When you tell people to stop using Windows and start using Linux,
it is like telling them to stop using computer. Some of them still think
of Linux as a command line operating system while others simply can’t leave
the software that they are using. This is where cross platform software
(mostly compose of Open Source Software) come in aid.

So how to help them? Challenge them if they can live with these
Softwares for 3 months and if they do, then they can certainly use Linux.
Most of these softwares are in Automatix2 if you intended them to use Ubuntu Linux.

3D content creation suite:

• Blender (http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/)

Antivirus:

• ClamAV (http://www.clamav.net/)
  ClamWin (http://www.clamwin.com/)
• Antivir Classic (http://www.free-av.com/)

Browser:

• Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/)
• Opera (http://www.opera.com/download/)

Calendar:

• Sunbird (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/)

Diagramming Software:

• Dia (http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/)Dia For Windows (http://dia-installer.de/index.html)

Digital Audio Editor Computer Program :

• Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)

Email Client:

• Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/)

File Archiver and Compressor :

• 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/download.html)

FTP Client:

• FileZilla (http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla/)

Graphics Editor:

• GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/)

Instance Messager:

• Pidgin (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin/)
• Psi (http://psi-im.org/)

Internet Tv:

• Democracy (http://www.getdemocracy.com/)

Media Player:

• VLC Media Player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)
• Songbird (http://www.songbirdnest.com/)
• MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html)

Office Suite:

• Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/index.html)

P2P:

• Frostwire (http://www.frostwire.com/)

Photo Software:

• Google Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/)

Programming IDE:

• Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/)

Programming/Scripting Languages:

• Java (http://www.java.com)
• Perl (http://www.perl.org)
• PHP (http://www.php.net)
• Python (http://www.python.org)
• JavaScript (http://www.mozilla.org/js/js15.html)
• XUL (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/)

Remote-Desktop Tool:

• TightVNC (http://sourceforge.net/projects/vnc-tight/)
• RealVNC (http://www.realvnc.com/)

Satellite Earth Imagery:

• Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/)

Torrent Client:

• BitTorrent (http://sourceforge.net/projects/bittorrent/)

Virtualization:

• VMware Player (http://www.vmware.com/products/player/)
• VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/)

Voip:

• Skype (http://www.skype.com/download/)

Web Server:

• XAMPP (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html)

WYSIWYG HTML Editors :

• Aptana (http://www.aptana.com/download_all.php)
• EasyEclipse (http://sourceforge.net/projects/easyeclipse)
• Nvu (http://www.nvu.com/index.php)