This small selection of programs might make it all a bit less painful.
Links flexify - Bend spherical panoramas into vertiginous new shapes.
There is a free version, FreeAgent which does usenet only. The 16bit version seems to run to some extent under Wine and Linux. 0 Rate It NoteTab - NoteTab is webarchitects favourite windows text editor. There is a free version of NoteTab, but the commercial one has many more features. The Ultimate Audio Player for Windows - Freeware audio player capable of handling Microsoft Windows Media files, MP3 files, audio CDs, and more.