i use ubuntu as my main OS, don't have windows install alongside...

wine is deadly... but a decent web browser is all you need now-a-days... i suggest chrome.

KUbuntu is so much better though.
Personally, I used to use SuSe, but with my new laptop decided to switch because at Ubuntu is now mainstream enough that I can get native drivers, which are always a bit nicer to use.

So yeh, my first comments would be get Kate & if you do any form of scientific writing get Kile.

As for good programs, there are some lovely brainteasers, but other than that just get stuff when you need it!

@Puddle: there is a ton of great software. Depends on what you want to do or what you need it for. Can you elaborate?

@figles: I think it's a matter a preference (gnome vs kde). Personally, I prefer gnome.

GIMP and Inkscape are great graphics editing tools.

I think you'll find that KDE is more popular in Europe and Gnome is more popular in America.

@yebellz - I agree, but I much prefer the way KDE lets me try and run my computer, whereas Gnome tries to hide everything from me.
I rather see them as Windows & Mac in that respect.

Agree with Gimp/Inkscape. To be honest anything you currently use that's free is likely to be available to you.

Also a little tip for you - use Symlinks to map your linux documents folder to the same as your windows one. Then no matte which side you log on with you'll get the same documents. That said, I tried merging my firefox profiles and it wasn't too impressed!

I keep a bootable persistent Ubuntu install on a thumb drive. I can boot it up on any PC anywhere and access the internal hardware. Handy tool.

Amarok is a good quality music player, a necessity on every OS.

@ abgemacht : I think Gnome is more popular in Europe too, or at least in France.

I use xubuntu (Im more of a xfce man then a Gnome/KDE guy, and don't get me started on unity)

When I had the need to use a music player I used xmms2 since it ran good from terminal.

Wine to run most applications produced for windows, that I still want to use.

Virtual Box with a virtual win XP installation to run Magic Online.

VLC as my movieplayer of choice.

xchat for irc.

etc. Almost everything that you have used on windows will have a decent version on gnu/linux, and for the other few applications wine/virtual box is there.

Puddle, one of the great joys is going through all available software and finding a suitable match for you. Play around with it, if you need software for anything, Google and check out what available applications there are, try them all! It's fun.

Ditto Gimp/Inkscape/Amarok/VLC.

Wine is next to useless if you have a windows dual boot unless you demand that you run windows programs from ubuntu, more trouble than it's worth if you ask me.

Learn how to use apt-get and aptitude to look for packages as well (both what's available and what's installed) if you don't already know how.

The software center is good but limited. It only has available packages from repositories, and though it has alot of good stuff it also contains a decent amount of crap. (also, you may want to go adjust the settings in the software center that allow you to see and get packages from the multiverse)

If you do any coding, I'd recommend dumping open-jdk-6 and get sun-java-6 instead, more stable and I have no clue why they switched. Google around for instructions on this it's not that hard. Also if you do any scientific or engineering stuff, octave and qtoctave are good matlab like tools (command line and GUI respectively). I'm a robotics hobbyist and find ROS (Robotic Operating System from willowgarage.com) to be an awesome tool, steep learning curve but extremely powerful once you learn it. Likely I'm one of the few who would find this even remotely interesting though.

For music player, I'm going to shout out for Guayadeque. Its quite a 'light' GUI for gStreamer, but was the only one I could find that correctly sorted by music library by Album artist rather than simply 'artist'.

@Leif - What issues have you had with open-jdk-6? As for justifying the switch, I'm assuming they'd always choose the open source version when possible.

Now, off to upgrade to Nutty, then back to windows to fight 7SP1

I'm a loooong time linux user. Started with slackware, then SuSE, then debian, then back to SuSE... then ubuntu finally got me off my SuSE love...

Learn apt and learn the command line. You 'kids' these days are too tied to the gui. X has a way of falling on its face if you aren't careful, so make sure you can do things on the command line in a pinch.
My fav non-standard app? tilda. The name comes from how you opened up the 'cheat' console in doom and quake. It's the same in ubuntu, except it brings down a transparent console window. I can't live without it.
Other than that, gnome-do is great if you are a gnome user. Ctrl-space and start typing in the app, then hit enter... no need to deal with the 'start' menu.

