THE MYTHS

The first problem which people face while switching over to Linux is the “unavailability of softwares” as they claim. They just try to run their windows installer/setup file and end up with frustration saying “Linux is so incompatible!” Is it really so? Linux is not a clone of Windows. Then how come you expect your softwares built specifically built for windows to run on Linux. Linux has its own OS architecture, filesystem, binary file format and many more.

GETTING LINUX ALTERNATIVES OF YOUR SOFTWARE

So if you really want to switch to Linux, try to get accustomed to Linux alternatives of your software. If you were using Winamp, the alternative is XMMS or Audacious. The replacement of Internet Explorer is Firefox and IceWeasel though Firefox is also available for Windows. It would be better if you spend a week or two using softwares which are available for both Windows and Linux. Some of the examples are:

Firefox- an award winning and largely loved Web Browser
Thunderbird- a portable Mail client
VLC- a highly portable and excellent Media Player
Pidgin - Multi protocol Instant Messenger
Abiword - a lightweight Word processor
OpenOffice - An office suite, installed by default on most Linux distributions
FileZilla - an Open Source FTP client like CuteFTP etc

THE EASE OF INSTALLING SOFTWARES