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As far as desktop apps go, I can only discuss Windows apps, since I don't use X at all. Linux = command line as far as I'm concerned.

• Windows Only
• AVG - Antivirus, free if you don't live in Europe.
• Spybot - Antispyware, freeware.
• Winamp - Nice for playing those mp3 collections.
• Kazaa Lite - Nice for getting those mp3 collections. For the legal-minded, substitute a good cd ripping program (I don't know of a good free one, I use a pay app).
• MAME - Bring back the memories.
• Trillian - Save them from the AIM/MSN/ICQ mix and match hell.

• Cross Platform
• Tight VNC - Install it so you can remote-admin their computer easily when they screw it up.
• Mozilla - Either Moz itself or one of it's 'light' siblings Firebird and Thunderbird for email and web browsing.

• Shareware Worth Trying

• Audiograbber: It's free to try, easy to rip with, and only $20 to register.
• GetRight - Assists in downloading all those patches and apps.

Browser: Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 (or 0.7 nightly build)

Email: Thunderbird 0.2 (or 0.3 nightly build)

Office Suite: Open Office 1.1

SSH Client: Putty 0.53b

Graphics: Irfan View 3.85 or GIMP 1.2.5

Music: Winamp 2.91

Virus Scanner: AVG 7.0

Instant Messenger: Psi 0.9 or Trillian Basic 0.74E or gaim 0.70

Non-Copywrited Music downloads :P : WinMX 3.31

Video Player (paired with an ATI Video card): ATI MMC 7.6

FTP : LeapFTP 2.7.4

ok so that was 11 .. sorry ;)

Windows:

Kerio /or Sygate for firewall (both are good)
Aladdin's free StuffIt Expander (unpacks a lot of different compressed files, including SIT and Gunzip's)
AVG antivirus (free for personal home use)
QuickClear lite (deletes IE cookies/cache/empty's trash)
StartPro (well, it used to be free. Gives you a nice list of programs set to load at bootup, including registry keys.)
Ad-Aware everybodies favorite adware/malware answer.

Mandrake is (of course) easy:

Got the Easy Urpmi and follow the directions to install all the different media sites. Once you do that (its just a cut and paste job) you can fire up rpmdrake and search for software by name/description/type/etc. Mandrake installs with a lot of the right stuff already. I'd recommend maybe installing nano (easy command line text editor if you hate VI/VIM/EMACS/ETC) and of course if you running a system with a NVidia card get the NVIDIA drivers (rpmdrake, but if their not listed NVidia will have them).

Here is the page about the free version of AVG.

My suggestions for the Windows side...

For email I'd definitely recommend Eudora as it can be used free (ad based, but small add window) and isn't suceptible to propagating the many viruses that target Outlook.

As someone previously mentioned, I'd also recommend Opera, again, ad based, but a solid browser and mouse gestures rule!

Someone else also mentioned AVG for antivirus, probably the best option for free antivirus.

CDEX is a great MP3 ripping program that I've always used.

We can't forget Sonique and WinAmp for playing your MP3's. I prefer Sonique but that's just me.

Then of course there's Winzip, Adobe Acrobat, QuickTime, VNC, and ZoneAlarm or BlackIce (all available at download.com). These are all (except perhaps VNC) must have utilities for a Windows box.

Although others have said Mozilla as a web browser, I feel that it's too bloated and slow. Try K-Meleon or Opera instead.
CDEx is a great open-source program for ripping your legally-owned CD-audio tracks. Rip them to OGG and feel your 1337ness potential expand.
Try using ZINF instead of WinAmp (bloatware ... I haven't cared for WinAmp since early 2.x) for your sound-playing abilities. The skinning abilites are also a lot better on ZINF, plus it supports more formats than WinAmp does.
If you're not looking at getting the entire OpenOffice.org suite, you can get just AbiWord, which is a great word-processing program. OpenOffice.org, however, is really full-featured and I would say almost a must.
People have already mentioned the free anti-virus software from AVG, but it doesn't hurt to have backups, such as the free online scan from Trend Micro.
As someone else also mentioned, ZoneAlarm is also a great thing to have.
Trillian and/or GAIM are great instant-messaging.

Taking a look through SourceForge and Pricelessware are great places to go and explore on your own as well.

Mozilla Firebird
Mozilla Thunderbird
OpenOffice.org
AVG Anti-Virus
Gaim
VLC Media Player
Spybot Search & Destroy

Here are my most favorite windows apps. Some are free. All at least have trials. They are in no particular order.

Firewall: BlackIce
Virus Scanner: AVG Anti-Virus
Instant Messaging: Trillian
Movie Player: BSPlayer
Web Browser: Slim Browser
Mail Client: The Bat!
Taskbar Improvement: True Launcher Bar
SpyWare Protection: Spybot Search & Destroy
File Compression: Win Rar
Hex Editor: Hex Workshop
Audio Player: Winamp
Ternimal Emulator (telnet/ssh/etc): SecureCRT

My Personal Opinions (Apps I can think of):

Mozilla Thunderbird: Email client that's still in Alpha but has never given me one problem.

