The idea of secure passwords has appeared a bunch of years ago when the number of passwords has increased. As it is insecure to use the same password for multiple accounts, you need to either remember all your passwords or write them down anywhere. Luckily, there are some solutions that allow us to maintain security and use secure passwords at the same time. This kind of software is called password managers and we’re going to include a brief review of them.

What is a password manager? A password manager software helps a user to organize his passwords. Password manager uses a local database, where the encrypted data is stored. It may also have additional features such as automatically filling in forms or generating random secure passwords.

Password managers are available for many platforms such as for Windows, Linux, MacOS X, Pocket PC, Smart Device, Palm OS and U3. We have taken most popular 3 password managers for linux and are going to describe them below:

Password Gorilla

The Password Gorilla helps you manage your logins. It stores all your user names and passwords, along with login information and other notes, in a securely encrypted file. A single “master password” is used to protect the file. This way, you only need to remember the single master password, instead of the many logins that you use. The latest version 1.4 was released in July 3, 2006. Password Gorilla is platform-independent software, runs on most operating systems has been tested on Windows, Linux and Solaris.

Features:
- Password Safe 3 file format is supported.
- Search Password option.
- Hide main window when coming up and asking to open a file.
- Improved seed for initializing the pseudo-random number generator.
- Allow closing a locked database using the “X” button.

KeePass Password Safe

KeePass Password Safe is a tool for managing user’s passwords, released under the GNU GPL. The program stores logins, passwords and addresses of the URLs in an encrypted database. Access to the database is obtained by providing your password or a file-key. KeePass uses strong and secure encryption algorithms such as AES and Twofish, and hash SHA-256. KeePass keeps encrypted passwords in his memory even after starting and opening a database. There are Linux, Windows and Pocket PC editions of this software and it is highly recommended if you are planning to use them on multiple devices.

GPass

GPass is a password management software for GNOME desktop. GPass encrypts the file that keeps the password collection by using Blowfish security algorithm, one of the most secure on the market. The latest version of GPass is 0.5.1 and was released in March 25, 2006. Requirements are: GNOME2 libraries, OpenSSL cryptographic library.

There are some password managers that are integrated in browsers. An example could be Lastpass. It can be integrated with Firefox to store all your passwords. The only thing that doesn’t seems to be good is that your passwords are stored at a remote server and the possibility of data leek is much higher. Though I don’t think they have any reason to steal your data, it is much more pleasant to have the password database stored at a hard drive or a removable media, just like flash drive. Modern Password managers can be run from a USB Flash so that’s another good feature: your password database becomes portable and you don’t need to keep in mind all your passwords.

We recommend you to use password managers for everyday needs. Never share your password files to anyone and do not write your passwords to a text file. Let password manager do its job!

Related posts:

1. Basic Rules of Working with Secret Information
2. Using RAR in Linux: Guide and Samples
3. Choosing an Antivirus for Linux

What are the network interfaces? They represent devices that are used to transmit and receive packages of data. The examples of network interface devices are: Ethernet card, ISDN adapter, modem and etc. You can imagine that a network interface is a mailbox or an end of pipe, where you can send information and receive an answer. The integral attribute of network interface is address.

Generally users encounter with IP (Internet Protocol) networks. In the given review we are going to consider IPv4 (4th version of IP addresses), which are still very popular among the end users. After that we will discuss how to setup a network connection in Linux, taking as an example Ethernet card (which presents an interface allowing to connect a PC to the net with the help of copper twisted pair cable with the data transfer speed of up to 1GB/s). You can setup other interfaces in a similar way. To setup the interface in Linux the following steps should be completed:

• Physical installation of the card in the system (we suppose you’ve already done this step or the interface is in the motherboard of your computer; moreover don’t forget to plug in the cable as well)
• Installation of the proper drivers, so Linux can work with your card
• Specifying IP address and some other parameters, which are needed for IP network

In Linux OS network interfaces (as the majority of other devices) are set up with the help of text files, which can vary depending on distributions, for example:

We are going to review it by Ubuntu example.

