I have a 16 year old that I setup a few years ago with a laptop and I have two more approaching the pre-teen years now. I initially set up a linux machine for

I have a 16 year old that I setup a few years ago with a laptop and I have two more approaching the pre-teen years now. I initially set up a linux machine for him but found that in school they were forcing them into Windows and working from that, it wasn't until he got into his high school that has a technology program that he is in that the linux became valuable. Until then though, Windows was way more beneficial for him for school and solved compatibility issues we were having with Microsoft Office and the open source office products, also power point etc. Just a point, and I know you say the laptop is light on resources so Windows may not be possible. Offline wiki was a great idea, I need to remember that one. Why not load up some good bookmarks too for things like stackoverflow and other potentially useful resources. Webstorm is also a great IDE for node.js, html and other projects. It is also from JetBrains and free for students. May not be necessary since you have intelliJ, but I know we use both WebStorm and PhpStorm. Also, Adobe Reader, Chrome, FireFox, MySqlAdmin, FileZilla, Git/GitHub, Instant messenger of some sort and maybe Skype. I know my kid uses Skype for classes and for homework projects, and just to keep in tough with his friends of course. My younger ones even use it. Just ideas. Good luck!