There are times when users are stuck at a point, the reason being they have migrated to linux or maybe they want to give linux a try, but what happens is newbie users are not much aware of what is free and open source philosophy and software and I would also urge newbies to stay away from all that, instead first let us try and migrate to linux and then go have a brief view about the philosphy. Well I am providing here a list of softwares which are availiable on linux and also mentioning their counterparts on window, so that its easier for users to choose what they want and where is it.
The list goes like this.
First - Category
Second - Windows
Third - Linux
Office Suits
Microsoft Office, OpenOffice
KOffice, OpenOffice, SotOffice, AbiWord, etc
Email Clients
Outlook Express, ThunderBird, etc
Thunderbird, Evolution, Balsa, Pine, etc
Browsers
Internet Explorer, FireFox, Opera, Maxothon, etc
Opera, Firefox, Mozilla, Epiphany, etc
Instant Messengers
Msn, Yahoo, Aol, Icq, etc
Gaim, Kopete, Centericq, IM2, Jabber, etc
Media Players
Windows Media Player, Winamp, Sonique, etc
Xmms, Mp3blaster, Beep, Splay, Zinf, etc
Text Editors
Notepad, WordPad, MS-Word, etc
Vi, Emacs, Kate, Kwrite, Vim, etc
Compression
WinZip, WinRAR, WinACE, 7-Zip, etc
Zip, Tar, Bzip2, Rar, etc
Download Managers
Flashget, GetRight, DAP, etc
wget, Axel, ProZilla, QuickDownloader, etc
Desktop Search Msn, Google, Yahoo, Coppernic.
Beagle, Kat.
Development
C, C+, VB, VC+, Perl, PHP, .Net, Java etc
C, C+, Perl, C#, PHP, Ruby, RealBasic, Java, etc
IDE
Visual Studio, Visual Studio.net, Zeus, etc
Anjuta, Kdevelop, etc
Firewalls
Zone Alarm, Sygate, McAfee, Tiny, etc
Ipchains, Iptables, FireStarter, etc
Anti-Virus
AVG, Norton, McAfee, Pc-cillin, QuickHeal, etc
AntiVir, ClamAV, Bit Defender, etc
Database
MySQL, SQL Server, SAP, Oracle, etc
PQSql, MySql, Oracle, etc
Image Editors
Paint, PhotoShop, Corel Draw, etc
GIMP, Blender, Dia, Electric Eyes, etc
this is not a complete list as only the few good ones are mentioned and if you are wanting more on any platform I would suggest go to:-
https://download.com
https://tucows.com
and search for windows realted softwares but if you want softwares for linux related, the best resources are:-
https://sourceforge.net
https:// https://freshmeat.net
and yes. you can always search them on msn, google, yahoo.
if you want any help from me regarding some software or installation issue on linux platform you can surely drop me an email, I would help you to my knowledge and I suggest newbie users to seek help from a linux user who is well acquainted with installation of linux, or else you might loose all of your data while using it dual boot. Ok now. let us have a brief overview of GNU. or infact OpenSource.
Software developed in OpenSource license which means users can view the source code of the software, modify it, make changes to it and use it the way they want. this is usually not of interest to Home Users, as they are dont care much about whats going on behind the scenes, what they want it an easy look and feel, but most of the companies want to make changes to the source code and use it according to them, this is where OpenSource helps, but what I would recommend is just dont get into all this politics. what I feel is if you can afford a windows license use windows and if not use a flavour of linux which is free, piracy hurts the industry it is not just about advocating on the windows side but the software industry gets a big backlock because of piracy, many people understand it when they get into the coding scene or into a software development firm. but trust me, a lot of labor goes into developing software no matter its open source or proprietory, anyways, people who wanna try out linux can sure dual boot their machine, with windows and linux side by side, and as you get familiar its upto you what you wanna do go for only Linux or windows.
For Newbies I would suggest you go for SuSE, Mandriva or Ubuntu and for the advanced users . I really dont need to say that. they already know it, and yes. I would surely like to know how many people vising mouthshut.com use linux, and yes I welcome your comments and questions or you want some links and references just drop me an email.
I would want everyone to look into the real world facts and then judge the writeup.
Regards,
Anish