I find that's generally true on Linux, my preferred dev platform of choice - but I did pay for BoundsChecker/Purify for windows (valgrind is comparable) visual c++ 6 and visual assist (nothing is as nice is free. Not even vs 2012 which is not free)
I also grudgingly pay for one copy of ms office for compatibility reasons.
Balsamiq for mockups, Sublime Text for webdev, Visual Assist for C/C++ on Visual Studio, PVS for SCA, 3DS/Maya for modeling, Photoshop for graphics, Office for business shit...
I have had zero problems with Virtual Box on Fedora running Office under Windows 7, plus SublimeText and SourceTreeApp (a .NET hog) when I've needed to ensure cross-platform operation for a few in-house tools.