All Linux network interfaces have unique alphanumeric identifiers. For Ethernet interfaces the identifier consists of “Eth” prefix and interface ordinal number, which is generally assigned by OS depending on the order of devices on PCI bus; however in some cases it can be changed. Linux can work (and, of course, assign an identifier) just with those devices, which have proper drivers installed. Run ifconfig command in the terminal. In case you see your network card in the list, it means that Linux installed the drivers. Here is the way a response you should get may look:

As you probably understood “eth0″ means your network card. In case there are some network cards, for each one there will be an eth section with the order number.

Using dmesg | grep -i eth command you can specify the name of network interface that corresponds to your network card. Of course, it can be useful just in case you have several cards. Here is the way it looks:

If you don’t see the card you need in the list, you will have to find and install the driver.

A driver is a small program that allows operating system to get the functionality of certain devices. Due to this fact the drivers for different operating systems differ from each other (still there are some exceptions, for instance, some drivers for Windows can be used in Linux as well).

In Linux drivers are implemented in the kernel by compilation or by installing special kernel module. Drivers are generally distributed in the same way as usual programs (in particular in the form of source code), but their installation may require some additional actions, thus it’s strongly recommended to get familiar with the README for a certain driver. The most probable sources for proper drivers are:

• Webiste of device manufacturer
• Website of your Linux distribution provider (in particular, update packages for Ubuntu, which include drivers, appear on a regular basis – drivers for some network cards you can find in the package linux-backports-modules-intrepid-generic).
• Hackers or communities websites

The process of configuring network interface for working in IP networks includes defining the following parameters:

IP address of interface.  It represents 4 decimal numbers that are separated by periods. For example, 10.9.8.7. In case you connect your computer to an existing network, the address should be taken from network administrator; but if you create your own network, it’s recommended to choose IP address from special range: 10.0.0.0-10.255.255.255, 172.16.0.0-172.31.255.255 and 192.168.0.0-192.168.255.255

Subnet mask (address mask). Given parameter is used to define the multitude of computer addresses, which are available in your network. If there is a necessity you can learn more here. In small networks the most common mask value is 255.255.255.0.

Gateway. If your network is going to have connection with other network (even with Internet), you need to define the address of routing computer (gateway), which is directly connected both with your network and the other one. All the data packages that are not masked by the above mentioned mask will be transferred to this router for redirection to the extranet.

Broadcast address. It’s used to send the data to all computers in your network at once. In most cases there is no need to specify it because the system can automatically calculate it.

DNS server address. It represents IP address of a server that transforms character names, which are convenient for users (for example, www.lampdocs.com, www.linux.com and etc), into appropriate IP addresses and vice versa. Generally such a server is maintained by your internet provider, moreover very often several servers are provided to ensure fault tolerance.

If the user wants to get rid of setting all the parameters, a special server can be created in the network – DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), which will automatically configure your network interface. Get in contact with the administrator of your network or your Internet provider to find out if there is a DHCP server. In case such a server doesn’t exist, you will need to specify all the settings manually; it’s not as hard to do and the procedure is almost the same as the one in Windows. Now we are going to show how you can do that in Ubuntu.

Related posts:

1. Setting Up PPPoE Connection in Linux
2. Setting Up SSH clients on Windows Mobile Devices
3. IPv6 advantages and its configuration in OS Linux

It’s quite an understandable fact that each of you has favorite apps for movies, music, Internet radio and so on. Moreover it can be just one single app, which you really like, thus willing to get at least comparable alternative. Fortunately there are a lot of things to choose from, so you can easily find the one corresponding to all your needs.

Here is the full list of the most popular multimedia applications to be reviewed (in alphabetical order):

1. Amarok
2. Audacious
3. Banshee Media Player
4. Dragon Player
5. Exaile Music Player
6. Juk Player
7. Kaffeine Player
8. Listen Music Player
9. Movie Player (Totem)
10. MPlayer
11. Quod Libet
12. Rhythmbox Music Player
13. SMPlayer
14. Songbird
15. VLC Media Player

As you understand the amount of programs deserving attention is much bigger, so if you encountered a nice app that wasn’t included in the list, please let us know.

