CliDesktop
This page is still being put together.
If you have a computer too old for a graphical desktop, X server is broken or you just want to work faster then this article may be a good guide to getting started.
Basic programs
First you should install lynx. It is a text based browser which has support for many protocols including https. Irssi can be used to get help from the rubuntu irc channel and is installed by default. Mutt is a good email client to use when using just the command line. Centericq is a text mode menu- and window-driven IM client program that supports the ICQ2000, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, IRC and Jabber protocols.
For editing text files, nano and vim are installed by default. If you do not know the difference then you may be better using nano at first. For making formatted text files you may want to consider using LaTeX. Obviously some tasks such and imagework are not well suited to a textual interface.
While not nearly as many games are available if you are not using graphics there are more than one might expect. First off are Muds which are played online via telnet or a specialized client like tf. Next is Interactive Fiction which can be played with an interpreter like frotz or tads depending on the file format. After that are the rogulikes such as nethack-console which are ascii represented dungeon crawlers. There are also some varied games that installing freesweep, bsd-games and bombardier should take care of.