October 22, 2011

Edubuntu 11.10 Classic Gnome Desktop installed

I installed Edubuntu 11.10 using the Classic Gnome desktop. I also found that the XFCE desktop manager is also part of the standard DVD install. And you can choose which desktop you want each time you log in. It comes with Firefox v7.01, Banshee media player, Libre Office, and the Thunar file manager by default. There also are a wealth of graphic applications included. Edubuntu with the Gnome desktop seems very restricted. There are only 2 themes included: Ambiance and Radiance. There are less options to move toolbars, add themes, or change the location of the min/max buttons on the title bars. I even had to add Nautilus file manager and the Synaptic Update manager. In time, I'll learn more. I added wood wallpaper and used the Radiance theme.
Below are my Gnome and XFCE desktops. So if you want the Classic Gnome desktop on the latest Ubuntu build, Edubuntu 11.10 fits the bill. My feeling, is that I will stick with Ubuntu 11.04 and upgrade the apps I need, or switch to Xubuntu 11.10.





Below is the Ubuntu Software Center



You have to install the Compiz Setting Manager from the Ubuntu Software Center


Below is the Synaptic Package Manager







Edubuntu allows you to boot to Classic Gnome, Classic Gnome No Effects, and XFCE. Below are 2 screen shots showing the XFCE desktop manager.





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October 21, 2011

Best Free Software for Linux List by Gizmo 09-2011


Best Free Software for Linux

Updated 19. September 2011 - 6:32 by Jojoyee
Introduction
LinuxLinux, occasionally referred to as GNU/Linux, is an open source and free operating system predominantly known for its use in servers, but has increasingly become commonplace in desktop, notebook and netbook computers in recent years after newer and enhanced versions of Linux distributions, Ubuntu or Linux Mint for example, are developed and offered free to users.
While you can get the Linux system and use it for free, you can also run on the system a wide range of free applications such as well-known and commonly-used software including Firefox web browser and the OpenOffice application suite.
Among various free applications, here you might find the best free software for Linux, including those products reviewed and recommended by our editors in the various sections.
Other programs that work as potential alternatives to Windows applications or even perform better than them are also listed here for the benefits of users who migrate from Windows to Linux or run dual systems on their computers.
Best Free Software for Linux - Quick Select Index
After clicking a link, use your browser's Back icon to return here.
Items added or updated most recently: Pinta | Rhythmbox | GanttProject | LibreOffice | KeePassX| Remastersys | Phun | LBreakout2 | Urban Terror | AbiWord
Disk & File Tools:Drive Imaging | File Manager | Folder Sync | Archiver | Partition | Secure Erase | Encryption | CD Recovery | Online Backup | File Copy
Desktop & System:Screen Capture | Program Launcher | Desktop Search | Screen Session Recorder | Font Manager | Wallpaper Changer | Color Picker | Windows API | Cleanup and Tuning | System Backup | Other System Tools
Multimedia:Media Player | Music Player and Organizer | Media Center | Format Conversion | MP3 Tag Editor | Burner | Emulator | CD Ripper | DVD Ripper | Audio Editor | Video Editor | Music Creator
Image Tools:Image Viewer | Image Editor | High Dynamic Range | Photo Organizer | Vector Graphics Editor
Home & Office:Office Suite | Word Processor | PDF Writer | PDF Reader | PDF Tools | Personal Finance | Personal Information Management | Project Manager | Notes Organizer | Desktop Publishing | E-Book Reader
Internet Tools:Web Browser | Email Client | Download Manager | BitTorrent Client | FTP Client | Instant Messaging | Remote Access
Programming:HTML Editor | Programming Editor | NFO Viewer
Security/Privacy:Password Manager | Internet Safety Check | Anonymous Surfing Service | Antivirus | Firewall
Games:Sandbox | Computer Chess | 250 Online Games | Match-3 Puzzle | Jigsaw | Computer Go | Hearts | Sudoku | First-Person Shooter | Breakout Game | Reversi | Billiards and Pool
 
