For People with A Peaked Interest in Linux, Concerned about a lack of Typical software …
This thread is really just to raise some awareness about the range of available software on Linux that is typically the main stay applications of Microsoft Windows, Most software here is actually cross platform or allows for Account integration into many mainstream & popular services with no fuss.
I sense that some new comers or casually interested folk are looking for alternatives to their existing software, in many cases it is not needed. This isn’t a definitive list by any means.
So here goes …
- Web browsers ⤶
Chromium ( Open source browser based on Google Chrome )
Vivaldi ( Proprietary freeware/ opensource component, Customizable browser for the power user )
Firefox ( Open source, well featured browser Required for Gnome Extension Integration )
Chrome ( Closed source & fast browser, Required for Netflix compatibility )
Opera ( Closed source & Fully featured browser with good HiDPI support )
Midori ( Open source, Lightweight extensible browser suitable for casual browsing )
- Social Media & Messaging ⤶
Mumble ( Secure, certificated local server or remote hosted messaging, high quality positional audio )
Discord ( Free, Proprietary, closed source, cross platform messaging alternative to teamspeak/skype )
Corebird ( Modern, easy and fun Twitter software client )
Gwibber ( Basic Twitter notification software )
Pideon messenger ( Google Talk, Yahoo!, IRC, MSN, XMPP)
Chatty ( Twitch Chat application)
Hexchat ( Cross platform, Themeable IRC Client)
Tox ( Open source encrypted communication platform for voice, video and chat )
Telegram ( Cross platform, Part open source, Encrypted group messenger with private P2P mode)
- Downloads, Cloud & Backup ⤶
Syncthing ( Encrypted opensource data sync software, no central server, private clusters)
Dropbox ( with desktop sync and integration )
OwnCloud ( cloud storage with desktop integration and mobile app sync)
Backula ( backup )
Deluge ( bit torrent )
Transmisson ( bit torrent lite )
Clipgrab ( Fast Automated Youtube Downloader with Queuing and quality selector)
Libre Office ( Distribution supported, Fully open source office suite: Calc, Draw, Impress, Math, Writer )
Okular ( Universal cross platform document viewer based developed by KDE. PDF, Postscript, DjVu, XPS, ePub)
PDF Studio ( Non Free, fully featured Adobe acrobat replacement. Free trial available )
WPS Office ( Microsoft office file support, 700million users cross platform, cloud and mobile support )
ThunderBird Mail ( IMAP,POP with auto registration for gmail , yahoo! )
WMAIL ( Cross platform, Desktop client for Gmail & Google Inbox )
Geary ( Straight forward IMAP mail client with easy account setup and desktop notification, gmail, yahoo! )
Manager Accounting ( Powerful & comprehensive free accounting & ledger Software )
- Mainly Video ( but also audio ) ⤶
Tomahawk ( Open source, cross platform & Mobile Music player with cloud streaming integration )
Kaku ( Open-Source Desktop YouTube, Soundcloud, Vimeo Music Player for Linux)
TwitchLive ( A Gnome panel extension showing whether your favourite Twitch.tv streamers are streaming)
GNOME Twitch ( Dedicated light weight twitch app for Gnome )
Livestreamer ( Pipes Live video streams into VLC or other Media Players, Useful for removing Streaming Lag )
VLC ( The Swiss army knife of desktop media players )
KODI ( Formerly XBMC, custom personal cinema and media suite, game emulator with steamOS integration )
Microsoft Skype ( Professional VOIP/Video call client & Spyware tool 
)
Plex ( All in one easy to use Client-Server Desktop/Mobile media suite, all in one easy to use )
- Audio Playback ⤶
Banshee ( Cross platform music player, supports internet radio, podcast & MTP devices. Also CD burning)
Audacious ( Lighweight alternative to WinAMP with some good audio plugins supplied, Winamp Skin Support )
Clementine ( Amarok Alternative Music player with good system integration and playlist support )
gmusicbrowser ( Customizable, Mutil layout Jukebox Music Player )
JuK ( Simple but effective Jukebox Music Player )
Deadbeef (Clean, GTK2/GTK3 music player with headphone crossfeed & large array of format support )
Soundnode ( Opensource SoundCloud app for desktop )
- Audio Creation & Mastering ⤶
Audacity ( Opensource easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder. Cross Platform )
Ardour ( NON FREE OpenSource Digital Pro-Audio Recording & Mix Station )
LMMS ( OpenSource Audio Digital Work Station )
Bitwig ( NON FREE next generation of software for sound and music creation)
ShotCut ( Open source, cross-platform 4K video editor )
Kdenline ( Open Source & powerful multi-track video editor )
Pitivi ( Free video editor with a beautiful and intuitive user interface )
OBS (Open broadcaster, no nonsense video recording and live streaming )
Simple Screen Recorder ( Easy to use, multi-threaded Video Game screen capture software )
GIMP ( Powerful image editing program )
Autodesk Maya ( NON FREE, 3D Animation production Software )
LightWave 3D ( NON FREE, Extremely powerful industry standard 3D modelling Software )
FreeCad ( Computer Aided Design Software )
Krita ( Digital Painting Software with Full Wacom Graphics tablet support )
MyPaint ( Quick sketches for Wacom (Autodesk sketchbook express)
Darktable (Tethered Shooting, Instant Digital picture development and management ( Think Lightroom)
Inkscape: Vector graphics (illustrator)
Scribus (Desktop publishing and edition (inDesign, frontpage)
Autodesk Pixlr ( Cross platform & Mobile Web Based Image drawing and editing program )
Blender ( Powerful Free and open source 3D creation suite & Video editor, also available on Steam )
DraftSight CAD ( Free cross platform Computer aided design software supports DWG)
