Unfortunately, most media formats have

There are many games available for Linux. Loki Software has made its business porting popular Windows games to the Linux platform. Those ported include Quake III, Myth, and many others. There are also a number of opensource games. In addition to toy games like Solitair and MineSweeper, there is LinCity, a SimCity clone, and FreeCiv, a Civilization clone. Finally, many Windows games can be run in Linux using Wine.

There are many other tasks that people commonly use their home machine for. One such task is managing personal finance. Indeed, Intuit made all its money selling Quicken, the personal finance program for Macs and PCs. For Linux, there's GnuCash.

GnuCash is a full-featured personal finance manager. It includes checkbook ledger, stock-market tracking, and other features one would expect of a personal finance manager.

Wine is a program that lets you run Windows programs in Linux. Strictly speaking, it is not an emulator. Rather, it is a Win32 interface to Linux and X window. This means that there is minimal slow down caused by running Windows applications in Wine.

Wine is perhaps most commonly used to run Windows games in Linux. Indeed, a large degree of effort has been put towards making Windows games run in Wine. There is even a company, TransGaming, that has this as its business model. Many popular Windows games run without glitch, and many more run with some glitches. Sadly, network support can be lacking in some games.

Other windows applications that have no Linux equivalent can be run in Wine with varied degrees of success. Apple's QuickTime viewer is perhaps the most oft-cited example. Apple has never released a Linux version of QuickTime, one of the more popular media formats on the internet. In some versions of Wine, in particular, in recent TransGaming versions, QuickTime Player runs just fine.