Best Free Disk & File Tools for Linux
Best Free Drive Imaging Program
  • Saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk and increases the close efficiency. The version of Clonezilla Live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. (Review)
  • "Not only can it clone disk to disk (any size) and copy disk partitions, it can also create and restore image files both locally and from an FTP site, if the workstation is connected to a wired network with a DCHP service." (Review)
Best Free File Manager
  • A file manager for KDE (by default) and good for other desktop environments such as GNOME as well, focusing on usability with navigation bar, view properties, split of views, dockable panels and many other useful features.
Best Free Folder Synchronization Utility
  • "A solid application with very clear and informative interface. The preview is very easy to understand, file collisions and deletions are readily recognizable.
    If you require a sync program that can copy files that are in use or locked, it has you covered there too!" (Review)
Best Free File Achiver / Zip Utilities
  • "Easy to use and very versatile, capable of creating 7Z, ARC, BZ2, GZ, PAQ/ZPAQ, PEA, QUAD/BALZ, TAR, UPX, ZIP files and extracting from 98 archive types." (Review)
  • Both archive managers designed respectively for GNOME and KDE desktop environments to create archives, view or extract files from archives, work as front-ends to command-line archivers supporting various file formats.
Best Free Partition Manager
  • "A GNOME partition editor for resizing (enlarging or shrinking), creating or deleting, moving or copying partitions on a hard disk, creating a partition table, enabling or disabling partition flags such as boot and hidden." (Review)
  • "Employs core programs of GParted and GNU Parted to handle partitioning tasks and can be run from a live CD, DVD or USB flash drive." (Review)
  • "A console application designed for data recovery. It can be used to fix partition table, recover deleted partitions or copy files from deleted partitions." (Review)
Best Free Secure Erase Utility
  • "Constructs a floppy disk or CD that will automatically wipe the hard drives of any PC that's booted from the disk, great for bulk disk cleaning and emergency." (Review)
Best Free File Encryption Utility
  • "TrueCrypt is a powerful, flexible and highly-effective encryption program to encrypt files, folders or entire drives. Use this seasoned, widely-used encryption program when you want an encrypted container that mounts as a virtual drive.
    It's one of those freeware programs that is far superior to commercial software and its open source status allows the all-important peer review of the source code required for a trustworthy encryption program." (Review)
Best Free CD Recovery Utility
  • "A preventive program to create an error correction file from a good CD or DVD for data recovery." (Review)
Best Free Online Backup Sites
  • "Provides 2 GB free space for backing up and sharing your files, works similar to any other folder of your computer—after installation, simply drag and drop files/folders to Dropbox you want to backup, share or sync with other computer." (Review)
Best Free File Copy Utility
  • "Excellent for copying information from scratched CD's, DVD's and corrupted files from the hard drives." (Review)
 
Best Free Desktop & System Tools for Linux
Best Free Screen Capture
  • "Shutter is like a swiss army knife for all screen capture tasks in Linux. It works better than Gnome-screenshot and KDE's KSnapshot.
    You can use this program to capture desktop, window, child window and rectangular area, with many plugins for resize and special effects, delay capture, activate/deactivate window border and cursor, inbuilt drawing tools, linked to external editor and auto save." (Review)
Best Free Program Launcher
  • "a top product in the keyword search class, easy to understand, use, configure and extend. It has a really small memory footprint." (Review)
Best Free Desktop Search Utility
  • "Google sidebar and gadgets. Just type a few letters or words into the search box and your top results pop up instantly. Indexes and searches multiple email programs." (Review)
Best Free Screen Session Recorder
  • "Ease of use, great flexibility and powerful annotation features, allows audio to be embedded in the presentation, etc." (Review)
  • An easy-to-use and effective recorder to make screen recordings into free Ogg video format. It also offers the ability to record audio through ALSA mixer or other options. The frontend program gtk-recordMyDesktop and the ALSA mixer can be downloaded from some depositories including Ubuntu Software Center.
Best Free Font Manager
  • "It is the largest and most complex application and runs on a wider range of platforms with more high-end features. Some of these features are not available in any of other programs.
    You can activate fonts in tagged groups, view many sample texts in many languages, classify fonts using PANOSE, view and compare glyphs, find a font from a raster, extract fonts from PDF files, and test layouts in a free-form playground." (Review)
Best Free Wallpaper Changer
  • "A good wallpaper changer allows for wallpaper positions to set to centered, tiled, center tiled, centered maxpert, tiled maxpert, scaled, center auto fit or scale and crop.
    The program supports features such as time intervals, selecting images from local folders or online resources, displaying images' EXIF data in system tray tool-tip, saving downloaded photos and run-time folder change detection." (Review)
Best Free Color Picker
  • "Quick and easy to pick a color, supports HSV, RGB and HTML codes with an opacity slider, color grabber, allows for naming and saving picked colors." (Review)
Best Free Windows API
  • Wine allows for running Windows applications on Linux and other operating systems, but without a copy of Windows. It's still under active development and not every program works yet.
Best Free Cleanup and Tuning
  • A system tool allows you to preview and delete unnecessary files to free up your valuable disk space, maintain privacy, and remove hidden junk. It deletes cache, cookies, Internet history, logs, temporary files, broken shortcuts, and wipes clean 70 applications and more.
  • An orphaned libraries remover to analyse the status of your installations, looks for orphaned libraries and adds package-removal capability. A GUI front-end to Deborphan for Debian systems.
  • A Startup Manager to change settings for your preferred default operating system to boot up, manage Usplash themes, adjust bootloader menu resolution or set timeout in seconds. See alsoChange Default Boot Options.
Best Free System Backup
  • Allows you to make a full system backup including your personal data to a live CD or DVD that you can use anywhere and install, or make a distributable copy, excluding your personal user data, of the system for sharing with your friends. It works for Debian, Ubuntu or its derivatives. (Review)
Other System Tools
 
