It is well known that ultrashort, high intensity pulses with peak powers exceedinga certain critical value (Pcr) undergo self-focusingleading to collapse and filamentation. During the initial stagesof propagation at low intensities the beamdynamics are dominated by diffraction and dispersion. During filamentation, self-focusing resulting from the nonlinear Kerr effect is balanced by higher order nonlinearities such as plasma induced defocusing and absorption.This work examines the role that linear processes combined with initial spatial and temporal conditioningplay in the generation and subsequent evolution of filaments within nonlinearbeams. It is demonstrated that, because of linear diffraction, initial spatial beam shaping can have a dramatic effect on the filament pattern, the number of filaments and the energy contained in each filament. These ideas are applicable to cases that arequite common, such as circularly apodized beams, and help to explain interestingbehavior observed in these types of beams. Finally, it is demonstrated thatwith appropriate preconditioning of multiple subcritical pulses, linear effects can be employed to accurately control when and where filamentation occurs during long distance propagation through conditional collapse of overlapping pulses.