I like open-source software. For the most part it appears to be more stable and user-friendly than the commercial products available these days.
Web Browsing – Mozilla Firefox http://www.mozilla.org
Email – Thunderbird http://www.mozilla.org
Office Suite – Open Office http://www.openoffice.org
Graphics – The Gimp http://www.gimp.org
Linux is a nice alternative to Windows although you can’t run Windows based casino software… Just java-based games.
But it is great for doing web development, very rarely crashes and doesn’t require frequent reboots.