Below I provide the links to the most commonly used operating system and application softwares used in my computers (I have in practical 1 desktop runnng dual boot on WinXP and Linux Suse, 1 laptop running on Linux Suse, and few desktops cluster running on Debian Linux). Not all softwares are free, in fact some of the are commercially quite expensive. However, most of the have a one-moonth free trial version which can be downloaded for free. Of course, the program will no longer work after 1 month.

The links refer to the main page of the company or individuals who develop the softwares. You may need to follow the instructions given there to bring you to the download site. Please refer to the instruction/documentation given for downloading and installation.

Operating systems

	Windows. Very popular, but very expensive operating system. Nevertheless, some of its programs are free and useful, for example DirectX and Windows AntiSpyware.
	Debian Linux. It might be the most similar to the original Linux OS (created by Linus Trovald). We use this for our SPS computer cluster. But I will not recommend this for first-time Linux user. First of all, you need to know some basic console commands, then some knowledge about Linux system administration. GUI is not very supported here.
	Suse Linux. Free for download, this version of linux has probably the best graphics as compared to other. Also its YAST system make installation very easy, just follow step-by-step in Windows-kind of style. I use this for my laptop and home desktop. As opposite to Debian, I think GUI is very supported here. First-time Linux user may try this one.
	RedHat Linux. The Fedora version is free, but its Enterprise edition is not. I used to run this in my laptop, that was RedHat 8.0, but it has problem with my nVidia graphics card... need to install extra drivers first... installation not as easy as the SuSe version, but still managable. I've never installed the Fedora version personally.
	Mandrake Linux.
	Knoppix Linux. Linux on CDs, it comes very handy when your computer crashes, and you want to save your data first (if it can be salvaged) before re-formatting. Should be able to run in any hard-ware.

System Administration & Files Management

	WinRAR. A very good compressing software. It can also handle *.tar.gz of *.tar file extensions, those usually used by Linux tar commands
	Winzip
	Alcohol 120%. Very good CD-image reading program. It's equipped with features, such as burning image to CD, or creating the CD-image from the original CD. Trial version is available.
	Symantec Norton Antivirus. The most commonly used antivirus program currently.
	Nero. The most commonly used CD/DVD-burner program currently.

Text Processors & Viewers

	Latex. This is a very good word-processing software. Commonly used among scientists for publishing journals, it's very convenient to type equation. Although it's not a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) kind of application, it actually doesn;t take very much time to master it.
	Miktex. Latex developed specifically for Windows, and it's free!!! It also come with the DVI viewer, and software to convert it to PostScript files
	GhostScript. This is used to veiew *.ps (PostScript) files.
	Acrobat Reader. This is used to view the most-commonly found *.pdf files. Unfortunately the free version of Acrobat Reader doesn't support converting files to PDF. Hence, another software, CutePDF can be used. Its non-commercial version, CutePDF Writer, print any files to PDF format.
	DjVu. This comes handy for viewing scanned files, run as a plug-in to your internet browser. Works well with IE, as well as Mozilla (including Firefox).
	OpenOffice. Developed and distributed for free to compete with MS Office. Although it's not as sophisticated as MS Office yet, it is quite sufficient, especially since afterall noone has ever really used all the "extra" features in MS Office.
	Vim. Something similar to Notepad, but more sophisticated than Notepad . Developed originally for Linux, this can be run on Windows as well nowadays. It's very helpful for coding in programming or Latexing, because it can highlight the basic codes for easy-viewing.
	Emacs. Another text editor program.

Multimedia Players & Codecs

	RealPlayer
	QuickTime Player
	DivX. Important codec for viewing, say for example *.avi files.
	XviD. Another codec which I think is deloped along with DivX (as the name suggests), although I'm not sure what's the difference with the DivX codec.
	ac3filter
	Winamp
	I-tunes. Apple version fo winamp.

Computational, Programming & Development

	Mathwork Matlab
	Wolfram Mathematica, click on "Other Wolfram Sites" to bring you to other Stephen Wolfram's web resources.
	SigmaPlot. Very good sofware for statistics and data analysis . Unfortunatelyu it's not free, although the one-month-or-so trial period is available.
	Sun Java. Most probably the most popular Object Oriented Programming. The SDK is free for download. Its IDE, Sun ONE Studio, it's not free but trial version is available.

Design & Image Processing

	Macromedia
	Adobe Creative
	Gimp

Browser & Network

	Netscape. Last time it used to compemete with IE. I think the current version stops at Netscape 8. Afterthat, the developer switch to Mozilla.
	Mozilla Firefox.
	Opera
	Bittorent
	eMule
	MSN Messanger. The most popular MSN chatting program.
	Yahoo! Messanger
	SSH. I use this to connect to my SPS host computer from any Windows machine. But the problem is that you need to install this first. GUI is supported. Transferring files is as easy as drag-and-drop. It's not a fully freeware, however free version is available. If you're running from home computer, download the SSH for workstations instead of for servers.
	PuTTy. This functions almost the same as SSH. In fact, I thinkl they work using the same method. However, this one doens' need to be installed.You just need to download it, put it on the desktop, double-click, and run the program. I find it very useful when I need to connect to SPS host computer from the computer who doesn't have SSH installed.

Accessories

	ObjectDock. Making your Windows taskbar looks like the one in Apple's I-book.

External Drivers & Softwares

	Nokia PC Suite. Go to "Support", click on "Phone Support" tab, and choose "PC Suite" to download the software that connect your Nokia handphone with your desktop.
	Palm Desktop. Go to "Support", choose the model accordingly, and download the driver needed to connect your Plam handheld with your desktop.