If you install Linux just check out the application menus. There are usually something that you want, the apps included by default are thought of to provide the basic functionality that hopefully will appeal to the largest amount of users.
Also check out freshmeat.net. For instance I just did a
search for office and got this result.
Then I picked
Topic :: Office/Business :: Office Suites ang got some decent results. Freshmeat is ok. You can usually find all sorts of odd and interesting free software thru that.
Also if there is hype behind a product, or lots of people are talking about it or mentioning it, then it's usually worth it to at least take a look at it.
my preferences:
Office tools: OpenOffice/abiword
Music: mpd (music player daemon), zinf
Media: Mplayer (command line version), GUI: default gnome(totem), VLC (video lan client)
email: Evolution
cd burning: command line tools
firewall: home use: seperate LEAF firewall appliance (200mhz cpu with 2 nics as a router that boots off of a single floppy), for laptop: Default Fedora/iptables/whatever
antivirus: Not needed.