Gamejolt ( Opensource Indie game platform with Linux client )
itch.io ( Indie game platform, upload, buy & sell. Linux Client available)
Lutris ( Gaming platform Integrator, Launch Steam,Desura,GOG,Humble bundle all from one platform & Emulators! )
Steam ( Most popular game client, 2500 Linux Games and growing platform )
GOG games ( Good old Games, Alternative to Steam. See GOG forum for Linux Automated Downloader )
- Emulators ⤶
PCSX2 (Cross platform, Playstation 2 emulator)
Dolphin Emulator (Nintendo GameCube, Wii emulator, Linux native version)
FCEUX (Nintendo entertainment system 8bit) emulator)
Fusion (SEGA MasterSystem, GameGear, Genesis/32X, SegaCD emulator, Linux native version)
ZSNES (Super Nintendo entertainment system) emulator)
Mupen64Plus (Nintendo 64 emulator, Linux native version)
Vice (Commodore 64, VIC-20, PET, emulator)
Libretro (Cross platform, front end development interface for pluggable emulators and game cores)
Leadwerks ( NON FREE, 3D game engine powered by OpenGL 4.0 )
Unity ( NON FREE, Cross Platform 3D game engine + tools )
LÖVE ( Opensource, LUA scripting framework for 2D game creation )
OGRE (Open-source graphics rendering engine)
ioquake3 ( free software (GPLv2+) first person shooter engine)
Godot ( multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine )
Blender-GameEngine ( multiplatform, Game engine part of Blender built in )
Spriter-Pro (NON FREE, crossplatform sprite editing and animation program )
Piskel (HTML sprite editor, onion skin, open source. http://www.piskelapp.com/)
Winconn ( RemoteApp Manager , FreeRDP to Windows)
WINE ( Basic Windows software support from the desktop )
PlayonLinux ( Front end Windows gaming management utility that integrates With WINE, play windows Steam games )
Virtual Box ( Easily run full operating systems within a container from your Linux Destkop, (3D gaming not supported )
KVM ( Direct pass through Virtualization of Windows Machines ( For Pro users )
Steam Linux Swiss Knife - ( A backup utility and database for Linux Steam games )
HydraPaper - (A Gtk utility to set two different backgrounds for each monitor on GNOME)
Gnome-Pie ( circular application launcher for Linux, made of several pies)
indicator-sound-switcher ( input/output Audio selector (source and sink) specific output port with just two clicks)
Grsync ( Easy Backup software, Graphical Front end for R-Sync)
Calibre (ebook management (kindle)
Timeshift ( Easy Windows restore like system snapshots ( SystemFiles only not user files like Documents)
Greyhole ( HDD storage pooling with JBOD using Samba to create pools (* NOT a backup utility / Raid1 replacement)
P7zip ( File compression )
Peazip ( extended file support file compression )
7-zip ( AES encryption supported compression support )
BleachBit (Program for cleaning web browser Pron cache, double-files. Free disc space (use with caution!)
f.lux (white color filter for better reading at night, turns screen a warm orange )
Redshift ( white color filter for better reading at night, turns screen a warm red )
Solaar (Logitech unifying reciever utility)
gparted (Easy but powerful HDD Partition manager )
Albert ( Lightweight Desktop file & program Search tool, works on most Desktop Environments )
Tomboy notes ( light system integrated note taking software, for jotting down quick references and links )
Synapse ( GUI, hotkey enabled quick program launcher )
Hamster ( Time tracking software )
Radeon-Profile (Fan Control Daemon for AMD card >=HD7000)
- Networking Utilities ⤶
Wireshark ( Network Monitoring and fault diagnosis )
Smb4K ( KDE samba windows shares configuration tool NTFS )
Samba-configuration-tool ( Samba shares configuration tool including NTFS for multiplatform file sharing )
LinSSID ( Graphical Network discovery tool, similar to inSSIDer )
- Terminal Based ⤶
htop ( great lightweight process viewer: Customisable CPU/Mem/Swap graphs )
Screenfetch ( a terminal utility for helping others discover your window tweaks, icons and themes useful for screenshots)
lolcat ( colors your terminal text like a funky rainbow )
Guake ( Theme-able, Fancy Drop down terminal emulator as seen on the Tek)
cool-retro-term ( Terminal emulator which mimics the look and feel of the old cathode tube screens)
Terminator ( cross-platform GPL terminal emulator with Multi-tabbed features )
razerCommander ( GTK contol center for managing razer peripherals on Linux)
polychromatic ( A graphical front end for managing Razer peripherals under GNU/Linux)
SC Controller ( User-mode driver and GTK3 based GUI for Steam Controller )
SSCD ( standalone userland driver for the steam controller to be used where steam client can’t be installed)
Kdevelop ( Cross platform, IDE with semantic code analysis )
Bluefish Editor ( Powerful but fast web development, scripts and programming language software )
Geany (small and lightweight Integrated Development Environment GTK2)
Brackets Web Editor ( open source text editor with good integrated CSS support )
Light Table code editor (Next generation Code editor, Supports Python, JavaScript)
Atom.io ( A modern hackable text editor)
Vim ( lightweight, Highly configurable text editor)
emacs ( Popular customizable, free text editor)
TextSuggest ( Autocomplete Tool for the Linux Desktop )
LLVM Clang (front-end for the LLVM compiler)
~
There are MANY more, But The list above should give you and Idea Just how Closely Linux Rides along side Windows / Mac in terms of Software. There are only a handful of big programs that are not on Linux today, most if not all of those can be either Emulated or Alternatives can come close to offering the features required by most users.
Extended List of Linux Applications
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications
Alternate Tek syndicate Wiki: https://tekwiki.beylix.co.uk/index.php/Linux_Software_List