Yahoo: Linux

Linux links

Linux.com http://www.linux.com/: Lots of useful information, courtesy of The Linux Foundation (Wikipedia).
Linux Online http://www.linux.org/
Linux User Groups http://www.linux.org/groups/
Linux Archive at UNC Chapel Hill http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/: This is what used to be at sunsite.unc.edu, and then metalab.unc.edu; you can download Linux for free, here and from many other sources.
The Linux Documentation Project http://www.tldp.org/: Primary resource for public information about Linux.
Linux User Group HOWTO http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/User-Group-HOWTO.html
LinuxChix http://www.linuxchix.org/: A community for women who like Linux, and for supporting women in computing.
Linux Central http://www.linuxcentral.com/
The Linux Counter http://counter.li.org/

Software

For links to Linux code editors for Web publishing and programming, see my HTML pages.

Office suites

OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org/ Wikipedia: A complete open-source freeware application suite with capabilities similar to Microsoft Office, including Writer word processor, Calc spreadsheet, and Impress presentation manager. Version 2.0, released in 2005, added Math equation editor and Base user-friendly graphical database manager. Version 3.0 (October 2008) supports Office 2007 formats. General-purpose desktop-type Linux® distributions usually include a version of OpenOffice.org now.
Wikipedia: Comparison of office suites
StarOffice http://www.sun.com/software/staroffice/ Wikipedia: Sun Microsystems bought the original StarOffice in 1999, and Sun was acquired by Oracle in January 2010; OpenOffice.org is the LGPL version. Sun sold their own version under the StarOffice name with some proprietary additions; stay tuned to see what Oracle does with it.
KOffice http://koffice.kde.org/: For the KDE desktop environment.
AbiWord was originally meant to be part of a suite that never materialized. The name comes from the Spanish word abierto meaning "open."
GNOME Office http://live.gnome.org/GnomeOffice: For the GNOME desktop environment, including AbiWord word processor and Gnumeric spreadsheet. Apparently never especially mature or integrated, and now pretty much eclipsed by OpenOffice.org.
Applixware Office http://www.vistasource.com/: Proprietary (not open-source).
SoftMaker Office http://www.softmaker.com/ Wikipedia: Proprietary, for Windows and Linux.

Web browsers

Wikipedia:
Linux Web browsers

Mozilla Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/: The best Web browser.
Opera http://www.opera.com/
Konqueror http://www.konqueror.org/: Web browser and file manager for the KDE desktop environment, first released in 1996.
Google Chrome for Linux: Beta versions for Linux and Mac OS X released 8 December 2009. Still in beta as of the release of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, late April 2010.

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Email clients

Pronto http://www.muhri.net/pronto/ Balsa http://balsa.gnome.org/: Two more GNOME email clients.
Mutt http://www.mutt.org/
Pine http://www.washington.edu/pine/: Mutt and Pine are console-based (text mode, non-GUI) email clients.

Mozilla Thunderbird http://www.mozillamessaging.com/: The POP-mail client that goes with the Mozilla Firefox Web browser.
Opera Mail http://www.opera.com/: Opera version 7 in 2003 introduced a new database-driven mail client called M2, and I hear complaints about it.
Evolution http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/: For the GNOME Desktop.
KMail http://www.kde.org/: A KDE email client.

VNC

VNC on:
• Wikipedia
• Open Directory

Windows XP comes with Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop tools for remote login, but they're not cross-platform. See also the Wikipedia article Remote administration.

Virtual Network Computing is an open-source system for remote console logins. It lets you control one PC from another, similar to proprietary Symantec pcAnywhere, over a LAN or over the Internet, cross-platform on Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac.

RealVNC http://www.realvnc.com/ Wikipedia: A VNC implementation from a company founded by members of the team that originally created VNC. Proprietary, with a free version that's included in most Linux distributions. Unfortunately the free-edition Windows binaries you can download aren't kept up to date.
TightVNC (Windows, Linux/Unix) http://www.tightvnc.com/ Wikipedia UltraVNC (Windows) http://www.uvnc.com/ Wikipedia: Open-source freeware VNC. If you want to do free VNC on Windows, you probably want one of these.

