Below are local links to information I have found either interesting or useful. All links are locally cached with permission from the original authors, when possible links are provided to the original article.

A distribution (distro for short) is the linux kernel packaged with various programs, libraries and an installation routine. All distro's use the linux kernel at their core. The difference lies in each distro's linux philosophy, package management and focus. As with the ongoing Windows vs. Linux debate, people argue which distro is best, the bottom line is, the best distro is the one you find most useful. Descriptions below are taken from their respective home pages when possible. For a complete distribution list consult www.linuxapps.com.

MARC - MARC is an RDBMS driven database of mailing list messages, viewable and browsable by list, thread, author, or searchable via a full-text search engine. Its interface is no-frills but highly functional, designed to be useable even over slow links or with text-only browsers like lynx.

Geocrawler - Another mailing list archive. Part of the Open Source Development Network.

Neohapsis Archives - Another mailing list archive.

Root Prompt - "Nothing But Unix" - Daily articles on various *NIX related subjects.

Slashdot - Slashdot or /. reports daily on *NIX, toys, space, sci-fi, etc news. It is one of many linux / geek related sites now owned by Andover.Net.

Application Proxies

TIS Firewall Tool Kit - The FireWall ToolKit (FWTK) is a set of proxies which you can use to build your own firewall.

T.REX: Open Source Firewall - T.Rex Firewall is a complex application-gateway firewall. The firewall runs on a multihomed machine with two or more network interfaces and contains specialized application proxy servers, a generic proxy server for TCP applications, and a SOCKS server for setting up a circuit gateway. T.Rex also comes with a simple intrusion detection system, extended logging, and strong authentication support.

Squid Web Proxy Cache - Squid is a high-performance proxy caching server for web clients, supporting FTP, gopher, and HTTP data objects. Unlike traditional caching software, Squid handles all requests in a single, non-blocking, I/O-driven process.

Packet Storm - Packet Storm is the largest and most up to date information security database in the world.

nmap-hackers Top 50 - In May/June of 2000, insecure.org conducted a survey of 1200 Nmap users from the nmap-hackers mailing list to determine their favorite security tools. Each respondant could list up to 5.

GNU Privacy Guard - GnuPG is a complete and free replacement for PGP. Because it does not use the patented IDEA algorithm, it can be used without any restrictions. GnuPG is a RFC2440 (OpenPGP) compliant application.

BestCrypt - The BestCrypt software products keep your private data in the encrypted form on the disk and provide you with the transparent access to it from any application program.

scanlogd - Designed to be safe to use, scanlogd is a TCP port scan detection tool, originally designed to illustrate various attacks an IDS developer has to deal with, for a Phrack Magazine article.

Tripwire - Tripwire is a system integrity checker, a utility that compares properties of designated files and directories against information stored in a previously generated database. Any changes to these files are flagged and logged, including those that were added or deleted, with optional email reporting.

Logcheck - Logcheck is part of the Abacus Project of security tools. It is a program created to help in the processing of UNIX system logfiles generated by the various Abacus Project tools, system daemons, Wietse Venema's TCP Wrapper and Log Daemon packages, and the Firewall Toolkit by Trusted Information Systems® Inc.(TIS). Logcheck also works very well at reporting on other common operating system security violations and strange events.

snplog - (Simple Network Protocol logger) consists of three daemon programs: icmplogd, udplogd and tcplogd. They log connects of the specific protocol via syslog along with the remote name and makes an optional ident-lookup for tcp connections and also logs the remote user name.

OpenSSH - OpenSSH is a FREE version of the SSH protocol suite of network connectivity tools that increasing numbers of people on the Internet are coming to rely on. Many users of telnet, rlogin, ftp, and other such programs might not realize that their password is transmitted across the Internet unencrypted, but it is. OpenSSH encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other network-level attacks. Additionally, OpenSSH provides a myriad of secure tunneling capabilities, as well as a variety of authentication methods. SSH FAQ

nmap - nmap is a utility for port scanning large networks, although it works fine for single hosts.

Nessus - The "Nessus" Project aims to provide to the internet community a free, powerful, up-to-date and easy to use remote security scanner.

Snort - Snort is a lightweight network intrusion detection system, capable of performing real-time traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. Also check out their commercial services.

Linux Kernel Archives - This is the primary site for the Linux kernel source, but it has much more than just kernels.

Openwall Project - This patch is a collection of security-related features for the Linux kernel, all configurable via the new 'Security options' configuration section. See the README for full details.

HAP-Linux - HAP-Linux is a collection of security-related patches that are floating around, plus a few non-security, but "required" patches to the 2.2.x Linux kernels. (Note: HAP-Linux requires the above Openwall patches).

grsecurity - Grsecurity is the most extensive set of security patches to the 2.4 tree of Linux kernels to date.

TCPDUMP - tcpdump is a tool for network monitoring and data acquisition

Sniffit - A packetsniffer, developed on LINUX, ported to SunOS/SOLARIS, IRIX and FreeBSD. Has various functions that aren't offered in any other non-commercial sniffer.

Ethereal - Ethereal is a free network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It allows you to examine data from a live network or from a capture file on disk. You can interactively browse the capture data, viewing summary and detail information for each packet. Ethereal has several powerful features, including a rich display filter language and the ability to view the reconstructed stream of a TCP session.

