One of the big things, if not the biggest thing about moving to a new operating system is that many of the applications that you are familiar with may not be available. Here is a list of the applications that replaced those I was used to using in Windows.

Web browser
Firefox

Hah! A good start! The web browser is where I spend most of my time, and I had long ago switched to Firefox on Windows. Firefox in Ubuntu is virtually identical – although I did have a slight bit of trouble getting Flash working, due to there being no native 64-bit version available.

The main difference is that when spell-checking, I don’t see the suggested spellings when right-clicking on the underlined word. I’m not sure what that is all about.

FTP Client
Filezilla

Another easy one. Filezilla is a great FTP client (and server for that matter). I used it for years under Windows, and the Linux version works perfectly as well.

Telnet/SSH Client
Putty

Another one that has stayed the same – as time has passed I now find myself just SSHing from the command line.

Email/PIM

Windows: Outlook 2003
Ubuntu: Evolution Thunderbird

I can’t link to Outlook 2003, because Microsoft is pushing 2007 now. (As an aside, I was in on the beta for Office 2003 and 2007, and therefore chose to both adopt 2003 and reject 2007 a lot earlier than many people.) I used to use Evolution, but I’ve since adopted Thunderbird. Evolution had more features, but more problems as well.

Calendar

Lightning is an Thunderbird extension that meets my needs – I am not a big calendar user.

Password Management

I also used to store my passwords in Outlook as notes. When I first moved to Ubuntu, I used Revelation, but I have since moved to KeePassX.

Note Taking

Initially, I used Tomboy for notes, but now I am using TiddlySpot for public notes and zim on the desktop.

RSS Feeds

I was using an Outlook add-on called NewsGator, but now I use Liferea:

Office Suite

Windows: Office Professional 2003
Ubuntu: Evolution, Open Office

I’ve already covered the email/PIM side of the house. For former Word documents, Writer works perfectly for me. For former Excel spreadsheets, Calc is good – although I do miss ASAP Utilities and not knowing exactly how to do some things scripting-wise.

There isn’t a great substitute for Access databases – when I have to use that I run WinXP in VirtualBox. (more on that later)  Base is sadly not on the same level as Writer and Calc in terms of replacing Microsoft Office applications.

Music and Podcast management

Windows: iTunes
Ubunutu: Rhythmbox

Although I often read about how terrible iTunes  – I didn’t think so. I knew how it worked, and I liked how it organized my music. It was a hard blow to bring all my files over into Rythmbox and lose the star ratings and similar metadata I had spent a lot of time on in iTunes.

I am using Rhythmbox, which comes with Ubuntu.It’s not quite as slick as iTunes, but it gets the job done. It is the only media player I have tried that handles local MP3s, podcasts, and streaming radio (along with syncing to an iPod) in a sane and coordinated way. There are some apps that may be better in one area, but not in all 3 – and I use all 3 about equally.

I’m still holding out for a better media player. Songbird and Amarok look nice, but don’t quite offer enough to displace Rhythmbox for me yet.

Torrents

Windows: µTorrent
Ubuntu: Deluge

Wrote about this one in a blog post. Summary: I am a heavy user of torrents (which has nothing to do with the last application we discussed!), and so far Deluge is excellent acceptable. It lacks some of the nicer features, but it does the job and is Open Source. (Running a closed source torrent client developed by a company partnered with RIAA and MPAA members has got to be among the most … interesting … things one could do.)

Desktop Search

Windows: Copernic Desktop Search
Ubuntu: Tracker, Google Desktop

Windows XP didn’t have a decent search, but Copernic did a good job filling that gap. By default, Ubuntu comes with Tracker, which I have not had much luck with – it seems to stop working unless I re-install it or re-start it every time.

Tracker, which comes with Ubuntu was never a reliable searching tool. And I tried Google Desktop for a while, but didn’t like it either. Right now, I’m getting by with command-line tools like find and locate, but I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a decent GUI searching tool.

Comic Book Reader
Windows: CDisplay
Ubunutu: Comix

Ok, I’m a nerd and I like to read comic archives (.cbz and .cbr). Under Windows, I used the serviceable application CDisplay. However I’ve found Comix superior.

IRC / Instant Messenger

Windows: mIRC, Google Talk
Ubuntu: Pidgin

Pidgin is just about perfect for me. It supports virtually every popular IM network and IRC all from one interface, so it reduces the number of apps I have to juggle.

Media Player

Windows: Windows Media Player, VLC Player, Media Player Alternative
Ubuntu: Totem Movie Player

Totem has worked just fine for me – as I talked about in this blog post. Of course, it helps that the video codec mess has calmed down a lot in general. I generally choose to stick to mp3 for audio and xvid (or DivX) for video, and that helps keep everything working for me.

Encryption

Windows: Truecrypt
Ubuntu: Truecrypt

As detailed in this blog post. The Windows version is a bit easier to use, because the Linux version does not come with a GUI. The latest versions of TrueCrypt do come with a GUI, and are just as easy to use as the Windows versions! Hooray!

This is a win, because I was able to just bring over the encrypted drives from WinXP to Ubuntu.

Graphics

Windows: Photoshop
Ubuntu: GIMP

I’m no graphic artist so GIMP works just fine for me (that is not my creation in the screenshot).

Virtualization

Ubuntu: VirtualBox

Virtualization allows you run one operating system (OS) “inside” another OS by abstracting or simulating the underlying hardware of the “host OS” for the “guest OS”. For those very few applications that absolutely require Windows, I have WinXP SP3 available in a virtual machine (VM).

Setting up a VM and installing Windows is very simple.