Best Free Multimedia Software for Linux
Best Free Media Player
  • "Supports playback of most video files and DVD discs without the need to download external codec packs, including flv filescan. There are 5 different DVD region codes and VLC plays them all.
    VLC also has the ability to take screenshots of your video, even while during DVD playback, a real attractive feature." (Review)
  • "Intends to be a complete front-end for MPlayer, from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters, remember the settings of all files you play and more."
Best Free Music Player and Organizer
  • "An easy-to-use music player and organizer that has a clean interface, and sports many features, such as album art display, online radio access, and CD burning. This software is powered by Gstreamer, and can therefore support all of its audio formats, such as WAV, AAC, MP3, OGG, FLAC and more." (Review)
  • Imports, organizes, plays, and shares music using a simple yet powerful interface. Other features include rip CDs, create playlists, burn audio and mp3 CDs, support for podcasting and music recommendations.
  • A powerful music player for multi platforms with an intuitive interface, supports for collection management, bookmarking, dynamic playlists, file tracking, integrated web services and more.
Best Free Media Center
  • "It is truly outstanding in this category and earns the Gizmo's Top Pick title rightfully in my eyes. It played all media files I fed it with and turned out to be the most reliable product for me.
    XBMC offers convincing media library features and is highly configurable with custom skins and backdrops. You will find a vast amount of plugins, skins and other goodies for it as the community around XBMC is large." (Review)
Best Free Audio / Video Format Conversion
  • Aims to be simple to use and fast for conversion from most audio files to wav, flac, mp3, aac and ogg files, supports for extraction of the audio from videos too. (Note: Install GStreamer MP3 Encoding to enable conversion to mp3.)
  • An easy-to-use converter to convert multimedia files from one format to another for playback on various devices. Supported output formats include m4v (Ipod), avi (Nokia, PDA or DVD player), mkv (computer) and mp4 (various Sony devices), depending on the device you choose.
  • A small and easy-to-use utility to convert most audio and video files to the patent-free Ogg format, and support for encoding to the Matroska container format (mkv, mka), with adjustable settings on audio and video quality for conversion.
Best Free MP3 Tag Editor
  • "Edit all tags, generate tags from files or vice versa, import tags from databases, browse cover arts and lyrics from online resources, drag and drop cover art to a file, export tags, etc." Kid3 uses KDE libraries, while another package Kid3-qt is also available for installation without KDE dependencies." (Review)
  • "Identify track info by matching digital thumbprint with MusicBrainz database, show up existing tags with add and delete functions." (Review)
Best Free CD / DVD Burning Software
  • A capable CD/DVD burner optimised for KDE, lets you easily burn data CDs/DVDs, create audio/video CDs and video DVDs, rip audio/video CDs and video DVDs along with other related tasks, good for experienced as well as beginner users.
  • Designed for ease of use to create a traditional audio CD, data CD/DVD, video DVD or a SVCD, burn an existing CD/DVD image to disc, copy a CD/DVD to a new disc or write to an image file in ISO and other formats.
  • "Most powerful burning application with advanced features, support for every modern optical disc from CD to Blu-Ray, more than 10 image formats, authoring rewritable discs, etc." Runs on Linux with Wine (x86 only). (Review)
Best Free CD / DVD Emulation Software
  • "Select or drag-and-drop an image file to mount, one-click unmount, supports for burning ISO and IMG files, generate MD5 and SHA1 checksums, saving history and retrieving previously unmounted images." (Review)
Best Free CD Ripper
  • A simple yet powerful audio CD ripper and encoder to save audio tracks from an audio CD as any of MP3, AAC, Ogg, WAV, FLAC, Wavpack, Musepack or Monkey's audio files.
    Useful features include using CDDB to name and tag each track, encoding to multiple formats in one session, simultaneous ripping and encoding, tagging each track for a different artist and more.
Best Free DVD Ripper
  • "Good quality in transcoded video, small file size, integrates the latest improvements to the H.264 encoding library with enhanced picture quality, speed optimizations and supports better control over multiple audio tracks." (Review)
Best Free Audio Editing / Audio Splitter
  • "It does all the recording and editing I need, and is much simpler and faster to use than a lot of paid products. The interface is easy to use, allowing you to select and apply a noise profile just as easily as removing it.
    The program also can record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings, edit various sound files, cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together and change the speed or pitch of a recording." (Review)
  • "Splits mp3 and ogg files without re-encoding, able to identify split points between tracks via online database services (CDDB or FreeDB)." (Review)
Best Free Video Editor
  • "It is designed for multi-purpose video editing and processing and is my personal favorite because of its simplicity yet wide range of tools.
    The software supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. It lets you do just about everything under the sun, with well documented tutorials." (Review)
  • An open-source and non-linear video editor which is stable and friendly to use with support for many video, audio and image formats based on FFmpeg together with lots of other useful features.
Best Free Music Creator
  • "As a stand alone application, one would be hard pressed to find a more comprehensively full featured and versatile free music creator than this, with so many instruments and effects to choose from.
    The onboard Beat/Bassline editor removes the need for a separate drum sequencer and is a very nice touch: LMMS really is a one stop shop" (Review).
 
