What?

Password Management:
LastPass: http://lastpass.com
KeepassX: http://www.keepassx.org/

Encryption:
Luks: Built into most distros and allows you to encrypt files mounted via loopback or whole disks. Gnome Disk Utility will use this to create encrypted disks.
Truecrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org (Realcrypt for people on Fedora using RPMFusion)

Video editing/Transcoding:
Handbrake: http://handbrake.fr/ (Note: The daily releases are better for modern distros)
AviDemux: http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/ Basic editor that I use to rip out commercials from my TiVo movies

Media Players:
Totem
VLC
Rythmbox

Bittorrent:
Transmission

iPod/iPhone/iPad Management:
gtkpod
Rythmbox

eBook Management
Calibre

TiVo Management:
Kmttg: http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/ Great tool to pull movies off my TiVo and transcode them. Can be setup to automatically pull certain shows, transcode them etc…
pyTiVo

Web Browsers:
Firefox
Google Chrome/Chromium

Video Conferencing/VOIP:
Ekiga
Skype

HTML Editing:
Komposer

Instant Messaging:
Empathy

Remote Control:
VNC
NXClient/NXServer: www.nomachine.com

Backups: I previously used Deja-Dup but wound up spending the money on SpiderOak because of the zero-knowledge encryption and the advantage of a cloud based solution
Deja-Dup: https://launchpad.net/deja-dup
SpiderOak: https://spideroak.com/

Office Apps:
OpenOffice

Disk Recording:
Brasero: Part of almost every Gnome distribution by default as the recording software

Virtualization:
KVM
VMWare Player
VirtualBox

Blackberry:
Barry: http://netdirect.ca/software/packages/barry
Bluetooth Tethering via Network Manager

Email:
Thunderbird

Newsgroups:
lottaNZB: http://www.lottanzb.org/
PAN: http://pan.rebelbase.com

Note to myself:

Create a file:
.is_audio_player at the root and insert:
audio_folders=MUSIC/,RECORD/
output_formats=audio/mp3

audio/mp3 can be replaced with OGG but most of my music is from Amazon so it is MP3 now and I want to avoid the hassle of converting. Should probably convert the whole lot though Banshee will convert on the fly so may not matter if I switch to OGG.

Note for myself

This tutorial works with UNR as well:

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/02/jaunty-encrypted-home-directories.html

Another reminder for myself….

To get Notes 8.5 on Linux to open attachments create a symlink to the latest version of libgnome-desktop-2.so

For example on Jaunty:
sudo ln -s libgnome-desktop-2.so.11 libgnome-desktop-2.so.2

This is mostly a reminder for myself, my Father in Law’s laptop has a very touchy caps lock key. Here is the reg file to disable it:

Create a file called something.reg. Paste this into it and save it. Then import this registry change:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]

“Scancode Map”=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00

Just a note for people who use Lotus Sametime conferencing and the web chat client the Openjdk web plugin does not work. You need to completely remove it and use the Sun-Java.

Once I did this I could use the Sametime Web Chat client and the meeting center.

The full sametime client worked with or without OpenJDK.

*Side note: This may also apply for Webex meetings, I tried to attend one the other day and it failed to run the Java applet in a similar way that Sametime failed.

I recently installed a SVN snapshot from the Network Manager project to see how development was going. Tambet Ingo and Dan Williams deserve the thanks of all Linux users for the work they have done so far.

New Features:
Revamped Connection manager
Static Address Support
PPPOE (DSL) Support
Mobile Aircard Support (GSM and CDMA)
Multiple Active Devices

The new Connection Editor exposes every possible option, but none of them should be needed for most users. Network-Manager detects the type of network and will prompt the user for just the information needed to connect. When I plugged in my AT&T Aircard it was immediately available for use and connected on the first try. The VPN plugins worked properly regardless of how I was connected.

Below is a screenshot tour of the new features, this is a development snapshot so layout and features are likely to change.

