There's lots of browsers for Linux.  My personal favorite is Firefox, the latest browser from Mozilla.org.  Firefox has one major drawback... it won't let you run more than one instance of the program under the same "profile".  Mozilla has several browsers, editors, and email clients available.  Opera is another good browser.  And, of course, you can stick with KDE's native Konquerer, or whatever is incorporated with gnome.  For email, my favorite is Thunderbird from Mozilla.  I tried Netscape and promptly removed it from my system due to pop-ups galore.  If you really need it, Internet Explorer works through wine.  If you need Internet Explorer like features consider Opera.  Opera can be configured to report itself as MSIE 6.0 so you can access difficult sites such as financial institutions that require IE.  The free version has a very polite ad banner.  The only drawback to Opera is the cluttered page window.  There is a quick toolbar that refuses to be turned off permanently.  Other than that, Opera is the best browser with tabbed browsing plus all the other bells and whistles.

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There are quite a few media players available.  I've tried several, and found they all do an excellent job of playing multimedia.  The XMMS cross platform multimedia player has the usual controls, an equalizer, and saves playlists.  To change the "skin" right-click anywhere in the XMMS window and select Options-Skin Browser from the pop-up menu.  A clean and readable skin I've found is "Helix-Sawfish".  You can find it, and more on the XMMS website.  I've been searching for streaming music, but haven't found it yet.

Openoffice.org is an excellent office suite.  It will gladly import MSOffice files, but any macros you had will not function.  I haven't used this suite extensively, but from what I've seen it works well.  My grandaughter uses it under WinXP instead of MSOffice97, because Openoffice works better for multilple users under XP.  Openoffice.org has word processing, spreadsheet, drawing and presentation applications.

For those ex-Windows users who miss Publisher and/or PrintShop, Scribus is the best Linux alternative I've found.  The drawback for casual users who just want to make greeting cards, announcements, etc, is that Scribus is truly professional quality.  There are no cookie cutter casual user templates readily available.  However, Scribus affords the user a wider range of creativity and there are some professional quality templates being offered that can be found on the Scribus site.  I have made a guide (1.1MB), using Scribus, intended for Windows imigrants.  The Scribus file can be found in my downloads page.  Sorry, there's no Windows version of Scribus.  SuSE Professional offers Scribus in its standard installation.  However, I found and installed the latest version with little effort.  The Scribus web site provides RPM's for the 1.2 release for Debian, Fedora/RedHat, and SuSE distributions.  To get the latest RPM from Scirbus go to www.scribus.net, click on Downloads, then Development.  The last rpm I got was version 1.2 , and it is fantastic. 

I've only used "The GIMP", included in most distributions.  It has done everything I've needed from simple drawings to digital photo editing with excellent results. In my opinion, The GIMP is complete with the exception of creating batch thumbnails.  I suspect that even that is included in there somewhere.  I haven't had the need to look for any other graphics editors.
I have come to the conclusion that there are no easily acquired free personal finance applications, at least for a SuSE installation.  Every one that looked promising had dependencies and conflicts that could not be easily resolved.  Even the dependencies had alarming dependencies and conflicts.  The following is a list of commercial software that I am trying.  It will grow until I find one I like.

• Moneydance: $29.99 Very nice!  Register entry is neat and efficient, in check format.  You can make savings accounts as child accounts to your checking (to "hide" money from yourself).  Child account transactions are shown in the reconcile window, but I had "include child accounts" checked.  The preferences include automatic file saving and backup options (nice).  It also includes a good reminders calendar.  Reminders from the calendar show up on the "Root" view making it easy to enter transactions by clicking each reminder.  The look and feel is polished and not too "busy" with fluffy stuff as in Quicken.  Moneydance is my pick.
  

• Kapital:  $39.95 Used for one week.  User interface is blocky and fixed.  Categories cannot be seen in the register's drop down list.  It does offer asset accounts and transaction reminders through a calendar.  Kapital's web site references February 2003 as if it hasn't happened yet.  I don't have much confidence in "The Kompany" if that is the case.  I sent an email to "The Kompany" about the categories drop-down list problem and the only response I got was "I don't know what application you're talking about."  I returned with the application name and have heard nothing.  Kapital got kicked to the kurb!

• KMyMoney:  This was included in the SuSE 9.1 release that I recently installed.  It works just fine, but is not as polished as Moneydance.

"Nvu" is my HTML editor of choice, so far.  The interface is easy to use, you can have several pages open at once, and it's easy to switch between WYSIWYG and source code.  I haven't used the "publish" option in Nvu bacause I prefer to use the KBear FTP manager, which was included in the SuSE Linux 9.1 release.  Openoffice.org has html capabilities, but I found it difficult to use.  Mozilla has built-in html editing, but when I tried it long ago I wasn't impressed.  It may be better now.  Amaya is another html editor, but it seems intended for more advanced users.  Another FTP client is Igloo FTP.  If you use Igloo, make sure you have your user name and password setup correctly, or the program hangs. 

Why in the world would someone need or want to access Linux files from Windows?  I experienced a Linux system failure (gasp!) that I could not fix.  I had just purchased Moneydance and forgot to print the email with the keycode.  I also had several nice things that I had not backed up recently.  Windows was unaffected, but could not see my Linux partition.  I was in a pickle.  After three hours, I found numerous tools.  LTools, ext2fsnt and explore2fs all failed to work under XP.  Total Commander (shareware) was the only application that worked.  Through TC, your Linux partition appears as another computer on a local network.  I backed up my files, using drag-and-drop, and was able to re-install Linux from scratch.  Total Commander is shareware.  My philosophy on shareware is if I use it more than twice I'll pay for it.

• Distribution - A retail product with enhancements to the basic Linux system.  Some popular "distros" are Red Hat, Debian, Fedora, Mandrake, and SuSE.
• Dependencies - core code that can be used for several programs.  These are like Windows DLL's