Ubuntu Linux is a nice version of Linux. It's pretty intuitive for someone who has only used Windows. The CD is bootable; you can run the entire operating system, plus a browser and the StarOffice office suite, off of the CD. It runs pretty balky; it doesn't use your hard drive for "caching" at all. But that way you can try it out. It also makes a great emergency CD for a computer that won't start Windows correctly.  If you like it, you can install the whole package on a hard drive. It runs very well that way. You'll need 256 MB RAM and about 2 GB hard drive space.  There's a few quirks: the Firefox browser won't let you stop annoying animated banner ads (animated GIFs). If that annoys you, you can download Opera 9 from the add/remove programs on the menu (you may need to check the boxes that say "Show unsupported applications" and "Show commercial applications". Installing Flash worked fairly well for Firefox and the Mozilla browser, but didn't work in Opera. I got Real Player to work on one install, but not on another. You probably won't have luck playing Windows media files. But there's a lot of good things about this. There's a good firewall called Firestarter, which you can download free. You can burn an ISO image of Ubutu, or if that doesn't work for you, you can fill out the form and they will mail you 5 copies of the CD; you can give the rest to friends. (version 6.06 LTS. I tried version 7.04, but had problems with it, so I use 6.06.)

Note: you can now buy computers from Dell with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled at http://dell.com/open

FileZilla - a nice, free FTP program. 

Annoying messages from spammers using Windows "Messenger Service" (this is different from an instant message program), such as this example,

can be stopped with this great tool from Steve Gibson. (very small download; 22KB)

Security

CT Cookie Spy - a small tool to remove the cookies you want, but leave ones you want. This is handy to leave cookies so sites like Yahoo Mail and the Washington Post remember you, but erase cookies you don't need or know what they are. (142KB)

Sokoban++  (ver. 1.5) (4 stars) This is a game where you push the little brown balls into the green area with the yellow ball with the arrow on it. If two balls are pushed together, they can't be pushed "headon", but one can be pushed from the side. If you push a ball in a corner, you can't get it out (D'oh!). There are 50 levels. (700 KB)