Amarok (audio)

Amarok represents a very popular media player known by its great functionality and usability. One of the coolest feature of this app is Web services integration, which allows you to access music directly, significantly expanding the number of songs you can listen to. The services you can connect to are: Last.fm, Magnatune, Ampache, Librivox, MP3tunes, Shoutcast Radio, Jamendo, and OPML Podcast. Still you can easily add other services as well.

In addition to that Amarok is a cross-platform player, so you can download Windows or MacOS version to give it a try (if you’re not using Linux yet); however it should be mentioned that those versions are for testing purposes only, because there is no official support yet.

Another nice thing about Amarok is its attractive design. Let’s see some screenshots so you can check it. Here is the main window of Amarok:

No doubts it’s very pleasant to use, but you will need to spend some time in order to get familiar with its most important features. Don’t forget to check Settings panel that will help you customize the app:

If you would like to get see more screenshots, please visit this page.

Now let’s take a closer look at the features of given player. Here are the ones which weren’t mentioned yet:

• creating and editing playlists
• powerful tagging, renaming and sorting abilities
• opportunity to enhance your Amarok with community developed scripts
• automatic and manual bookmarking
• multilingual support (more than 45 languages) and etc.

Unfortunately there is no way to watch movies with this app. However for justice sake it should be emphasized that this is the only drawback which prevents Amarok from being all-in-one media player.

On June 17, 2009 the latest version of Amarok — 2.1.1 «Oceania» – was released. You can download it here. Nevertheless there is an easier way to install it: Applications — Add/Remove — Search for «Amarok» – Choose it — Apply changes. To start the application go to: Applications — Sound and Video — Amarok.

Audicious (audio)

Audacious is an advanced audio player, which is focused on audio quality, supporting a great deal of audio codecs. Audacious is extendable through plugins, and contains other useful features like LIRC support and support for Last.fm. It has a nice looking design which is very similar with the one of well-known Winamp for Windows; moreover it even supports some of Winamp skins, but not the modern ones.

As it was mentioned before the nice thing of Audacious is opportunity to implement a lot of features by using plugins. If you would like to check the full list of available plugins, please visit Features and Plugins pages.

Here is a couple of screenshots for you to have an idea about the way it looks. The first one is the main window of Audacious:

As you see it’s pretty simple, so there is no need to spend a lot of time to get used to it. The only thing you should do at the very beginning is to check preference panel:

Given player, as you probably have already understood, does not support video as well. However in the other aspects it’s pretty decent, so you should check it for sure before making the final decision.

Finally it should be emphasized that Audacious can be installed from Add/Remove panel (as in previous case), but in this way you won’t be able to get the latest version. Thus if you really like to have the latest and greatest version, you should download it from the official website.

Related posts:

1. Ubuntu Starter Kit
2. amaroK 2.4 beta 1
3. PcMidiFlux OS

In fact it’s not as hard to do as it may seem to be. There are just 5 simple steps…

1. Find out all the hardware connected to the bus

Launch the terminal and enter the command:

lspci

The list of all connected hardware is displayed. For instance, we are going to check the vendor of Audio device. In this step we need to remember the digits located in the very beginning of the line.

…

00:1b.0 Audio device …

…

We have the following digits: 00:1b.0

2. Determine ID of vendor and device itself

Enter the following command:

lspci –n

We get the list of the same devices, but displayed in a digital way. Find the line which starts with the numbers we got in the first step.

00:1b.0 0403: 8086:284b (rev 03)

Here we need to remember (or write down) the following digits – 8086:284b. IN fact these digits represent the passport of device: 8086 – ID of vendor and 284b – ID of device.

