My Mac Tower is Dead. Let the laugh riot begin.

I was so happy when I first got my new and modern Mac.  I had been out of the Mac world for about 8 years.  Using Lightwave had convinced me to flip.  At the time OS9 was the newest OS and Windows2000 was just catching on.  For whatever reason Newtek was not doing well with the Mac version of Lightwave.  So, when I could afford it, I built my first Windows box of my own.

Last year I decided I had been away long enough, and dropped almost $3500Can on a new 8core MacPro tower. 
Really Apple?   2GB of RAM?  Really? 
As per irony, something happened at the point where a simple repair could cost you as much as a car.   A few months into it's second year, there came the unexpected, sudden and completely typical failure.  Mysterious hardware failure never seems to happen during warranty period.

So, once I realized my normal tech efforts were not going to be able to repair a computer that is unable to read DVDs.   I was sad, and completely discouraged.

Ironically, I had just finished building a decent quad-core windows machine only months before I made the decision to leap into the Mac chasm and into 64bit la la land.  So, when there was a gala of failure, when I heard the delicious whine of a hard drive spinning down, when it was supposed to be booting.  I knew.  My windows box would save me.

Within 24 hours I had changed my mind.  Windows, although wonderful really didn't call to me.  Ubuntu on the other hand had just been installed.  Whatever the Mac OS was, Ubuntu was genetically it's brother... or sister if you prefer.  Yeah!  I would try to do my work... in Ubuntu!  I decided to put the open source mantra where it's mantra mouth is.

So the question became - rather quickly - is there software out there that could cut the mustard?  With windows, I would need to purchase some of the Mac software I used, but could I find software just as capable for free?
I would need to find replacements for the following.

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, AE
Dreamweaver, Lightroom,
Newtek Lightwave - fPrime
Maxwellrender

...and many more I'm forgetting.

So on to figure out a solution to all those trapped and alone HFS drives filling my Mac...