April Linux Freeware

Another selection of software for this increasingly popular operating system.

By James Morris

Messages may be collected via the POP and IMAP protocols, or from the local mail spool. It supports virtual mail folders, which is very useful when managing multiple incoming mail sources.

It also supports MIME messages, and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and Ispell are readily integrated with the application. An inbuilt address book is provided, which will scan for and incorporate existing address books upon installation.

Postilion is available as source or prepackaged in Debian and Red Hat formats, and installs easily. A default language (English, Italian, French or Swedish) may be selected during installation, and general preferences may be configured extensively from the Preferences item on the Info menu.

Once up and running, it takes a little while to configure and learn the interface, which this is unsurprising for an application this flexible.

Postilion provides a good range of features and may be worth considering if you're in the market for a GUI email client. After installation, it is definitely worth spending some time becoming familiar with the intricacies of the application to make full use of its features.

Developed by DJ Delorie at his wife's request after installing Linux on the family laptop, the suite is available free as source and binary packages.

Installation of the binary package is recommended for simplicity; just unpack the games and copy them to somewhere in your executable path (such as usr/X11R6/bin) then run them. All of the games have help available at the press of a key (F1 or H) and are presented in a pleasantly consistent way.

As well as Freecell and Minesweeper, the suite contains Solitaire, Golf and Thornq (card games); and Pegged, Merlin and Taipei (puzzles). A version of Mastermind is also included.

Ace of Penguins is a really great little package of entertaining, addictive games for all ages.

Code Crusader is a programming IDE that has been developed for Unix systems along the lines of the very popular Macintosh package, CodeWarrior.

As one of a number of free GUI based IDEs being developed, Code Crusader features a project manager, a source code editor, integrated hypertext help, a C++ class browser and good flexibility for working with external tools.

Code Crusader has also been designed to work closely with another package called Code Medic (details are available at the Web site), a graphical front end to the GNU debugger gdb.

The graphical interface is very slick and easy to use, while the source code editor is particularly impressive, with syntax highlighting, visual bracket matching, search and replace across multiple files, unlimited undo, and drag-and-drop facilities making up just some of its many features.

Flexibility is crucial for an IDE, particularly in rich development environments such as Linux/Unix. External parsers and lexers can be plugged in via an API to support almost any language, and the IDE itself has a good range of menu-configurable options.

Code Crusader is under active development and sports an impressive array of features for an open source project of this complexity. In combination with the Code Medic package, this could become a very popular development environment for the growing numbers of Linux/Unix developers.

LDAP is becoming increasingly important as a way to organise and search information, and this month we have a look at GQ, a generic LDAP client with a GTK-based graphical interface.

You will need the OpenLDAP library installed on your system first, so grab the latest release version from http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/OpenLDAP/ if needed (a recent version is recommended). You'll also need the GTK libraries, as with the building of any GTK application.

Having set these up, building GQ itself is simple. Run the configure script and type make, and you should be the proud owner of a binary called gq.

Once started, the next step is to locate a publicly available LDAP server (such as ldap.bigfoot.com) and enter it into GQ's server list. Type a sample string in the text box and press find. With any luck, a listing should be returned of matched results.

Browsing public servers such as his is good for getting a feel for LDAP, which can be pretty scary at first. GQ is also able to edit LDAP entries, and is very useful in developing and testing your own servers. Due to its simplicity and generic design, GQ may also be useful as a reference client.

Thankfully, not everyone is doing a JenniCam. Many people just like the idea of adding an almost real time image of themselves to their Web page, while businesses can add an extra dimension to the way they promote themselves on the Web with shots of the shop or office. Other uses include remote monitoring of computer rooms for security purposes.

Stamp is a nifty application which can process a raw image from a digital camera (or even a scanned photo), add information such as a title and a timestamp, then write it to the location where the final image is published.

Starting out as a command line utility, the Stamp application has now been developed with a GTK front end to aid management.

For those setting up or running a Webcam, it might be worth looking at both versions to see which best suits the situation. Very cool!