Best Free Image Viewing & Editing Software for Linux
Best Free Digital Image Viewer
  • "Fast, lots of features, very manageable, many plug-ins, supports nearly any OS." (Review)
Best Free Digital Image Editor
  • "Currently the only freeware package I am aware of that can be called an advanced image editor.
    If you are inexperienced at using image editing programs GIMP will likely be too overwhelming to start learning on as it has a steeper learning curve but it is feature rich. It has lots of advanced features and can do almost everything the Photoshop can do.
    Its multi-windowed interface makes it a little unusual if you're used to a windows program." (Review)
  • A simplified alternative to GIMP and modelled after the popular Windows program Paint.Net, Pinta is good for average users and includes most basic features including common drawing tools, resizing and cropping, adjustments and effects for tweaking images as well as supports for multiple layers.
Best Free High Dynamic Range (HDR) Software
  • Luminance HDR (previously known as Qtpfsgui) is an open source graphical user interface program and a high quality application to provide a workflow for high dynamic range imaging.
    It has great tone-mapping and aligning facilities, allowing for 8, 16 and 32 bit channels and two means of manually manipulating the image.
Best Free Digital Photo Organizer
  • "Simply sensational editing features that provide you with every function amateur photographers need." (Review)
  • A digital photo management program designed to import, organize, enhance, search and export image files. With this you can add comments and tags to albums, view and edit items, create slideshows and calendars, and share your creations.
Best Free Vector Graphics Editor
  • "A top product enhanced by an excellent user interface and the impressive set of tutorials, helps wean the user away from the world of digital images to the nodes, lines, curves and shapes that form the basis of vector editing." (Review)
 
