The Firefox 2.0.0.12 web browser empowers you to browse web pages faster, more safely, and more efficiently. Key features include pop-up blocking to stop those annoying ads, tabbed browsing to let you view multiple web pages in a single window, and opening links in the background so that they’re ready for viewing when you’re ready to read them. The toolbars are fully customizable. Don’t like the default order of the buttons? Right click, select “customize” and drag that button where you want it. Additionally you can expand Firefox’s functionality using a wide variety of extensions. Possibly the best reason to start using Firefox is its enhanced security. Built with your security in mind from the start, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by preventing harmful ActiveX controls, and offers a comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity private. In this age of rampant virus, trojan and phishing attacks, Firefox provides a secure alternative.

Firefox comes with Flash, Java, a PDF reader, and a media player included and pre-configured!

Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 is a feature rich email application that enables you to organize, secure and customize your email.

Abiword.2.4.6 (includes PDF plug-in) is a fully featured, but lightweight word processing application.

OpenOffice.org 2.3 is a full featured productivity suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, web page editor and presentation program. Documents are stored in a compressed, open-standard XML format to ensure future availability of your data and to reduce file sizes. You can read and write documents in a wide range of formats including Microsoft Office.

The word processor component, Writer, is suitable for the production of professional documents, reports, newsletters, and brochures. A powerful spreadsheet module called Calc contains sophisticated tools for calculation, data analysis and visualisation, its built-in charting tools are able to generate customisable 2D and 3D charts. The presentation utility, Impress (which also includes a PowerPoint convertor), uses effects, animation and drawing tools to help you create effective multimedia slide shows to present your the way you want to. Use the Draw component to produce either simple diagrams or complex 3D illustrations and special effects for use in documents and presentations. The database tool, Base, give you all the tools you need for day to day database work in a simple spreadsheet-like form.

Scribus 1.3.3.11 is a professional desktop publishing application, with a combination of 'press-ready' output and new approaches to page layout. With it you can create any printed material, from brochures, magazines, bulletins, and books. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus contains professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations and ICC colour management. It also supports OpenType Fonts and Unicode text including right to left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew.

Nvu 1.0 is a fully featured What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) web page editor, enabling you to create compelling web pages without having to devote months to learning HTML. Nvu includes an integrated FTP site manager, a style sheet editor, tabbed workspaces, and all the features you’ve come to expect from a fully-featured web page editor. It also features integrated support for HTML code validation, to help you make your HTML as clean and light-weight as possible.

OpenOffice.org Writer/Web is the web design component of OpenOffice.

The GIMP 2.4.5 (or GNU Image Manipulation Program) is suitable for those wanting to manipulate digital photographs, design and export graphics for the web, convert images from one file format to another, or even produce complex high-resolution compositions for print. The GIMP features a number of paint tools with sub-pixel sampling for high quality anti-aliased brush strokes, a powerful gradient editor and blend tool, layers and layer masks with over 20 blending modes, support for importing and exporting in a myriad of image formats, unsharp mask, levels and curves tools for enhancement of digital photos and much more! The GIMP is a feature-packed program which may seem overwhelming at firstm, so referring to the GIMP website for information is suggested.

Mtpaint 3.21 is a free drawing program designed for simplicity, but with a host of features.

GThumb 2.10.8 allows viewing of a wide variety of graphics files.

Dia 0.95-1 can be used to draw a variety of diagrams to suit your needs, such as entity-relationship models, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and simple circuits.

Use PDFedit 0.4.1 to generate and manipulate PDF documents. PDF (Portable Document Format) files are the de-facto standard in electronic publishing, because the author can be sure that the document will look as intended on all platforms, regardless of local fonts or lack thereof.

Evince is a fast, lightweight PDF viewer.

Ganttproject is a free and easy to use Gantt chart based project scheduling and management tool. Major features include: task hierarchy and dependencies, gantt chart, resource load chart, generation of PERT chart, PDF and HTML reports, MS project import/export, and WebDAV based groupwork.

Freemind 0.9.0 is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has turned it into high productivity tool.

Leafpad is intended to be a replacement for the Notepad program that is included as part of Windows. Like Notepad, Leafpad is small, fast, and has few frills.

MPlayer is a fully equipped GUI based media player. It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, and more!

Audacious is a GUI based media player with a useful set of plug-ins pre-installed.

Skype is a peer-to-peer VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) network that lets users exchange voice calls, instant messages, files, and videos between computers as well as from computers to telephones, and from telephones to computers.

Pigdin is an Internet Messaging (chat) client that enables you to chat with others in real time using any supported network, including AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC and Jabber. Pigdin can be simultaneously connected to several networks, so if you have contacts on different networks you can talk to them all at the same time, from one easy to use program.

LinNeighborhood & Samba. LinNeighborhood is a GUI frontend for browsing Microsoft machines and Networks (workgroups & Domains), and mounting SMB shares using Samba. If you have an existing MS based network, this application offers a simple way to browse it and access its resources.

Thunar has been designed from the ground up to be fast and easy-to-use. Its user interface is clean and intuitive, and does not include any confusing or useless options. Thunar is fast and responsive with a good start up time and directory load time. Thunar has been configured to automatically mount USB drives and has a menu entry that enables easy USB key browsing.

Search Monkey is a highly configurable but lightweight search application.

FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client and server with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. Features include upload/download resume, site manager, keep-alive system, SSL and SFTP support, and a flexible file queuing system.

Xarchiver is a GUI frontend to a variety of compression/archiving applications. The compressions applications include: Gzip, RAR, 5zip2, Zip, etc. Together, Xarchiver and these compression applications enable a simple method of creating or unpacking archived and compressed files in an enormous variety of formats.

Brasero is a simple to use but fully featured CD/DVD burning application.

Various Task Manager & System Monitor type applications are included.

Java is pre-installed.

Various Wincodecs are pre-installed.

XCalc is a lightweight scientific calculator.

School.Machine. includes the excellent PCLinuxOS Control Centre, which allows user account, security (including built-in firewall, backups, etc), hardware, peripheral, and software configuration.