GNU screen is a very neat tool that’s included in most Unix-like operating systems. It’s a utility that acts as a basic command line window manager, so you can maintain several open terminal sessions within one physical terminal.

Downloading software from repositories can be a long and daunting task especially when you are downloading from a repository server which is far from your location.

TrueCrypt is open source software for on-the-fly encryption. TrueCrypt can use an encrypted file or partition and mount it for use transparently by any application. The Windows version has a fancy GUI, but on Linux there is a good command line interface.

"The Songbird open-source media player that is built using Firefox technology and XUL Runner is now available in a early beta release..."

Previously in ITWire we put forth the view that one reason people stick to Windows is because they have to run specific applications that only exist for that platform. We’d like to introduce you to two tremendous web sites which help find open source equivalents for proprietary Windows software.

With my older IBM ThinkPad R50e starting to show its age, I recently decided to upgrade to a newer ThinkPad, this time under the Lenovo name.

As with Firefox, you can extend Thunderbird's functionality by installing extensions. Mozilla's official extension repository has quite a few nifty tools on offer, and which ones you choose to install depends entirely on your needs. There are, however, a few extensions that you might find indispensable no matter how you use Thunderbird.

PCLinuxOS Magazine, September 2007 Issue is available to download. We apologize for the 2 day delay in this release; website problems at mypclinuxos.com added to our woes. However, a few days late never means a dollar short! Our previous issues can also be downloaded.