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This page gathers some of my personal notes concerning a few tools I have tried out or use regularly.
Articles
- OpenSSL is actually several things in one: a crypto library (see my article in MISC), an SSL stack and a crypto tool.
- GPG is the open source alternative to PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). It's used to encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify documents.
- Enigmail is Thunderbird's GPG plugin. It automatically encrypts/decrypts/signs/verifies your emails.
- DokuWiki is this wiki ! I like it very much :)
- DotClear is a blog. It's quite good too.
- Joomla is a CMS. My personal home page uses Joomla. But I tend to find it a bit too big, slow, buggy etc.
Links to my favorite tools (or the ones I hate the less !)
| Description | Windows | Linux | Solaris | Windows Mobile 6 | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda |  Sunbird or Lightning (currently, I prefer Sunbird),  (on the web) | - | Nothing really great  |
||
| Backup | Cobian Backup or scripts with xcopy | scripts with tar or rsync | Sprite backup (not free) | ||
| Blog | DotClear (to install on a web server) | ||||
| Bug Tracker |  or  Bugzilla | ||||
| CMS |  Joomla | - | Versions I have tried are heavy and bugged, but there's an active community and it's very customizable | ||
| Compression |  http://www.7-zip.org/ | bzip, gzip, tar | - | ||
| Development in C | Visual Studio Express (quite handy), Eclipse (very heavy) | Eclipse (very heavy), Emacs | - | Of course, text editors such as  PSPad,  ConTEXT, Emacs (I'm an Emacs fan !) are possible too ! Actually, I mostly use PSPad or Emacs. |
|
| Development in Java | Eclipse (very heavy),  jEdit | - | Of course, using text editors is possible too ! | ||
| Download Manager | DownThemAll (Firefox add-on) | - | |||
| Disk encryption | TrueCrypt (supports full disk encryption) | EncFS (handy to backup, but security level might not suit all situations + said to have issues concerning NFS) or TrueCrypt (requires newer kernels). See also dm-crypt | ZFS Encryption ? | ||
| File encryption |  GPG4Win |  | CSWgnupg | - | |
| FTP Client |  FileZilla or FireFTP (Firefox add-on) | gftp (home) | - | ||
| Groupware | OBM (I haven't tried it yet) | ? | - | ||
| Google Talk |  Google talk | Use google talk's widget (in Netvibes, or in Gmail) | GoTalkMobile 3 | ||
| Image editor |  The GIMP | CSWgimp | - | Open source alternative to Photoshop | |
| Image viewer | XnView or Nikon View | XnView | - | XnView is available for plenty of platforms. | |
| Mail Client |  Thunderbird | Icedove | CSWthunderbird | - | Thunderbird's not perfect, but it's the best I know of |
| Mail encryption | Enigmail (Firefox add-on) | - | Requires GnuPG | ||
| Mobile - PC Sync | ActiveSync, FinchSync | FinchSync | FinchSync is Java/HTTP based. Other solutions such as SynCE are said to work, but I haven't tried them. | ||
| Network sniffer | Wireshark | - | Ex ethereal | ||
| Password safe |  KeePass Password Safe or  Password Safe | KeePassX (may be difficult to install on some systems) or  Password Gorilla (Tcl/tk interface: it works but it's ugly) | Password Gorilla (Tcl/tk interface: it works but it's ugly) | KeePass Password Safe | KeePass can read PasswordSafe databases |
| PDF Viewer |  Foxit Reader (smaller than Acrobat Reader) | Acrobat Reader | evince (also PS viewer) | ||
| Project Management | Open Workbench (I haven't tried it yet, but it's meant to be an open source alternative to Microsoft Project) | ||||
| Remote Desktop Control |  Tight VNC or Radmin (not free) | Tight VNC | |||
| Social Network |   | - | Plaxo supports professional and personal profiles, whereas LinkedIn is dedicated to professional links. | ||
| Skype |  Skype | ? |  | ||
| Slides | Open Office Impress | Star Office | PowerPoint Mobile | Open source alternative to Power Point. Able to read/write .ppt | |
| SSH Client | PuTTY or Cygwin/ssh | ssh | Pocket PuTTY | ||
| System cloning | Clonezilla (Live CD) | - | This is the free alternative to Ghost, but I find it difficult to re-use the clones ! | ||
| System rescue | System Rescue CD (Live CD) | - | I love it. Even offers a graphic environment. Useful to check, repair partitions. | ||
| Text editor | PSPad, Win32Pad, ConTEXT, Emacs over  Cygwin | Emacs | Emacs | Good replacement to Microsoft's notepad | |
| Versioning system | Subversion with TortoiseSVN | Subversion or CVS | - | ||
| Virtual machine |  VirtualBox (nice, but several bugs) or VMWare Player (free versions have a few limitations) | Not tried, but there's plenty: VMWare, VirtualBox, Qemu, UML… | VirtualBox (currently, USB not implemented) | ||
| VoIP client | |  GoSIP (slow on my HTC Touch) | |||
| Web browser |  Firefox | Iceweasel | CSWfirefox | Opera Mini | |
| Web editor | KompoZer | FrontPage = berk, KompoZer = ex Nvu. | |||
| Wiki |  DokuWiki | - | Does not require a MySQL database | ||
| Word editor | Open Office Writer (open source alternative to Word. Able to read/write .doc) | Star Office | Word Mobile | ||
| X server | Cygwin-X (open source) | native | |||
(c) A. Apvrille - 2009