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As one of the ILUG members who helped out at our stand at e-Xpo 2001, I have fielded quite a number of questions (both 'live' and via email) from people that would use Linux exclusively 'if only...'.
I pretty much intend for this page to grow over time - if you have a question, or want to suggest better alternatives then by all means please email me.

Compatibility with Microsoft Office.
Quite a number of people expressed an interest in being able to read Microsoft files without having to boot into Windows.
AbiWord, StarOffice and OpenOffice are all rather good software suites that can both read and create Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
Gnumeric and abiWord are good alternatives for Excel and Microsoft Word respectively.

Email Applications
Evolution is one of the best Linux Email applications, it integrates email, calendaring, meeting scheduling, contact management, and task lists, in one powerful, fast, and easy-to-use application. There is now a free Exchange Connector for Evolution, this provides a working exchange client solution to replace Outlook.
Thunderbird from Mozilla.org features Adaptive Junk Mail Controls, an RSS Reader, Global Inbox Support, Saved Search Folders, Message Grouping and Privacy Protection.
kmail supports IMAP, POP3, multiple accounts, powerful filters, PGP/GnuPG privacy, inline attachments and more.
Zimbra is an open-source replacement for Microsoft Exchange, for which paid support is available.

Accounting Software.
There are many levels and kinds of accounts packages that people use. Some of these have equivalents for Linux and some have direct counterparts.
At the personal level, there are GNUCash and AppGen's MoneyDance. At the enterprise level there's AccPac.
The middle-ground, ie for small businesses, appears as though it may be inhabitated by Sage and Tas Software - we spent some time during the e-Xpo driving home the fact to representatives of these companies that there is a genuine business need for them to produce software that will run under Linux.
Quasar Accounting is another package that you may wish to consider. It's 'fully functional' and runs on both Linux and Windows. It is also good for stock-management (inventory and shelf) and has multistore functionality as well.
NOLA does accounting, inventory, point of sale, contact management, billing, puchasing, and reporting all in one integrated web-based package.
SQL-Ledger is a multi-user double entry web-based system. A full list of features is available.
KMyMoney is another full double-entry accounting software package, for personal or small-business use which can import and export Quicken's .qif files.
You may want to read Finances, Linux, and Stuff... by Christopher Browne for other links and information on other Linux based accounting software.

Desktop Publishing
As far as DTP is concerned, I found Scribus, it is a very good open source equivalent to Publisher.
I'd be inclined to give Open Office (as linked to above) a go as well.

Diagram Software - Visio
Dia and Kivio are two good alternatives.

ERP + Contact Relationship Management software
Compiere
SugarCRM is a commercially available solution.

CAD
LinuxCAD works as a perfect alternative to AutoCAD. For Free alternatives to AutoCAD, there's QCAD and LinuxCAD. They both have some limitations compared to the lastest version of AutoCAD, but those limitations are going away as more people contribute to the projects. If you truly want to help get people out from under Autodesk's thumb, this is the way to go.
Commercial alternatives, which are probably more full featured, include VariCAD, Cycas and IntelliCAD. All of these run on Linux.

Bibliography Editors
Asked for an alternative to EndNote, these are some that I found:
Pybliographer
RefDB
RefDB is a concerted effort to provide most of the functionality of commercial packages like Reference Manager or EndNote in a platform-independent tool, targeting markup languages rather than word processors.
RefWorks
RefWorks is a web based bibliographic application that is about to add Open Office to its compatibility even though it already works from the web site with Linux.
sixpack
Qbib

Graphics and Multimedia
Some people asked about graphics packages for Linux.
The foremost graphics app for Linux is called The Gimp.
xfig is another recommended drawing program for Linux, as is PhotoGenics (which is commercially available for Linux, AmigaOS and Windows.
InkScape is an SVG editor like Visio, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw etc.

Digital Cameras
I was asked if it's possible to use digital cameras under Linux - GPhoto will let you transfer photos to and from your camera.

Web Browsers
There is a serious number of webbrowsers available for using under Linux. Some of the more popular ones are Mozilla, Firefox, Konqueror and Opera.
Mozilla is one of the best; as a website developer I primarily develop for Mozilla which I use for debugging JavaScript, check headers using the Live HTTP Headers plugin and make extensive use of it's DOM Inspector. It also has a mail client.
FireFox is the new stand alone web browser from the Mozilla Project. It is the most popular browser on Linux and is also available for Windows.

IRC Clients
Xchat
Chatzilla

Instant Messaging Clients
Gaim The most popular Instant Messaging client for Linux Supports all the most popular networks in one client.
Kopete is also an excellent Instant Messanger. It supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus SameTime, and more.

Peer to Peer Clients
Mldonkey Supports a number of peer to peer searching and downloading methods Can be used by a wide number of front-ends. BitTorrent and EDonkey are also supported under Linux.

