A free Graphical User Interface (GUI) for chess is Arena. See: www.playwitharena.com
I used winboard for years and know my way around the old versions better than arena but there are a number of GUI's out there. Then you can install differant chess engines and the top chess engine these days is stockfish, that happens to be free and open source. See: https://stockfishchess.org
.pgn is a file standard for chess games that can include notes and sub variations. I use Fritz for a GUI with Stockfish loaded as the main engine. Chessbase is great for keeping your games orginized and preparing for certain players you have in your database. Chessbase lite is a free download.
If you are in Brookings tomorrow I can show you everything on my laptop.
http://www.sdchess.org/flyers/2015/2015-Jackrabbit-Open.pdf
Grab a USCF membership at uschess.org to save time registering in the morning at the tournament. Hope to see you there!
what software?
I used to use my notebook and board, but now I imagine there is some software that can hold my repertoire along with possible combination/traps etc. Everything I've looked at lacks this feature.