A list of Windows (or possibly Mac) programs, and alternatives available on Linux. Perhaps, with a discussion of pros and cons of each. If you're particularly familiar with some area, mark it with your name.

Basic

• Windows --- Ubuntu, Gentoo, FreeBSD
  • Ubuntu is generally better, but Windows supports some hardware better (webcams, etc.)
    • Hardware support is getting better - Ubuntu supports everything in my (Richard) laptop (wireless, bluetooth, sound etc straight off a fresh install - windows I need to install bloatware to get my devices working)
  • The free OSes are much cheaper.

• Internet Explorer --- Firefox
  • Firefox is better.
    • Why is Firefox better ? - Spyware - Phishing Protection - Less "Drive by" web exploits - Extensions, Greasemonkey - Spellchecking ?
  • Both free.

• Add/Remove Programs --- APT, Synaptic, etc.
  • The latter is obviously better, and almost a good enough reason alone to convert to Ubuntu or another good distro.
  • Stress the ease of use of finding and installing new programs - search for mp3 player, get a list to choose from etc - all automated, most software available on campus - quick to download and use.

• Microsoft Office --- OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Gnome Office
  • Both are MSO and OOo are horribly bloated.
  • GNOME Office currently consists only of a word processor, spreadsheet and database program.
  • OOo works fine for basic tasks, but no VBA, spreadsheet auditing, etc.
    • Microsoft Office 2007 is the one thing I (Richard) still use windows for - basic word editing done in OOo, but run into compatibility problems reading office documents in OOo - Much easier to build very slick presentations in Powerpoint 2007.

Graphics/Design

• Photoshop --- GIMP (Max)
  • Quite different: learning the GIMP after learning Photoshop is probably just as hard as learning Photoshop again.
  • Probably equally powerful.
  • Expensive vs. free.

• Corel Draw, Freehand --- Inkscape (Max, sort of)

• Maya, 3DS --- Blender, Yafray (Max)
  • Blender is engineered to be very efficient for experts rather than easy-to-use for beginners.
  • Elephant's Dream made entirely with OSS (Blender, GIMP, etc.)
  • Expensive vs. free.

• Fontographer, Fontlab, VOLT, AFDKO --- FontForge (Max)
  • FontForge was originally based on Fontographer, so has a similar UI.
  • Not as pretty as Fontlab.
  • Has built-in OpenType handling... no more rotation between Fontlab, VOLT and AFDKO.
  • Very expensive vs. free.

• CDisplay --- Comix
  • Comix is not as easy to use or efficient as CDisplay.
  • Both free.

Video/Music Players

• WMP, Winamp -- Amarok (Ben), Exaile
  • WMP is fail. _Really_ slow with many files, playlist generation.
  • Winamp is better, also not very well designed for huge libraries.
  • Amarok- takes the best aspects of Winamp, couples them with what
  • WMP has stolen from other players and makes a sleek and smooth music player
  • Exaile is a GTK+ player, similar to Amarok, but with fewer features.

• Media Player Classic, VLC --- VLC, mplayer (Ben)
  • Quite common ground between Windows and *nix. Mplayer is much more efficient than any of the other players.
  • VLC is a very well known player and common on most student PC's.
  • Slight configuration required to

• Windows Media Centre -- MythTV (Ben)
  • Media Player is slow and memory whore. MythTV is far from perfect, but getting there.
  • SQL-side install is somewhat more complicated for a n00b.

Mathematics and Statistics

• Matlab --- Octave, KOctave, Scilab
  • Octave has most basic functions of Matlab, and is syntactically very similar
  • KOctave is a graphical shell for Octave
  • I have no experience with Scilab

• Maple, Mathematica --- Maxima, wxMaxima, SAGE
  • Maxima is somewhat tricky to use, and the manual is only useful if you already know how to use it.
  • But wxMaxima has shortcuts for the most important/basic functions.
  • Mathematica and Maxima both use code from the first symbolic maths program, MACSYMA
  • SAGE is accessible from the Python language, which may be familiar to physics students and others.

• S --- R

Physics

• VPython --- VPython
  • It's the same program... just about anything written in the one should work in the other.

Games

• (Ben)
  • Will remain a leading cause for many Windows to remain Windows users.
  • Too few games are created with Linux in mind, although this is changing.. slowly.
  • The only really large decent "designed-with-Linux-in-mind" games that I can think of are Unreal Tournament 200x for x in [3,4,7]
  • Wine and cedega are worth a mention, but not _amazing_.. they work well with older games especially, although we can get Julian to demo Portal in wine
  • Dosbox

Some notable OSS/Linux games

• OpenArena and other Quake3 engines

• FretsOnFire
  • Guitar Hero-like game, played with keyboard. Portable (Python + OpenGL)

• Wesnoth

• Chess, Reversi, and all that

Chatting

• MSN, Gtalk, mIRC -- Pidgin
  • Pidgin++ ftw. Theres no debate.
  • Gajim for Gtalk
  • aMSN, KMess for MSN