! I am driving myself mad trying to find some meager way of downloading streaming media in any way I can. I honestly don't care what it saves as or whether it's a good downloader. I don't want to edit, change, or anything else like that. I just want to capture my streaming video and get it on my hard drive.

I have the Acer Aspire One. It uses Linux (Maybe some modified version?) I've tried downloading a million different programs, found the command lines to install them, all to no avail. Do I have bugs maybe? Everything else is working fine. But I cannot get a single program that will just copy my streaming video. Will I have to become a pseudohacker just to learn how to do this?

Any direct links to downloads? I'll try them all. If you don't get a response in a day, just email me gaiaguerrilla@gmail.com and I'll be sure to check it out.

If part of the problem is that they were loaded but I don't know how to use the program, I'd be happy to follow instruction to fix it to copy media and save it in a folder every time I look at streaming media.

Thanks in advance!