Best Free Home & Office Software for Linux
Best Free Office Suite
  • A new office suite contains six feature-rich applications including Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base, supports for Open Document Format (ODF) and is compatible with other major office suites.
    If you're already familiar with OpenOffice, you will be able to start using LibreOffice quickly and easily as it's a fork of OpenOffice.
    Developed and supported by The Document Foundation, LibreOffice is aimed to be free and vendor-independent, with no requirement for copyright assignments.
  • "Covers the basics of office document creation: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, a desktop database and allows you to save your documents in many choices of file formats so you'll have no problem exchanging documents with MS Office.
    All of the modules are easy to learn and if you've ever used any other office software, it's a doddle. It is also extendable via extensions" (Review)
Best Free Word Processor
  • "Easy to adapt to, especially since the interface is similar to that found in Word and WordPerfect. Its abilities include cut and paste, highlight, as well as the usual host of common formatting tools, annotation and checking spelling in many languages.
    Besides being able to save to Word format, its own proprietary file format is available. A plugin can be installed to open OpenDocument formats. Sharing documents is possible with the integration of AbiCollab Web service." (Review)
Best Free PDF Writer
  • Creates a virtual PDF printer to convert a file printed in queue to PDF and save it in a user directory.
Best Free PDF Reader
  • More than a viewer for pdf and other document formats including postscript, djvu, tiff, chm, dvi, xps, odf and so on. It can be used on both KDE and GNOME desktop environments, with features for annotations, highlighting, drawing lines and shapes, adding textboxes and stamps, selecting and saving a part of documents as text or in an image format.
  • A document viewer for pdf and other document formats including postscript, djvu, tiff and dvi, aiming to replace the multiple document viewers that exist on the GNOME Desktop with a single simple application.
  • Small size, user-customized toolbar, fast launch speed, full screen capabilities, snapshot, zoom, thumbnails and other features. (Review)
Best Free PDF Tools
  • "Re-arranging pages in a pdf document, or merging and splitting pdf files, would be much easier with PDF Shuffler.
    After importing one or more pdf files to PDF Shuffler, you are presented with pages in thumbnails so that you can easily merge, re-order or delete the pages, or right-click a thumbnail to rotate or crop a page before exporting to a new pdf file." (Review)
  • "Allows you to import and modify PDF documents in OpenOffice from a PDF/ODF hybrid file with 100% layout accuracy." (Review)
Best Free Personal Finance
  • "Double entry accounting, keep tabs of budgets, create various accounts in each category, full suite of standard and customizable reports." (Review)
Best Free Personal Information Management
  • "Excellent task management, with "triage" (presents tasks and events in "now", "later" and "done" categories). Imports external SMTP email accounts, Google calendars and Highrise tasks. Exports calendars and tasks. Email messages can be edited, added to, and sent directly from Chandler." (Review)
Best Free Project Manager
  • "A very good project management tool with a surprisingly good depth of features and accessories—you can put in a percentage complete bar inside the timeline of that particular stage and make it easy to see how far along everything is without a lot of hassle. You can also add team members for a project and assign them to tasks when you set them up.
    It also includes a Milestone feature giving an end goal to aim for with a fixed time. Many other project management tools do not support these." (Review)
Best Free Notes Organizer
  • "In each notebook, you can create folders and pages, as well as sub-folders and sub-pages, and you can re-organize them easily by drag-and-drop. In each page, rich text formatting including colored fonts, bullet point lists and hyperlinks are supported.
    Not only can you store images, you can also directly insert a screenshot you take with this application into an opened note." (Review)
  • "Time for Tomboy Notes if you want to have a useful tool to relate notes and ideas together, with a wiki-like linking system. Features of the program include rich-text formatting, printing or exporting notes to html format, etc." (Review)
Best Free Desktop Publishing Program
  • "It's the real thing; a professional quality page layout program capable of producing press-ready output. The feature list is impressive; basically everything you want is there including "CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
    Graphics manipulation is handled via an interface to Gimp. Scribus can also import from and export to programs in the Open Office suite. The user interface is highly functional and the documentation is excellent, with lots of support from the user community." (Review)
Best Free Electronic Book Reader
  • "Includes an e-book viewer, library management, format conversion, news feeds, ebook conversion and sync features. A complete solution to all your e-book needs." (Review)
 