3. Right now to find out the real names we need to visit this site.

Using ID of vendor (8086) we find out that the vendor is Intel Corporation. If we click on ID we get the list of vendor’s devices.

4. According to 284b we get the name of the device itself. It’s 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller. ID represents the link to the list of subsystems for given device.

5. Possessing all the data we can easily check the vendor’s website (or any other website with drivers) to get the driver we need.

Related posts:

1. How to Install Linux from CD/DVD in Graphical Mode
2. Moblin 2.1
3. ELKS

In fact Linux installation is much easier than the majority of users may think it to be; it can hardly be considered more complex than the one of Windows. The only thing users should remember is that they need to install it on a different disk because in most cases Linux distributions are installed as a second operating system; but we will talk about it in detail a little bit later…

As regards the system requirements they are pretty the same as the ones for Windows XP, so there is no need to have a high-end computer in order to try Linux. Moreover, the installation program automatically detects your computer’s hardware and you don’t usually need to supply it with any specific details about your system; though you should make sure that your hardware meets the minimum requirements of the distribution you’ve chosen.

In addition to that it should be emphasized that generally all distributions support graphical and text-based installations. Only systems with more that 192MB of RAM or that boot from the installation DVD or Live Media can use the graphical installer. For the text-based installation you should have at least 64MB of RAM.

Before we start it should be mentioned that in this certain case we will review the installation of Fedora 11. However if you decide to install different Linux distribution (please read this post to check the most popular ones), you won’t encounter any problems, because in general the installation process is very similar. Moreover it will be much better if you choose a Live version, because you will have the opportunity to check the way system works.

The Installation Process

First of all make sure that you have a separate partition prepared for the installation of the distribution (you can use Acronis Disk Director Suite, Paragon Partition Manager and etc); however this step is not an obligatory one. Burn a CD or DVD from the distribution image. Check if the system boots from CD- or DVD-ROM. If you using a Live version of a distribution, it’s a great idea to test the system.

Live system

As soon as you boot from CD or DVD with the Linux distribution the system will be loaded, though it doesn’t mean that it’s already installed on your PC or laptop. I would strongly recommend you to spend some time checking system in action, just to make sure that you’ve made a right decision as far as the distribution is concerned. Here is the way Fedora Live version works:

a) The screen you see while the system is loading to start

b) Choosing the language of the system and keyboard

c) The desktop of the system that has just started

d) Checking the functionality and the software available without the need to be installed

Finally when you’re done with the checking and are ready to start, just double-click “Install to Hard Drive” icon in order to initialize the installation process.

Related posts:

1. TopologiLinux v7.0.1
2. Kiwi Linux 10.08
3. Choosing a Linux Live CD

Nowadays free software is so widespread that it’s hardly possible to find a user who doesn’t use at least some free applications. Moreover due to the fact that free software is very similar in functionality with the proprietary one, it’s understandable why many people tend to choose it. But what does “free software” term mean? Let’s check the precise definition.

Free software represents software that is generally distributed with a “free software license” and can be used, studied, modified, and redistributed without or with minimal restrictions. To be more precise, here are the four freedoms which show that the software you get is free:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this as well.

However it should be mentioned that free software is not the same thing as “freeware”. The main difference between them consists in the fact that in case of freeware authors (or copyright holders) retain the rights to the software, i.e. users generally cannot study, modify or redistribute it. In addition to that free software being redistributable sometimes may not be free of charge, but cost some money, though the prices are generally quite affordable ones.

While talking about the “free software” term the great majority of users associate it with Linux OS and Linus Torvalds, thinking that they represent the source of free software. Though Linux, with no doubts, is the most popular free OS, there are two very important points to be emphasized…

• The appearance of the free software is the merit of Richard Stallman who is considered to initiate the free software movement in 1983. The main purpose of that movement was to satisfy the need for and ensure “software freedom” to computer users. Moreover in 1985 Stallman creates the Free Software Foundation in order to provide the organizational structure for his free software ideas.
• Linux is just a kernel, but the operating system is GNU (GNU is Not Unix). GNU project was launched by Richard Stallman in 1983 with the aim to develop a complete Unix-like operating system composed entirely of free software. Thus this combination should be called as GNU/Linux operating system; still it’s generally incorrectly called Linux. However, Linus Torvalds who wrote Linux kernel in 1991 is against the GNU/Linux naming, arguing that Linux is not a GNU project.