As far as gnome/kde: it is a matter of preference, but I was a loooong time KDE fan (SuSE is KDE), but when gnome finally matured and KDE went off on it's 'workspace' kick, I found that when I wanted to tweak the UI, it was simple in gnome and just... worked.... KDE gave me all kinds of options, but even when I fine tuned it, it still wouldn't work for me. I had a hell of a time with dual monitors in KDE (on a laptop... turn off the laptop monitor, and use 2 external monitors... still can't figure it out on KDE).

I, personally, hate wine. It's bloated, doesn't work half the time.... I would rather have virtual box (the full app, not the stuff you get from the canonical sources) with a WinXP or 7 install. You can even setup virtualbox to boot up your other partition if you walk through the instructions to do that...

Flash (adobe) has always been a PITA... causing firefox to slow to a crawl. But it looks like they finally fixed it a few months ago, so make sure you have the latest version.... and use chrome... it is soooo much faster on ubuntu than firefox.

Pidgin is the IM choice for me. It isn't the default, but the default (which is empathy, I believe) isn't as mature as pidgin.

I also suggest using the sun java jdk's over the open ones. The open ones have had memory leaks and crashes for me for applications, and has some weird compiler rules when I work on some complex java code. It also doesn't play well with eclipse.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but that's all I got for now...

Oh... one last one, and this is for windows/mac/linux if you ahve two (or more) computers next to each other:
Synergy

It shares the keyboard and mouse across computers AND operating systems. I have 2 windows laptops open and on, and 1 linux system (dual monitor) on. I can move my mouse from one system to the next seamlessly (it even keeps a hold of text on your clipboard across OS's).

It is impressive to see in action and isn't difficult to setup if you don't mind working with settings in a config file instead of a gui.

@ fortknox,

ditto the command line. So much power, so little respect.

Eclipse is the primary issue I've had with open-jdk but I've also had a few other non-standard problems crash with open-java. No such issues with sun-java. Open java also seemed to maginfy firefox's shortcommings in ubuntu, these are less with sun-java, but I should probably check out chrome.. Also had a few open-jdk problems with ROS before I switched but as ROS is mostly C++ and python these weren't huge.

I'll have to check out synergy as well that's sounds way too incredibly useful. Also I'm gonna need to take a look at the full app version of virtual box, I've stayed away from all related programs because of the ineptitude of Wine.

@ figlesquidge
As big a fan of open source as I am, open source for the sake of open source is not always the best. See above for issues I've had with open-jdk.

I agree with you there don't worry. I didn't know the open version was significantly inferior to the sun one - in which case clearly the switch is logical.

IM choice - I'm all for Kopete. Not quite sure why, might be historical thing, but I really like it.

kopete is nifty, and I used it back in the day... but pidgin just has sooooo many plugins and options.

No argument intended, I disagree with some in the open-source community who hold to the open-source or nothing dogma, but I can at least see their logic. I have no problem if they wish to follow that creed, (it does afterall help over time to fill the needs and gaps in the open source world). I just get upset when that sort tries to tell me I have to be open-source or nothing. Sorry if I came off as defenseive..

Archlinux with Awesome (Openbox before that) was my thing. Now i just run a 'simple' Ubuntu on a pretty old pc.
Really happy with Linux in general. I agree that you should try a lot of different packages and find the software you like that way.
I also would recommend trying MPD to play your music, great system and a nice 'exercise' to get into Linux.

OH! How could I forget the best thing in Ubuntu: Compiz!

Get that and you will *never* go back to windows!

compiz isn't needed in the newer forms of ubuntu (when they moved from xorg.conf to xrandr) for basic composting, but if you want to go nuts with all the different animations and stuff, compiz is an option...

BUT if you don't have a decent graphics card, compiz will be a nightmare for you.

Can you get the Cube without Compiz?

I don't know... I'd have to check when I get home. I don't use compiz at work because the laptop is old, and I'm stretching the graphics card to the max already, and I don't turn it on at home, because it gets too distracting ;)

I do know that transparency works without compiz, which is the only compositing I do.

I would say about 50% of my day is twirling the cube on my computer : )

Abge +1
Just to say, Kubuntu 11.04 looks beautiful.