Mozilla Firebird: Greatest web browser around today. Here are some reasons why.

Krusader/Windows Commander: Great file managers. Windows Commander is (obviously) the windows original and Krusader is the KDE based *nix one.

Open Office: You already mentioned this one

GAIM: Best IM client avaliable (I know this isn't exactly productivity software).

AVG Anti-Virus : Free non-commerical use anti-virus.

PuTTY: Telnet/SSH/Rlogin, everything you need for remote access.

XMMS/Winamp: Media Players

I am still looking for good financial software. Microsoft Money is the best I've found so far.
cuban

Free Firewall (better than zonealarm)

Free Virus Checker, seems to do pretty well

For all your other free needs

I've been using AVG anti-virus Free edition on my WinXP machine at home for a couple months now. It seems to work OK for a 'bare bones' virus checker.

Try it at: AVG Anti-Virus

AVG Free edition

Zonealarm

Winamp Classic

..they are the first things I install.

I like Grisoft.

For a free Antivirus software go for AVG Anti-Virus. Free for non-commercial, non-networked use. It's what I install on people's machines when they are low on cash, and want to continue running Windows.

It would be a good idea, though, to tell all students to please install software like Ad-Aware and an anti-virus program.

I've found that Agnitum Outpost Firewall is good also: the free version is free for all, as in beer. It does the job nicely: the link is outpost, there are two: 1.0 is the freebie.
There are two free as in beer antiviruses too: the german antivir and grisoft avg.

So far we've seen people mention Grisoft's AVG (which I use at home), Avast, and even F-prot for DOS - but I haven't seen anyone mention this yet

Housecall - online virus scanner-- got someone who thinks they have a virus? Just send em to this site, while it doesn't prevent viruses, it will tell you if any show up! Its good in a pinch, and if you think your current virus scanner might be missing something.

For home and non-commercial users, just switch to AVG Antivirus. See Grisoft (the publisher) for the free download. It is free and it has free updates. Again, only home and non-commerical users can use it for free.

GF.

AVG Antivirus is pretty good, got automatic updates and it's free for personal use.

Get it here. It's free for non-commercial use, even if the interface is a bit baroque. But so is Norton's.

I agree with "Say no to Symantec" but what you should pick up if you're stuck using Windows is AVG Anti-Virus ... you just can't beat the price!

Symantec antivirus for home use is bloated as hell and has required yearly "subscriptions" for some time now. When that nonsense started, I bailed. Antivirus software should at the very least offer free updates to the virus definition files, given the havoc that these things have been causing of late.

Most Windows users will know that something is wrong when "svchost" constantly crashes, prompting for a reboot. The hits on port 135 cause it to bork out. My mom, who is quite "computer illiterate", knew that something was wrong, and called me about it. We corrected the problem by upgrading her virus definitions (which were only a week out of date), and installed ZoneAlarm Free on her machine to stealth the ports from now on.

GRISoft's AVG Antivirus, and ZoneAlarm, are two great and free tools that can fix and prevent these things.

AVG Anti-Virus
Zone Alarm

A year or two ago, I wouldn't have thought that firewalls were so essential for dial-up users. Now, it's important for all users to have them, regardless of the OS.

• AVG AntiVirus
• ZoneAlarm and
• Ad-aware

Why download it off kazaa? There's a perfectly functional, free antivirus program for windows out there. AVG Anti Virus. http://www.grisoft.com/

AVG Antivirus http://www.grisoft.com Is a free (depending on your country of residence)windows based AV that does not use any spyware and has free updates. It has saved my neck quite a few times. I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't currently have any protection. So far it appears to have mostly the same features as others such as Norton AV.

Just to add to the "No Excuse" list, If you dont have a virus scanner because it costs money, or your current Virus Scanner is asking you for money to update, uninstall it and get AVG. It's Free and it works.

If you have a PC running windows, Especially XP with all of it's Virus Friendly Features built in, The Question Isn't IF you will get a virus but WHEN

I am too cheap for an anti-virus checker
There is a (legal) free virus scanner.

Try this free antivirus program on for size. It works for me.
Here...

I've been using AntiVir for a few months on W2K and 98SE machines. Seems to work pretty good.

AVG appears to be another free one but I have not tried it.

I was using an older version of NAV Corporate but it seemed too bloated for some of my slower machines. I've also used the scaled down version of Trendmicro that normally comes packaged with new motherboards, it is limited to 3 months of updates unless you pay for a subscription but the price is reasonable if you want to keep using it.

AVG AntiVirus is free (ony registration with a valid e-mail address is required) and support up-to-date signatures, scheduled scanning, real-time scanning and e-mail scanning.

I recommend AVG Antivirus. Free to download, automatic updates are free as well. I usually install it for friends/neighbours that don't want to shell out Norton Antivirus.

