Download wine so you can run windows apps under linux Wine is extremely popular, and you probably know why. Wine is a windows emulator, even though they don't want you to think of it that way. This is a DEB package, which can be installed on any distro using alien. Very helpful.
Download the Firefox web browser The most popular web browser for linux, and it has won many awards.
Download the Pidgin chat client Pidgin has been discontinued in Fedora 12, which as of now, October 25 2009, is in beta, however, I prefer pidgin.
Disclaimer: I did not write any of the software here. Therefore I cannot be responsible. I doubt if any of this will cause problems, but you never know, and usually if it's posted here it means i've tested it.