Blackbox - Blackbox is that fast, light window manager you have been looking for without all those annoying library dependancies. If you have a C++ compiler and the X Window System you can compile and use it.

Fluxbox - Fluxbox is a fast, light weight window manager based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code base.

Enlightenment - Enlightenment is designed to be as configurable as possible - in look and in feel.

Window Maker - Window Maker is an X11 window manager designed to give additional integration support for GNUstep applications. It tries to emulate the elegant look and feel of the NeXTSTEP(tm) GUI.

KDE - KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system.

GNOME - The GNOME project was born as an effort to create an entirely free desktop environment for free systems. From the start, the main objective of GNOME has been to provide a user friendly suite of applications and an easy-to-use desktop.

Eterm - Eterm is a color vt102 terminal emulator intended as a replacement for xterm. It is designed with a Freedom of Choice philosophy, leaving as much power, flexibility, and freedom as possible in the hands of the user.

MP3 Playing

XMMS - A skinable mp3 player for linux with similar features of WinAmp and extensive plugin support.

mpg123 - Mpg123 is a fast, free and portable MPEG audio player for Unix. It supports MPEG 1.0/2.0 layers 1, 2 and 3.

MP3 Encoding

xingmp3enc [$$] - XingMP3 Encoder will compress your audio (WAV) files into MP3 files. This means that you get high quality audio in small, manageable files, around 8 times (!) faster than any other encoder available.

BladeEnc - BladeEnc is a freeware MP3 encoder. It is based on the same ISO compression routines as mpegEnc, so you can expect roughly the same, or better, quality . The main difference is the appearance and speed.

cdda2wav - cdda2wav is a sampling utility for CD-ROM drives that are capable of sending audio CD data in digital form to your computer (CDDA). Data can be dumped into wav, sun or cdr format files.

Video

MPlayer - MPlayer is a movie player for LINUX and other Unices. It plays most video formates and supports Win32 DLL codecs.

xine - xine is a free, gpl-licensed video player for unix-like systems. xine plays videos synchronizing the playback of image and audio.

Audio

aumix - This program adjusts an audio mixer from X, the console, a terminal, the command line or a script.

rexima - rexima is a curses-based interactive mixer which can also be used from the command-line. It runs on any terminal with a screen size of 80x24 or greater. It's intended to be a simple, general, usable mixer without all the chrome usually present in other mixers.

Web Browsers

Netscape Communicator - The popular web browser suite. Includes Navigator, Messenger, Composer, AOL Instant Messenger, Netscape Radio, RealPlayer G2, plus multimedia plug-ins.

Mozilla - "Mozilla is an open-source web browser, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability."

Opera - A powerful multi-platform web browser that focuses on speed and originality.

General

X-Chat - A powerful X11 Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client which supports Perl and Python.

BitchX - A multi-platform console based IRC client. It is a modified clone of the popular ircII client.

GAIM - An instant messaging client with support for most popular IM protocols.

Star Office [$$] - StarOffice software is a powerful, cross-platform office productivity suite.

AbiWord - AbiWord is a lean and fast full-featured word processor. It works on Windows and most Unix Systems.

Word Perfect Office [$$] - "Designed specifically for the robust Linux operating system, the suite delivers world-class applications for powerful word processing, versatile spreadsheets, captivating presentations, databases and personal information management."

Open Office - Their 'Mission Statement' says it all: "To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format."

GnuCash - If you've been looking for a way to manage your personal finances under Linux, you've found it! Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. GnuCash is backed by an active development community and is blossoming into a full-fledged accounting system. Developed under the GPL, you have no need to worry about obsolescence: GnuCash will be there for you.

Cygwin - Cygwin is a UNIX environment, developed by Red Hat, for Windows. It consists of two parts:

• A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a UNIX emulation layer providing substantial UNIX API functionality.
• A collection of tools, ported from UNIX, which provide UNIX/Linux look and feel.

Putty - PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator.

WINE - Wine is an implementation of the Windows Win32 and Win16 APIs on top of X and Unix. Think of Wine as a Windows compatibility layer. Wine provides both a development toolkit (Winelib) for porting Windows sources to Unix and a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows 3.x/95/98/ME/NT/W2K/XP binaries to run under Intel Unixes.

VMware - VMware is software that runs multiple virtual computers on a single PC--at the same time--without partitioning or rebooting. Really.

BASH - Bash is a shell, or command language interpreter, that will appear in the GNU operating system. Bash is an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and C shell (csh). It is intended to conform to the IEEE POSIX P1003.2/ISO 9945.2 Shell and Tools standard. It offers functional improvements over sh for both programming and interactive use. In addition, most sh scripts can be run by Bash without modification.

Greycat's Bash Guide

Greycat's Bash FAQ

GKrellM - GKrellM is a single process stack of system monitors which supports applying themes to match its appearance to your window manager, Gtk, or any other theme.

XPenguins - XPenguins is a simple program that animates a number of penguins that fall from the top of the screen, walk along the top of windows, up the side of windows, up the side of the screen, and sometimes even levitate with their genetically-modified go-go-gadget 'copter ability.

screen - Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes, typically interactive shells. Each virtual terminal provides the functions of the DEC VT100 terminal and, in addition, several control functions from the ANSI X3.64 (ISO 6429) and ISO 2022 standards (e.g., insert/delete line and support for multiple character sets).