Communication
Here are all the programs to communicate (even with the non Linux-) world;)
Browser
Mozilla Firefox [en] is the descendant of the Mozilla suite. This Mozilla suite contains in contrast to Firefox an email-client and other applications which makes Firefox leaner and faster. Firefox provides features like pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, a nice zoom option and a very good support of W3C standards but Firefox does also render non valid pages properly.
Meanwhile in 2004, Mozilla Firefox has gained popularity and some statistics say that the share of MS Internet Explorer decreases. Additionally, in leaflets of some German stores (e.g. Media Markt and Plus), there is Mozilla Firefox on offerd screens now.
Some time ago I have recommended Galeon [en] but Galon dows not have the advantage over Mozilla anymore. Konquror [en] and Opera [en] are also nice browsers.
Email- & News-client
Sylpheed was made to be very fast and it is. If you get dozens of emails a day, you will like it. You can use Sylpheed very efficently without the mouse. You can write secure emails using the GnuPG support. It supports threading, filtering, scoring, templates and signatures. Additionally, it can be used as a newsreader and has features like cancel postings.
Sylpheed can be used without local email- & news-server since it has a queue.
Instant Messaging
Gaim does not only support AOL's AIM but also ICQ, Jabber, Yahoo, MSN, IRC and Zephyr through plugins. It works quite well but all the features of closed protocols by AOL etc are not supported at the moment. So, you can only chat; a send-files-feature will be implemented soon. Therefore, you may want to use Jabber, an Open Source-protocol. Gaim can run as applet in the GNOME-panel showing its status.
Download Agent
It seems rather stupid to use an extra application to download something from the net since you can use the browser's built-in functions. But using the "Web Downloader for X" you have a lot of options: e.g. you can specify the speed. So you can choose a lower speed to browse while downloading and you don't waste your money while reading sites online. Using the applet for the gnome-panel, you can just drag'n'drop the file to download. It is a very convenient tool.