Drop-Down Menu:

Connected to via GSM Aircard

Network Connections Window:
The connection manager window is a simple tabbed window, from what I can see every possible option is available except Dial.

Wired Settings:
The ability to manually set a MAC Address and to specify the MTU.

802.1x is primarily used in enterprise environments to authenticate the user or device before it is allowed to connect. The options here are PEAP, EAP-TTLS and EAP-TLS.

You can set a static IP address, DNS server(s), default gateway, and DNS Search order. It looks like each option on the page is independent. So you can obtain an IP from DHCP but specify a DNS server and DNS search suffix. I will validate this soon.

Wireless Settings
Every wireless option is available, unencrypted wireless, static WEP, WPA(2) Preshared Keys, LEAP, WPA+EAP and WEP+EAP. The only possible option that might be missing is EAP-FAST but that is Cisco proprietary.

Note the option for Key Index

DSL
The long awaited PPPOE support is now available.

Login information: it may also support PPTP but I do not have a DSL line to test with.

You can clone a MAC Address if needed.

If your ISP has some strange PPP settings you can set them here.

VPN

The VPN Settings screen only has the option to set Static IP, the rest of the VPN options are in the same place as before under configure VPN.

Mobile Broadband

My Aircard 860 worked automatically.

I spent some time testing Gnash and swfdec and while both worked ok for general use neither was consistently good enough to replace the closed-source Flash. With both some video sites would work while others would fail miserably.

I don’t want to in any way diminish the work that either of these teams has done, they have come a long way and if I didn’t have a need to visit barney.com and other kids sites I would probably use gnash or swfdec without any issues.

Here are the positives to using Gnash or Swfdec:
1) NO MORE TALKING FLASH ADS!
2) You can set it to pause animation at start so you don’t have to see the flashing banners unless you want to.
3) Security: Adobe Flash has recently been the target of a large number of attacks, by not running Adobe Flash I avoid that mess

I will keep checking in on Gnash and Swfdec for the next year or two and contribute bug reports and testing when possible. These projects are too important to be ignored.

I have been using Thunderbird for years and before that Mozilla mail but I never used Evolution since everyone seemed to lambaste it. Well I am here to tell you that Evolution is a very capable if not excellent mail client!

Here are my requirements for a mail client:
* Spam filtering
* SSL/TLS support
* Extensive rules support
* Support for mailing lists
* Spellcheck support
* Block remote images by default
* IMAP Support
* GPG Support

Evolution has all these features as well as calendaring and tasks.

Is it heavier than Thunderbird? Yes, but not enough to make a huge difference considering all the added features and you have to add Sunbird, Enigmail and more to reach a equivalent feature set with Thunderbird.

Just to be clear, I still love Thunderbird, but I want to let people know that Evolution isn’t the steaming pile that it is made out to be and if you have avoided Evolution because of you heard you should give it a shot.

I was looking at my laptop today and realized that there are only four remaining applications/components on my system that are closed source or have restrictive licenses:

Lotus Notes
Adobe Flash
Video Driver (Nvidia)
Intel wireless firmware.

Lotus Notes is what we use at work so it is not going away very soon (at all).

I should be able to replace Flash with either Gnash or Swfdec. I tested Gnash today and it still did not work at http://www.barney.com and I will test swfdec later. Other than the Barney site for my daughter my use of Flash is so infrequent that Gnash or swfdec should cover me.

The NV driver is just too slow but I am watching Nouveau closely and when it gets more stable I will switch. I don’t use Compiz and I don’t play games so maybe I should take another look at this.

I don’t think there are any wireless cards that don’t have some sort of closed firmware blob so I don’t think I will be able to do anything about the wireless drivers.

Some closed applications I have replaced over the past year:
1) VMWARE: Replaced with KVM or Innotek’s virtualbox OSE
2) Skype: I rarely used it but I replaced it with Ekiga
3) Sun Java 1.5/1.6: Replaced with IcedTea

Since I work in the technology field I am not the typical user but my day to day usage is pretty typical and if I can be this close to a completely open system then almost anyone else can be as well.