0. Operating System OS  Ubuntu/Kubuntu

1. Office software for documents, spreadheets etc (eg. http://openoffice.org)

2. pdf (eg. pdf995.com to write pdfs, reader is free anyway) openoffice.org can also export pdfs

3. web authoring tools (something like dreamweaver, but free) NVU http://www.nvu.com/index.php

4. ssh/ftp tools (http://www.ssh.org) http://winscp.net/

5. image editors (basic operations like sizing, compression, cropping etc) GIMP http://www.gimp.org and SCRIBUS
http://www.scribus.net/

a6. image editors (on the scale of photoshop - esp for making event posters, etc; also something like imageready - for making web banners) GIMP http://www.gimp.org/

7. album makers ( http://www.raizlabs.com/software/magic/magicHelp.htm   See http://lwn.net/Articles/131394/ for a comparision.