Best Free Internet & eMail Software for Linux
Best Free Web Browser
  • "Firefox is safer and browses a tad faster than Internet Explorer (for Windows), very stable and more standards compliant, rich in features such as Private browsing, tabbed browsing and over 2000 free extensions (add-ons) that allow you to customize your experience. It provides the most flexibility, expandability, and features of any browser to date." (Review)
  • "Extremely fast, simple and intuitive interface, Incognito Mode won't leave traces of browser history, capable of creating Application Shortcuts to specific pages on the web." (Review)
  • "In addition to being a top rate web browser, it also has a great email client, RSS reader, newsgroup reader, and IRC Chat client." (Review)
Best Free Email Client
  • "Customizable and expandable through add-ons, intuitive user interface." (Review)
  • Evolution: Provides integrated mail, address book and calendar, matches most other email programs in features and functionality.
Best Free Download Manager
  • "A cross-platform program designed to be simple, lightweight and easy to use. It's an open source application written in GTK+. Debian and RPM packages are readily available for download and installation.
    The program supports pause, resume and queue downloads, and classification of download files, monitors clipboard and integrates with Firefox browser via FlashGot plugin." (Review)
Best Free BitTorrent Client
  • "Cross platform, informative interface, wide variety of plugins, excellent support and the Vuze platform of legal content that downloads at high speeds." (Review)
  • "Performs excellently, easy on system resources, has an appealing and useful interface and has no ads or toolbar on install." (Review)
  • An easy-to-use yet powerful BitTorrent client with an intuitive interface and low memory footprint. The default settings just work but you can take a few clicks to configure advanced features such as watch directories, limit download and upload speed, bad peer blocklists, the web interface and more.
Best Free File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Client
  • "A cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox, easy to use, small, fast, feature packed, frequent updates and new features." (Review)
  • "If you use a browser other than Firefox or require advanced functionality not found in FireFTP, then this is one of great standalone applications, easy to use, feature rich, includes site manager functions." (Review)
Best Free Instant Messaging Client
  • "Supports AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr IM networks, available for multiple platforms, simple user interface, functional and lack of popups." (Review)
Best Free Remote Access Software
  • "An excellent remote control product that allows you to connect to any PC over the internet and drive it as if you were sitting in front of it.
    The software is said to have been downloaded more than 60 million times so far, and is widely praised by a number of users of Gizmo's Freeware. Another handy feature is that your grandma won't need admin privileges to run the client application, so making the connection to her PC is going to be pretty easy." (Review)
 
Best Programming Software & Tools for Linux
Best Free HTML Editor
  • "Full-featured WYSIWYG editor, integrated file management, tabbed editing, supports for forms, tables and templates." (Review)
  • "Full featured HTML text editor based on the well-known, open-source Eclipse IDE and many plugins." (Review)
Best Free Programming Editor
  • "A lightweight yet powerful editor designed for experienced programmers and web designers, and works as a general purpose editor as well with the IDE.
    Its user interface is complete with toolbars, dialogs and user-customized menus to facilitate insertion of markups and codes. Options are available for writing websites, scripts and programming codes in many programming and markup languages, with many other useful features." (Review)
  • "Advanced and easy-to-use editor supporting scriptable syntax highlighting, indentation and code folding for many source files, loads fast and runs stably." (Review)
Best Free NFO Viewer
  • A simple viewer for NFO files with preset font, encoding settings, automatic window size and clickable hyperlinks.
 
Best Free Security and Privacy Software for Linux
Best Free Password Manager
  • You just need to remember one single master password to access many user names, passwords and other private information saved in one single database. Features include defining titles and icons, grouping and sorting entries, and generating secure passwords.
    The database is encrypted either with AES or Twofish encryption algorithm using a 256 bit key and uses a file format that is compatible with KeePass Password Safe for Windows.
Best Free Internet Safety Check
  • "Fastest ratings, uses green/yellow/red ratings and 'people' reliability icons, multiple rating categories to help you evaluate websites, fantastic warning screen to empower users to avoid potentially bad websites before interacting with them." (Review)
Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service
  • "(Previously known as JAP) it's my top choice and a Java application that performs the role of a local (PC based) proxy server that redirects browser requests via the JonDo network. This allows the user to configure their choice of any browser rather than requiring a change to Opera." (Review)
Best Free Antivirus
  • "You may not need it. Some Linux users like to scan files prior to sending them to users of other operating systems, though." (Review)
Best Free Firewall
  • A complete firewall tool for Linux, allows for users to create a firewall with a wizard, open and close ports with a few clicks, completes with a real-time hit monitor.
 