Other Linux software

Software such as Wine and VMware for running
both Windows and Linux applications, is discussed on my Running Windows apps page.

Samba http://www.samba.org/ Wikipedia: Probably included with your distro; allows Linux computers to network transparently with Microsoft Windows computers, as robust file or print servers, or peer-to-peer. Samba comes from SMB, the protocol used by the Windows network file system.
The GIMP http://www.gimp.org/ Wikipedia: Open-source freeware's answer to Photoshop for raster graphics editing, also available for Windows.
Inkscape http://www.inkscape.org/ Wikipedia: Vector graphics editing software, also available for Windows.
MySQL http://www.mysql.com/ Wikipedia: Open-source database management system for Linux and Windows.
AMANDA http://www.amanda.org/ Wikipedia: AMANDA lets you set up a backup server to back up multiple computers over a network.
Linux Software Map http://www.boutell.com/lsm/
Wikipedia category: Linux software
Wikipedia article: List of proprietary software for Linux

If you're searching for a Linux equivalent of a Windows tool and there doesn't seem to be one, bear in mind that Linux and its Unix cousin have a long history of doing things their own way. For example, on Windows I used a powerful open-source editor called Notepad++, which has a Compare feature I relied on for resolving occasional conflicting edits. When I was trying out native Linux editors, I was confused at first because none of them seemed to have a similar compare feature. It turns out that Linux and Unix for years have had a command-line utility called diff that does this job, and today there are user-friendly graphical front-ends for diff such as TkDiff.

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Hardware

There's a version of Linux to
run on just about anything,
including handhelds, some
smartphones, POS systems,
kiosks, thin-client workstations
with no drives, and embedded
in appliances. You can buy a
digital picture frame and find
out it runs Linux.

Linux-Friendly Hardware (Linux Online) http://www.linux.org/hardware/
Hardware for Linux http://hardware4linux.info/
Linux-drivers.org http://www.linux-drivers.org/: Linux hardware compatibility lists and drivers.
Red Hat Hardware Catalog https://hardware.redhat.com/
TuxMobil http://tuxmobil.org/: Linux with laptops, notebooks, PDAs, mobile phones, portable music players, ebooks, GPS, and wearable computers.
Linux on Laptops http://www.linux-laptop.net/
Graphics cards and chipsets http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/Projects/Drivers
Sound cards http://linux-sound.org/: Frames site: follow navigation link for Hardware.
Printers http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting
Scanners http://www.sane-project.org/cgi-bin/driver.pl
Cameras http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php

Here's the Wikipedia article about Beowulf, monster-slaying hero of the oldest surviving piece of literature in English.

Beowulf cluster computing http://www.beowulf.org/ Wikipedia: A way to make a supercomputer by interconnecting a group of Linux PCs, for a third to a tenth of the price of a traditional supercomputer. The last time I looked there was a showcase system you could read about. It looks to me like you need to be a programmer to make a Beowulf cluster.
The Stone SouperComputer http://www.extremelinux.info/stonesoup/: The story of a 1997 Beowulf cluster at Oak Ridge National Lab, made out of rows of cast-off 486s and Pentiums, that was the subject of a Scientific American article.

Print resources

Linux Journal http://www.linuxjournal.com/: The oldest Linux magazine; scholarly and programmer orientation.
Linux Magazine http://www.linux-mag.com/: "The chronicle of the revolution" began publishing in 1999; oriented more towards Linux beginners and troubleshooting.
O'Reilly Media http://oreilly.com/: Another great source for Linux books.
Running Linux, 5th Edition, O'Reilly (ISBN 0596007607, $50 list) http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007607/
Linux In A Nutshell, 5th Edition, O'Reilly (ISBN 0596009304, $45 list) http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596009304/: 3rd edition reviewed in Maximum Linux magazine Nov/Dec 2000: " ... the ultimate Linux command reference dictionary."
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Linux for Non-Geeks, No Starch Press (ISBN 1593270348, $35 list)

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