AVG AntiVirus Free Edition is available here: http://www.grisoft.com When I used to use windows, AVG was IMO the best antivirus out there in terms of speed and detection, compared to mcAfee and norton.

• A Win98 Boot Disk with
• CD of Windows 98SE
• Burned CD with Win98SE service packs/patches
• AVG Free Anti Virus (Free - as good as Norton IMHO)
• Winrar (Shareware - handles most archive formats)
• Ranish Partition Manager (Free - runs from bootable floppy)
• Pc Inspector File Recovery software (Free)
• Spybot search & destroy (Free - removes spy ware / Trojans ,ect)
• SpywareBlaster (Free - prevents most spyware, trojan, and "browser help objects(I.E. Gator and Lop.com) from ever being installed in the first place)

I use Quicken 2000 for my finances (haven't upgraded because it does the job). Glad I didn't go with Intuit now that the dirt is out, as I dual-boot and don't want my boot sector messed up.

Hey, isn't virus protection software supposed to prevent applications from changing system areas like the boot sector? I run AVG which is free, but I'm not going to go out and buy TurboTax just to test my theory.

I've recently found AVG , a free anti-virus product. Seems to be working OK, and does an auto-update so it's always fresh.

Give them AVG. It's not too tough to find, google "free anti virus" and it's the first returned result. Most people just don't think to search for that in the first place I think.

AVG antivirus is a free personal virus scanner that can be automatically updated at a certain time ever x days and can automatically scan every day/night at a user defined time.

The last time i tried one of those BIG-NAME ntivirus soultions. (name withheld in fear of a defamation suit), It completely crashed my OS, my Hard Disk and my motherboard. If you want a much cleaner solution try a free Anti-virus from grisoft. Or better still use linux like i do :-) -- using linux with root account is more dangerous than using windows. don't believe me . just do "rm -rf /"

AVG 6.0 Free Edition

The only downside is that the data file is updated only about once a week, and you have to be careful about which version of the file you get. But I doubt the typical family PC's virus scanner gets updated more than once or twice a year anyway, if ever.

Oh no, the users have to download a free virus scanner like AVG to remove it.

Unless you're from Europe of course.

I use AVG from Grisoft and just updated the signature file. I am SOOooo glad I use a freeware/shareware product that keeps up with REAL virus and not marketing. As they say here in the U.S. "There ought to be a law..."

I have heard ver nice things about GriSoft.

Quit being a cheap ass, and go buy McAfee Viruscan for $29.99 at WalMart.

Why?

I don't mind commercial software, and I would pay much more than $30 for a good antivirus program, but the fact is, McAfee is bloated and ethically challenged, kind of like the operating sytems it runs on.

Norton isn't much better.

An Antivirus program should be small. It should take up little memory and only be as big as is needed to do the work. It's functions should be non-obtrusive and every function should be optional. It should not have compulsory splash screens or animations, or sounds, or any other "glitz" to make it look more like a multimedia extravaganza than a utility.

I used to recommend Innoculate IT Personal until it went commercial, and even still I recommend it for those willing to pay.

Now I recommend AVG, from http://www.grisoft.com It's fairly small, it's free for personal home use, and it's effective.

As for the FBI Spyware crap -- I don't know if AVG reports it or not, but at least if it doesn't, it's not like you PAID money only to be betrayed, which is something I can't say about McAfee.

Have your mother take a look at www.grisoft.com. They have a free edition with monthly updated virus definitions. Which I think is much better then no checking.

http://www.grisoft.com, in my opinion, about the best virus program out there.

1. It's free (with no ads or other annoyances)
2. It scans both incoming *and* outgoing e-mails for virii if you so choose. (It will even tag them as certified virus free by Grisoft if you want.)
3. Just because it's free (although they do sell commercial versions) doesn't mean you don't get updates or anything. They already have an updated database (out today) for Goner.

Anyway, just something for the Windows people who don't have one of the commercial virus apps already, I've loved AVG since I put it on.

Also, doesn't look like AVG was targetted for deletion by this virus, course that just means AVG isn't very well known, but nice to know for me anyway....

You might want to ake a look at These Guys. Good, free AV for windozers...

Since Innoculate IT was turned into costly crap I have swithced to AVG AntiVirus System [Grisoft.Com or Grisoft.Cz].

So far it seems fine for free Windows antivirus software. It's not overly bloated, it has some pretty simple Heuristics and it interfaces with Outlook to scan incoming and outgoing e-mail.

For those not wanting to use the pretty crappy commercial stuff, it's nice to have a free alternative even if may not be too much better.

When all things suck equally, I go for the cheapest. ;-)

A virus expert (one of makers of antivirus software AVG) I have never seen f2f but whom I know for 10 years from czech&slovak FIDO network confirmed that it exists. He also added that we can expect to see much more press articles regarding the virus as the actual instances of it :-) So as the title says, don't panic. The author is 19-year old student and apparently all he wants is publicity (how many of you hit the news in 19? :-))