I am often asked by family, friends, and coworkers (I work in IT and have contact with a large number of end-users) what applications I use, and what I recommend that they use. I do suggest GNU/Linux, but clearly most of them are using Windows and prefer to keep it that way for now.
Here is the list of applications which I usually give them. Granted, some of these are NOT "free as in freedom" but are rather just "free as in beer" since, as noted elsewhere in this thread, for some categories of software there is no open source package available for Windows, or at least none available that your proverbial Grandma could be expected to use without installing Cygwin or something. (Obviously this list is aimed more at your Grandma than at the average GNU/Linux user, since that is the target audience. In real life I only use some of these applications myself. However, I do support family and friends who use them.)
You could, of course, argue that better choices could be made, and you'd be correct....
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