According to Wikipedia Debian has 26000 packages. Is it possible to have 1) a list of those packages grouped by categories 2) the name of the corresponding package in Windows (where applicable) ?

1) Yes, you can either visit their site to have a look at all the packages they have available. Packages are conveniently placed into categories. Or you can install debian and work it out from there.
2) there are a few sites that have this kind of thing but I can't quote any address off the top of my head. "Corresponding" is relative, of course. What is it that windows offers? a kernel, a browser, a few utilities, a window manager and a media player. Not that many items to compare it would appear. And you'll get all of those - and more - if you install only the first debian cd.

http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages

The rest is up to you

Jay73 & Dutch Master, thanks for your answers.

Although if I understand well (and I hope not) the situation is disappointing: if I look for a package that implement a specific functionality I'm supposed to go to the site Dutch Master is mentioning and to look for the package either using a keyword or browsing (sequentially?) the 26000 packages.

What I'm trying to achieve is to check if I find in Debian the packages or, of course, an equivalent of what I'm using in Windows.

@ Jay73
1) do you know the site address you're referring to ? I knew only the site Dutch Master is referring and there is no way to have the packages grouped in any order other than alphabetically
2) I've not been able to explain well enough to let me understand: I'm looking to a correspondence (where applicable and, I agree with you, always relative) considering ALL the packages running in a MS platform, not only those in a core Windows OS.

Hi,
you might be interested in the following :
http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html

hope that helps
cheers

Thanks for your input, Samael26. It would be nice to have a reacher "table of equivalents/replacements" but I understand it's difficult.

What I'm still missing, and I'm surprised not to find one, it's the list of Debian packages divided in categories (and sub-categories). I strongly believe that with this gap Debian doesn't leverage the biggest pro it has over the other distros: the number of packages in its repositories.

Maybe you didn't understand the link I gave you: on that page you can select a version (stable, testing, unstable) and it shows a 2nd page with categories of applications.

Caught !!! Without reading the content of the page I was focusing on the search box !!!

I'm happy now, thanks

The table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux.
Last update: 07.07.2007, 25.11.2007 (in progress)

Not too terribly out of date if this is the sort of thing you are looking for..

Thanks for the link, farslayer, but...you're arrived second !!! (Look 4 posts before)