Go about it the wrong way, what you should ask is what is the linux equivalent of X.
Your enjoy linux a good deal more, if you avoid trying to run windows software in it.
3d; BLENDER - Extremely Powerful 3d engine for modeling, gaming, riging, texturing, you name it, check out blender for 3d comes with most distro's
CAD: Google CAD + Linux, and have a look at what is out their
Visual 08: Like visual studios, like programming, WHY WHY, would you write windows code in linux
Linux has tons of IDE and programming languages. Look at
Eclipse
Genie
their are other but can't think of them off the top of my head
QT Creator
etc, etc, etc
Linux uses the GNU C compiler and GNU C++. It has has java, ruby, perl, php, cobal.....
Visual Basic, .net, C# to the best of my knowledge or windows specific. Though that defeats the purpose of .net but I believe their is osx support not positive though.
Gnome has built in tools for customization
KDE especially KDE 4 (4.3 is pretty nice) has tons of tools BUILD in for customizing your workspace. Its not like windows, you don't have to download malware to edit the task bar, or change your windows decorations.
You can make you own, edit existing, or search the massive databases of
kde-look.org and/or gnome-look.org
Linux, is the kernel, and what runs on top of it is highly modular and can be interchanged with other aspects. You can have md5 password encrytion or blowfish or any of the others its all in your personal preference.
If you know little about linux, OpenSuse or Ubuntu make a great desktop/workstation
Fedora makes a great development server or a crappy desktop
Slackware will kick your a**, but your learn alot about how linux works
Debian is what Ubuntu is based on. It more stable but not as current if your not looking for the newest of the newest I highly recommend it, as it won't crash as frequently as fedora and ubuntu. Btw I'd avoid fedora right now any way, their in the process of a complete over haul of the code and packages and the system is frankly broken in the latest release, 12 or 13 might be a good point to jump on with them, or go back to 10.
So
Debian 5 +
Fedora 10 +
Ubuntu 9.04 +
OpenSuse 11.1 +
Slackware 12 + (might be 12.1 or 12.2 by now)
Fedora 11 -
OpenSuse 11 -