Appearance of free operating systems

The main principles of free software – openness and cooperation – appeared a long time before Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation and introduced the “free software” term. Thus in the 1950s and 1960s almost all software was developed by academics and corporate researchers being not considered as a commodity. At that time source code was distributed with software because users often modified it in order to fix bugs and add new functionalities. That’s why Richard Stallman stated in 1971 when he became a programmer at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) that the “software sharing community at MIT existed for many years”.

However in the late 1960s and 1970s the situation began to change. The main reason for that consisted in the fact that manufacturer’s software costs were dramatically increasing. Although some software was still free, the amount of proprietary one was becoming more and more significant. As a result in the late 1970s and 1980s most of the computer vendors and software companies charged for software licenses, considering them as assets and imposing legal restriction on the development of new software.

So here are the most important prerequisites of Stallman’s Free Software Movement and the appearance of free software:

1) High cost of the operating systems available at that time (MS-DOS, Unix and etc.), i.e. they were available for a very limited amount of users

2) Paying extra money for the operating system while buying computer made it even harder for a person to get one

3) Providing no source code for the systems meant:
-  The users weren’t able to study the OS in order to understand the way it worked or to use it as a basis of their own work
-  There was no way to adapt the system to users’ needs
-  Users weren’t able to fix the bugs or improve the system

4) Proprietary licenses meant that the operation systems were not for sharing, thus slowing down the speed of OS improvement because there were less bug reports.

5) Slower development of software in comparison with hardware. In case of proprietary software it’s irrational to release new versions very often, because the users knowing that a better version is going to appear soon, won’t spend money to get the current version and etc.

As a result on September 27, 1983 Richard Stallman announced the plan for creating the GNU operating system, having the goal of bringing a wholly free software operating system into existence. The software development itself began in January 1984. Later on in March 1985 all the ideas of Richard Stallman were published as the GNU Manifesto. Most of GNU has been written by volunteers (some in their spare time, some paid by various companies, educational institutions, and other non-profit organizations.

Stallman contributed a lot in propagation of the “share with the neighbor” idea, giving the users the opportunity to be able to study, modify and redistribute the software that they use. According to Stallman’s point of view “freedom is vital for the sake of users and society as a moral value” and not for developing technically superior software; thus he does not agree with the phrase “software wants to be free” which is often mistakenly attributed to him.

Creating Linux Kernel

Before we go on with the history of creation of Linux kernel let’s find out what the main reason, which provoked 21 year-old Finnish student of Helsinki University of Technology, Linus Torvalds, to start that project, was. Though there wasn’t the only reason, the most important one is considered to be the fact that in 1991 no operating system was well adapted to the 32-bit features of the increasingly cheap and popular Intel 386 architecture for personal computers (MINIX had 16-bit design, but GNU and 386BSD kernels were not available at the time). Later Linus Torvalds stated that if either the GNU or 386BSD kernels were available at the time, he likely would not have written his own.

Despite the fact that the project of Linus Torvalds became well-known as the Linux kernel, initially it was a terminal emulator, which he used to access the large UNIX servers of the university. The program was written just for the specific hardware Linus was using at that moment (PC with an 80386 processor). As he wrote in Just for Fun, he eventually realized that he had written an operating system kernel.

