I'm far from a linux guru - but I'm pretty sure the major distributions of linux all have package management systems that have made installation of packages significantly easier.

That's true now for the most part yeah.

Jira is a great piece of software, but I wouldn't see all that much crossover between it and Sharepoint, combined with Confluence probably.

Confluence is a pretty damn good wiki. Combining it with a couple of plugins (AWP and Gliffy/Diagramly) gives you online documentation with revision control, customizable workflows and a diagram editor.

I'm actually a fan of almost everything Atlassian. Their commercial support has been fantastic for all the weird and wonderful issues i've ever had.

Sorrow, you're right about confluence having more in common with share point instead of jira. But one large function we use it for is change request management. SP survives because there is a huge user base of people who prefer to create Office docs and upload them as opposed to creating content directly on a wiki style cms

Well OT now, but attaching the files to a custom Jira workflow would probably work ok. We run our 'Quality Management System' in Confluence ie. Procedures, Work Instructions etc

bah, SharePoint 2010 is boss. awesome platform imo

ColdFusion is my nomination for most poorly designed rubbish