Firewalls & Internet Security
PortSentry and Snort.
AntiVir Personal Edition - this is a German package which is free for personal use.
Also, you should read up on ipchains and iptables.

Webpage Editors
Amaya is a highly recommended editor from the w3 organisation.
Bluefish
mozilla.composer  An easy web page editor/creator built into the Mozilla suite
NVU A project developing on the Mozilla Composer code Powerful standalone web page editing program.
OpenOffice.org Writer Known to produce very clean html when used carefully/sparingly!
Quanta Plus is a quick-turnaround webpage editor, you do need to know your HTML though as Quanta Plus is not WYSIWYG.

CD Burning
It has been possible to burn CDs under Linux for quite sometime, but it really has gotten very easy to do with the likes of the graphical X-CD_Roast.
There is also K3b. It really is as easy to use as any Windows CD writing software and has a nice setup wizard that will configure just about everything for you. The only commonly created format that it doesn't handle yet is DVD Video. Foreign disc image support is a bit limited (only bin/cue or iso) though.

3D Art Modellers
Asked for ideas on which Linux based software should be used as an equivalent to Bryce, these were suggested by members of the ILUG:

• PovRay
• Blender
• SoftImage

• 3D Modelling
• 3D Rendering

Audio tools
MuSE is a very good sequencer. For score editors, try RoseGarden and NoteEdit.
Fluid Synth is a good synthesiser.
Audacity Simple but useful audio editor, equivalent to Wavelab
Ardour  Record, edit and mix multi-track audio
vstserver/fst  Use (some) vst plugins under Linux

Making Movies
non linear editor: Heroine Warrior

Realtime effects:
mjpeg.sourceforge.net
effectv.sourceforge.net
veejay.sourceforge.net
Kino  DV Video Editor, provides support for firewire video cameras
MEncoder  Converts video from virtually any format to most formats
Dvdauthor  Prepare DVD Video discs (including menus etc.)

Terminal Server and Remote access (terminal sessions)
The K-12Linux Project is the best Newbie place for Linux and LTSP. Also look into Linux Terminal Server Project and TightVNC.
Examine NX for X over 9600 baud. Tarantella is a well established and mature option.

For Developers
Good applications for programmers looking to make a switch are: KDevelop is one of the best Linux IDEs. Anjuta is another good IDE. Glade is a good user interface designer for GTK+ applications. The Qt development environment includes QDesigner, which is simply excellent.
GUI access to scripting languages can be had as well. There are projects to add GTK+, Qt, and KDE support to languages such as Perl and Python, and there is a lot of development going on in with KDE as they work to make their existing JavaScript engine a suitable scripting language for rapid KDE development. It is called KJSEmbed.
Eclipse  is an IDE built with java and using plugins to support many features. Basis for PalmSource's own Developers Suite

FTP Clients
Graphical FTP clients:
KBear
gFTP

GUI CVS Clients
Asked if there were any non-command-line CVS clients that could be used under Linux, I immediately thought of LinCVS.
There are other such clients listed on the cvs website.

Censorware / Webpage Filtering.
I haven't cause for using censorware myself, but the question was raised by a father of two that he would like to use something equivalent to NetNanny to ensure that the coarser side of the Intenet wouldn't be discovered by his children.
DansGuardian seems to pretty much fit the bill here and is free for non commercial use.
As far as technical details are concerned, DansGuardian works by filtering out webpages based on content rather than on what the URL of the page is. It can also filter out files based on not just the file extension but also on the files mime-type.

Partition Tools
QTParted supports creating, formatting, moving and resizing all common partition types.

Family Tree Software
I've had good experience of using geneweb, which is a web application for all things genealogical.
There is also the GRAMPS Project and other Genealogy projects.

Update [8-Jan-2007]: The newly developed The Linux Equivalent Project website is worth having a look at too. As is the Open Source Help Desk List.

USERS COMMENTS

Posted By Michele Neylon 00:32, 19 November 2004

You might like to add Sugar CRM (http://www.sugarcrm.com/) under the CRM section. We've been using it for the last few weeks and find it very functional

Posted By Terry Cox 10:37, 6 March 2006

The Tarantella company mentioned (terminal Services type functionality) has now been purchased by Sun Microsystems and they continue to promote and support this software. The software is now called "Secure Global Desktop". Functionality is unchanged and the s/w will sit on a miserly piece of hardware supporting many users. It sits on Linux or Solaris (SPARC) or Solaris (x64, ie Intel or AMD). Backend connectivity is just the same, to Windows Server, Linux, UNIX and Mainframe. This software is incredibly easy to install & use and a full demo license can now be downloaded from www.sun.com and go to their download page. I have a handy guide for things to do before you install (saves loads of effort). If you need to provide access outside the firewall remember that you will need an X509 cert as the browser connects via HTTPS from an external source.

Posted By Ken Guest 13:36, 30 March 2006

Zimbra is an open-source replacement for Microsoft Exchange, for which paid support is available.