If you had to chose and learn a set of applications and tools on a computer which ones would you chose?

I'm putting forward this list as a discussion point but at the same time advocating them for universal use particularly in education throughout the world.

I've set some criteria that I believe are important for it brings us back to the underlying purpose of computer systems, that is to be tools to extent human capabilities not to be money magnets for hardware and software companies who are lead by and employ people who either never knew ( a sad observation on the state of education and credentialization ) or ignore key issues such as usability, functionality, purpose, value for money, ethics and a host of other factors. Users should not be concerned over CPUs, chipsets, or other internals of computer systems neither should they select an operating system as their key choice.

It is what I want to do with a computer that should dictate operating system and hardware factors. I propse that the applications that users should learn should be independent of platform issues.

The office user is best served by insisting on using:

Open Office

Full featured word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and vector drawing tool.

The Gimp

Full featured graphics package

NVU

WYSIWYG HTML tool

Scribus

Desktop Publishing System

Firefox

The web browser

Thunderbird

Email client

Audacity

Sound Engineering

MoinMoin

Personal Wiki

The developer should maximise their productivity and product dispersion by using:

VIM

Full featured editor

EMAC

Yet another full featured editor

NVU

WYSIWYG HTML tool

GNU

lots of ported software & bash for all platforms.

and other cross-platform tools

With these we could all save time, effort, money and share a lot.