Taking into consideration that Linus Tovalds developed it on Minix using GNU C compiler some of the researchers stated that young software engineer used Minix code while created the kernel. The main reason for such a statement was the time Linus spent on his invention. If Tanenbaum created Minix within some years, for Torvalds it took a couple of months to create Linux kernel. Another thing was that as a student Torvalds had access to Minix’s source code. However as Tanenbaum emphasized in his book Samizdat, Torvalds had not copied Minix’s design. Here is a short excerpt from his book:

“But the code was his. The proof of this is that he messed the design up. MINIX is a nice, modular microkernel system […] Linus rewrote the whole thing as a big monolithic kernel, complete with inline assembly code. The first version of Linux was like a time machine. It went back to a system worse than what he already had on his desk. Of course, he was just a kid and didn’t know better (although if he had paid better attention in class he should have), but producing a system that was fundamentally different from the base he started with seems pretty good proof that it was a redesign…“

The unfriendly tone of this excerpt can be explained by the fact that there was quite an unpleasant Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate about Linux, which Tanenbaum considered to be obsolete since it was a monolithic kernel. However later on Tanenbaum’s prediction proved to be incorrect.

On 26^th of August, 1991 Linus Torvalds posted his famous message to comp.os.minix, in which he wrote about the creation of free operating system for 386 AT clones. Since that time a lot of users contributed code to the project. The Linux version 0.01 had 10,239 lines of code and appeared by September 1991. It was just the kernel and as Linus mentioned “to get a working system you need a shell, compilers, a library etc. These are separate parts and may be under a stricter (or even looser) copyright. Most of the tools used with Linux are GNU software and are under the GNU copyleft…”

With the release of version 0.12 in February 1992 GNU General Public License (GPL) was adopted instead of the previous self-drafted license, which did not allow commercial redistribution. In March 1992 Torvalds decided to make a large jump as far as the version number was concerned and the new release was the version 0.95. The explanation was that there wasn’t so much work left until the final release of the version 1.0. Unfortunately that was too optimistic and the version 1.0.0 appeared just in two years. AS for the current latest version 2.6.30 it appeared on 9^th of June 2009 and contains 11,637,173 lines of code.

Another interesting point I forgot to mention is the appearance of the Linux name… Although Torvalds considered the name “Linux”, he decided not to use it because to his mind it was too egoistical. So the name he wanted to call his invention was Freax – combination of “freak”, “free” and “x” (from Unix). However his coworker at the university, Ari Lemmke, didn’t think that Freax was a nice option, deciding to call it Linux (Torvalds didn’t know about that). Later as Linus found out about the name Ari gave to the project, he agreed it.

Although Linus Torvalds did not design Linux to be portable (he especially emphasized that “it is NOT portable, and it probably never will support anything other than AT-hard disks, as that’s all I have…”), at the moment Linux represents one of the most widely ported operating system kernels. As for the end of 2008, GNU/Linux was used on more that 87% of systems on the Top 500 supercomputers list. In addition to that it has been ported to different mobile and handheld devices. Moreover the Android operating system, which becomes very popular these days and is considered to have very decent potential, uses the Linux kernel as well.

The Bottom Line

As far as the license is concerned at the moment Linux is licensed under version 2 of the GPL, with no option to use a later version. Here are some of the terms and conditions of the GPL:

- Licensee is given permission to modify the work, as well as to copy and redistribute the wok or any derivative version
- Licensee is allowed to charge a fee for this service if he/she wants to
- Distributor may not impose “further restrictions on the rights granted by the GPL”
- Programs distributed as pre-compiled binaries are accompanied by a copy of the source code ad etc.

However, according to the terms of the GNU GPL if no version is specified, then any version may be used. Still currently the great majority of the kernel programmers prefer GPL version 2 that version 3. If you would like to learn more about GNU GPL and its versions, please visit this page.

To sum up we should say that Linux and GNU developers, and many others who contributed to the design of GNU/Linux OS, manage to create a really functional, competitive and customizable operating system, which corresponds to all four Stallman’s freedom, ensuring thus the real freedom to the users.

