About a year ago, we took a look at the growing trend toward open-source security and highlighted 10 of the best apps available. Since then, the area has continued to mature, and now we're back highlighting 75 of the most frequently downloaded open-source security applications.

Linux only: Any Linux user clutching a mouse with more than the standard two buttons and a scroll wheel doesn't have it easy trying to match the same kind of configuration options given by the manufacturer's setup software, which is almost always Windows or Mac-only.

Many users of open source software point to the fact that their applications and platforms are more secure than proprietary alternatives simply because they aren't such obvious targets for malware distribution. As just one example, the Standish Group recently completed a survey in which 70 percent of respondents said Red Hat Linux is less vulnerable to security threats than Windows.

Here's a site full of links to various tutorials around the net on how to get Linux running on a laptop. It lists all known tutorials by make, model and distro used in the tutorial. It's a good site to go to, but is a bit ubuntu heavy. So if you know of tutorials using other dist ...

The Linux blogs were abuzz with accounts of Ubuntu's newly released version, Hardy Heron. The distro has pushed the envelope of capabilities and appeal with nearly every release, and the latest version has Linux fans speculating that it will attract more users away from Windows.

So in part one we disabled unwanted or unneeded programs from starting up when we turn on our computer. However those programs are still installed and taking up space. This space could be better used for other things. Important things like music, movies, recipes or maybe even some work related stuff.

Firefox lets you tinker with many of its internal settings by entering about:config in the address bar. The preference settings exposed on that page let you make many changes, but the tabular interface is not exactly user-friendly. One alternative, the Preferential extension improves matters only slightly.