My mom just bought a desktop computer and I recently gave a laptop computer to my sister. Both run WindowsXP (I’m not sold on Vista until at least 6 months into SP1) and while neither are screamers, they’ll get the job done for them. Budget is obviously a concern so rather than ask them to spend many hundreds of dollars on proprietary packages, I recommended they download their equivalent Open Source distributions of the software they’ll be using most frequently.

An increasingly tepid debate in the computer world is whether or not to use commercial software or open source software. Commercial software, defined as being both developed and released by a single organization, is usually expensive. Open source software on the other hand, developed by diverse individuals and released via a single distribution point is free. At least it’s as free as your conscience allows it to be should you be the contributory kind. Recently, while still usually slightly less full-featured, it is becoming very robust and highly developed. But how many of us really use those extra goodies anyway?

That gave me the idea for this post. Make a list of them. I’m in no way going to provide a complete list here but I wanted to start a discussion on pairing up commercial software to their OS counterparts. I don’t care about versions and I want a link to the homepage of the OS web site. As I find more, I’ll add them to this list. The main thing was getting a small list put together for my family to get them started. Please feel free to chip in.

Productivity Suites

Microsoft Office -> OpenOffice.org

OO includes every major component that Office does; a word processor, database, spreadsheet, a drawing program, presentations, plus a math program.

Microsoft Access -> Kexi

Although OO offers a database application, if you don’t need the full office suite, get Kexi

MS Visio -> Dia

Create flowcharts, diagrams and graphs.

MS Project -> OpenWorkbench

Robust project scheduling and management functionality.

Graphics

Adobe PhotoShop CS3 -> GIMP

PhotoShop is hundreds of dollars. Why fork over that kind of dough when GIMP will handle 99% of the common user’s photo processing needs.

Web and Publishing Software

Adobe Acrobat Standard -> PDFCreator

Easily create PDF files from any program in Windows.

MS Publisher -> Scribus

Not part of the MS Office suite, Publisher is used to create flyers and ad layouts with much more precise control than MS Word. Scribus brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout. It supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and PDF creation.

Adobe Dreamweaver -> NVU

Nvu (pronounced N-view) rivals Dreamweaver or the now lesser-used MS Frontpage for creating and managing web pages.

Adobe Flash -> OpenLaszlo

Create multimedia applications, even complete web sites with OpenLaszlo. Your app will work on all leading browsers and operating systems making it a platform independent interface.

Communications

AIM -> Pidgin

AIM, AOL’s IM, is free too but Pidgin works with far more IM protocols including AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, Zephyr

Microsoft Outlook -> Thunderbird

Both products allow you to manage multiple email accounts. Outlook is more than $100.

Utilities

WS FTP Pro -> FileZilla

A reliable and secure FTP and SFTP client and server.