Related posts:

1. Free Software. Why Is It Free?
2. Free Software Foundation Activity
3. Free Software Advantages

Though some Windows users may think that on Linux there are not so many IM clients to choose from, in reality the amount of counterparts is very significant. In the given review we are going to discuss the major Linux alternatives to Windows IM clients in order to demonstrate that there is no need to worry about the possibility of losing functionality of the IM client you prefer.

IM Protocols and Clients

ICQ

ICQ is a popular instant messaging service, the first version of which was released in November 1996. Since that time ICQ became one of the most popular instant messaging clients (at the moment it’s used by over 38 million users worldwide). The name ICQ is a homophone for the phrase “I seek you”. ICQ uses OSCAR (stands for Open System for CommunicAtion in Realtime) protocol that is a flagship instant messaging protocol of America Online (AOL). OSCAR protocol is used in AIM as well; as a result ICQ and AIM users are able to add each other to their contact list without the need for any external clients.

The latest version of ICQ (ICQ6) launched in April 2007 has the following most important features: sending text messages, offline support, multi-users chats, free SMS from ICQ to mobile, multiplayer games, animated icons, greeting cards, voice and video communication.

ICQ users are identified by numbers called UIN (meaning either Universal Internet Number or Unified Identification Number) which represent names assigned to each ICQ user. Moreover since ICQ6 appeared users have the opportunity to log in using their email addresses.

Although ICQ is very popular among the users there are some really important issues for which it has been heavily criticized. Here are the most important ones:

Spam – many users have to install antispam-bots, because ICQ is often used for distribution of spam and unwanted advertisement

Message delivery – proper message delivery is not guaranteed

Aggressive policy regarding alternative clients – American Online implements a lot of different changes to stop unauthorized ICQ clients working

Privacy and copyright – the acceptance of ICQ Terms of Service means that ICQ may publish or distribute any messages which were sent through the system that could be meant to be private

As far as the programs for Linux are concerned I would like to emphasize that the great majority of them support the most popular protocols giving users the opportunity to communicate everyone they want. Here are the most popular ICQ clients which run on Linux OS:

• Kopete supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, XMPP, Google Talk, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Novell GroupWise Messenger and others, for Unix-like;
• Licq supports ICQ, AIM and MSN, for Unix-like;
• Pidgin (formerly Gaim) supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, Gtalk, MSN, IRC, XMPP, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Meanwhile (IBM Lotus Sametime) and others;
• qutIM Qt-based, cross-platform;
• Sim-IM supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, XMPP, for Windows and Unix-like and others.

Related posts:

1. Ubuntu Starter Kit
2. Miracle Linux V5
3. Ehad Linux

For justice’ sake we should mention that one of the most important reasons why people don’t use MS Office’s counterparts consists in the fact that they just simply don’t know much about them. But what would you do, if you had the opportunity to use a very multifunctional application that is free of charge? Most likely you would like at least to try this program in order to compare it with MS Office and find out how nice it is. In the given review we are going to discuss the most popular alternatives to MS Office to help you find the one that will correspond to all your needs. But before we go ahead with that let’s see what a word processor is.

A word processor (or document preparation system) represents computer software used for the composition, editing and formatting of any sort of printable material. At the very beginning a word processor referred to a stand-alone office machine, popular in the 1970s and 80s, but nowadays modern word processors represents computer applications with user-friendly interface which provide the opportunity of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing; most of them allow users to work not just with text, but images, graphics and tables as well. Here you can learn more about word processors.

As you probably understand Microsoft Office is the most popular and commonly used word processing system, however it’s so expensive that not everybody may afford to buy it, especially home users who rarely need all the functionality it offers. That’s why a lot of people and companies tend to switch MS Office to much more affordable or even free applications which provide very decent functionality. As it was mentioned before we are going to review the best MS Office’s counterparts available on Linux, thus helping you to change your OS without the risk of losing any functionality.

Here are the word processing programs to discuss:

• OpenOffice 3.1
• AbiWord
• KOffice

Related posts:

1. All you need to view PDF documents in Linux
2. ALT Linux 4.0 Lite
3. Best Linux Operating System for Laptop