I find "Kubuntu" to help me be more productive but then it is a matter of personal preference also. "Yakuake" is a Quake style terminal that Smoothly rolls dow

I find "Kubuntu" to help me be more productive but then it is a matter of personal preference also. "Yakuake" is a Quake style terminal that Smoothly rolls down from the top of your screen after you press the shortcut key. This thing saves a lot of time to get quick access to the terminal without having to look for the shortcut icon in the Desktop or the Taskbar. If you need a good python editor than I would reccomend "DrPython". Also "ipython" is a good replacement for the standard python shell. For text editing in general I like "Cream" which is basically a nicely configured "gvim" : http://cream.sourceforge.net/ http://cream.sourceforge.net/ Konversation is my favorite irc client.