Best Free Games for Linux
Best Free Sandbox Game
  • "A great 2D Sandbox Game with Fun Physics and many options to create things. You can invent anything you can think of: machines, towers, cars, abstract fantasy stuff, etc. Start from scratch or choose from a few previously made inventions.
    Get inspired by all the Youtube videos and take a glimpse at the well made Tutorial Section of the Site (how to create cars, catapults etc)." (Review)
Best Free Computer Chess
  • "With this program, you can play against the GNU Chess engine or lots of other chess engines, such as the Crafty engine. You can also play Internet chess by connecting to the FICS servers.
    It allows for saving games in the PGN, EPD and FEN chess file formats so that you can always return to continue with the games or analyze them. It also offers opening books and other useful features including undo moves, hint and spy modes, sound and animation effects." (Review)
  • "a well designed open source Chinese Chess application with highly configurable user interface and multi engines for you to choose from. You can also easily connect to multi remote Xiangqi servers to play the game online." (Review)
250 Best Free Online PC Games In One Place
  • "Be greeted with a full-screen of tiny screen shots for more than 250 free online PC games, all kinds of popular games and they are of various genres." (Review)
  • "A good alternative game site with minimum advertisements, features 36 tiny screen shots in each page from a library of more than 800 free online games. A click on each tiny screen shot brings you to the game selected." (Review)
Best Free Match-3 Puzzle
  • "Designed with colorful 3D rendered penguin animations and 15 stereo sound effects, Frozen Bubble comes with editable 100 levels for 1-player game, or hours and hours of 2-player game. You can also choose to have multi-player game over the local area network or Internet.
    Play this game with the left or right key to aim your shot and up key to fire. Hone your skills in speed and accuracy before the bubbles get frozen!" (Review)
Best Free Jigsaw Puzzle
  • "Create and solve puzzles, save and open puzzle files, set tile sizes, solving a puzzle by swapping pieces or with a helpful solver." (Review)
Best Free Computer Go
  • "2D and 3D boards, adjustable board size and engine strength, play online or offline, etc." (Review)
Best Free Hearts Game
  • "Various rule sets including Spot Hearts, Omnibus Hearts with configurable play rules, backgrounds and card styles." (Review)
Best Free Sudoku Puzzle, Generator and Solver
  • An open source program allows you to generate sudoku puzzles in five different and configurable difficulty levels. It also includes a solver and an analyzer to help you solve the puzzles.
    While playing the game, you can select to view a summary of solving techniques and solution paths. When you click on a solution path, it highlights the steps on the corresponding grid to help you analyze the game. (Review)
Best Free First-Person Shooter
  • "Described as fun over realism by the creators, the game has fast paced, intense game-play. Urban Terror doesn't throw realism to the wind mind you, but rather tries to enhance game-play with elements like powerslides and wallhops.
    Five different game types, over a thousand servers, plenty of players to go around and no waiting for people to show up." (Review)
Best Free Breakout Game
  • "An extremely polished Breakout Clone features a two-player mode (local or over the internet or LAN), fine animations and graphics, excellent controls, the ability to save a game, a level editor, and a turbo key.
    This game gets regular Level Set updates. The fun continues well beyond when you have mastered the 50+ levels." (Review)
Best Free Reversi
  • "7-level of difficulty, clean and helpful interface, show legal moves and last move, undo moves, hints, animation, etc." (Review)
Best Free Billiards and Pool Game
  • "A brilliantly crafted open-sourced freeware game that affords play of either 8-Ball or 9-Ball. The 3D graphics are second-to-none and the physics appear to be flawless.
    The user interface is simple and the controls straightforward. As you assess your next shot, you can view the table layout from any perspective you want, roaming and zooming and peering." (Review)
 
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