Planning for promotion!

One of the most important ways to get people to think about alternative ways of working with their computer, is to promote open source software and operating systems. So that is what I am planning to do on the 7th of September. Originally I thought that I would limit it to a presentation of Ubuntu, and trying to get people to start using that instead of XP et al, but I decided against it.

The response among some of the people I know has been ok, not that many are immediately interested in this when you send them a little invite over the internet. When you talk to them it is better, and this coming week I'll do some information to people I do not know, which may get some people interested, but the final number is a bit uncertain at the moment.

The decision to do a presentation of free and open source software was made mainly due to the audience that I want to focus on, people who are normal users and who therefore need things that will be immediately useful. I have a list of some software that I want to present, which revolve around writing and communication, which are the main activities of any student. This is also the reason I want to present Ubuntu, because it is excellent at those two things and some students are in bad need of having their OS upgraded.

So I got a presentation half done, and that should be no problem. I have a list of software that I want to start with, but that needs to be expanded to cover more types and platforms. Seeing as I have had some practical experience with public speaking, that should not be a problem. Actively working within political and other types of organisations has helped within giving a reasonable presentation on most subjects. To contribute back I also want to upload some of the material that I've used so it can be available to others.

Now the challenge I face is of course finding software for the Windows and OS X platforms as well. I have some experience with Windows, but OS X have worked with at most 30 seconds. So this is really a call for some input, so I can get info on the good and free software for any platform. Do you have a suggestion of software that normal users would like to use? or suggestion of software that can be found on all platforms (not necessarily crossplatfrom)?