Free Software That Rocks

• Fedora Core Linux
• Eclipse - Multi-language cross-platform integrated development environment
• KPDF - PDF viewer. Not the most glamorous of tasks, but an essential one.
• Azureus - Excellent BitTorrent client
• Psi - Uses the Jabber protocol so you can chat to people using iChat, Google Talk, MSN, AIM...
• XChat - IRC client

Free Software That Almost But Not Quite Rocks

• SessionSaver - Firefox extension that saves all useful session state, automatically, at very frequent intervals, and restores it exactly. Doesn't work correctly with forms yet, so it might submit a form twice (which is very bad behaviour!)