(Detailed)

Create throwaway addresses to avoid being spammed.

aide -- Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment, the very first thing to install on your GNU/Linux system!

Apache -- The bestest free webserver:

• Tomcat -- Java servlets &c.
• Wicket -- A Java-based framework for dynamic web pages.

bzip2 -- This seems to be the best compression utility around these days.

Demoroniser -- A script to replace Microsoft's incompatible and completely unnecessary "extended characters" with ASCII equivalents. Demoroniser code has made its way into Perl (the HTML::TextToHTML module) and Macromedia's ColdFusion.

Firefox -- By far the best graphical browser, especially with the Adblock plug-in.

gaim -- If you must use IM, here's a nice one that doesn't try to spew ads and logos all over your desktop, browser, scrollbars, etc.

GNU -- GNU tools in the raw, without the packaging. This is the ultimate source of Emacs.

GNU/Linux -- An excellent free operating system:

• Debian -- The GNU/Linux with the best collection of utilities and a net-based distro approach.
• Knoppix -- Debian-based distro that boots from a CD and runs in RAM. Very handy when there's something else installed on the hard drive and you must have something better.
• xubuntu -- Debian-based distro tailored for human kindness. It's especially kind to humans with laptops.

The Red Hat distro has been available and stable for years, so it's a widely-used platform for server systems (including this website's). It's a good distro to be familiar with, but I'm happier with the Debian distros overall.

Gimp -- A nice freeware image-editing tool.

Hasciicam -- An amazing camera-to ASCII tool!

Internet Software Consortium -- Free Internet software: BIND, DHCP, and INN.

Jam -- Fast and clever multi-platform make tool.

Java -- Surely you've heard of Java!

KDE -- A desktop environment for GNU/Linux with excellent features and customizability. I'm not fond of the slick techno look (the warm look and feel of ubuntu is lost in the kubuntu distro), but even that can be customized.

Logdaemon -- Lock down Unix systems with daemons that are more robust and keep better track of events (both of which are great security features).

MHonArc -- Very versatile tool to make HTML archives from MH (and other mail) folders.

nmh (the new MH) -- My favorite mailer. It's highly customizable and available for use with any shell tools. Works seamlessly between graphical, command-line, and Emacs interfaces; and blends right in with the better newsreaders.

-- OpenOffice.org handles files from office software that have annoying proprietary formats, and lets you rework them into open formats.

Perl -- The most useful scripting language is available and fully-documented online.

PHP -- A powerful and well-designed web-scripting language.

SATAN -- A more deluxe security verifier for Unix systems.

ssh -- Secure shell gives you safer authentication for login sessions.

tomsrtbt -- A minimalist GNU/Linux on a floppy disk that runs in RAM. For those times when Knoppix is just too much.

7-Zip -- A better zip utility than the ones you'll pay for. Of course, bzip2 and gzip are much better, but at times we must deal with Windows cruft.

Ad-Aware -- Finds and cleans out spyware that's been installed on your Windows system.

Cygwin -- Nice bash shell for Windows, with bunches of prebuilt GNU tools.

GNU Emacs on Windows -- If it doesn't run Emacs, it's not really an operating system. This actually makes an operating system out of Windows. Barely.

IrfanView -- View images on Windows boxes. This is a very nice app with a good lightweight set of image-editing abilities, and I wish it would be ported to better platforms.

Metapad -- Beyond Notepad.

PuTTY -- A secure terminal app, providing ssh and scp.

Spybot Search & Destroy --- Finds and cleans out more spyware that's been installed on your Windows system. Ain't Windows great?

TTConverter -- If you're freeing yourself of Windows and want to take some favorite fonts along, this converts Windows TrueType Font files into Mac TrueType Font files.

TTSSH (Tera Term with ssh) -- Another good secure terminal app, providing ssh (but not scp).

Winmail Reader -- Some Microsoft products send email attachments as "winmail.dat" files in a proprietary format. This lets you read what's in the attachment.

ZoneAlarm -- A free "firewall" to detect and block all unwanted network access. (Don't bother with the "free spyware scan" or the nice extra features unless you want to buy them.)

Adobe -- I'm a big fan of PostScript and Photoshop. I use Acrobat Reader, too.

DECnotes -- Better than newsreaders, really.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking -- I use this voice-recognition software. Alas, it only runs on Windows. Now you know why this page has Windows tools on it ...

Macromedia -- I'm impressed with their animation systems: Director and Flash.

Perforce -- A very good RCS-based configuration management tool. They also provide Jam (see above).

Sybase -- A fast and spiffy database. Too bad about their pointy-haired management problem, though.

Symantec Security Response -- You're kind of stuck using all available antivirus tools when you're stuck using Windows.

Timefold -- Primo consultancy for Clearcase.

Annoyances.org -- For grappling with Windows.

Beware of Verisign -- Problems with domain name registration.

Editors 101 -- All you need to know about text editors.

Java Coding Standards by Doug Lea (Draft) -- The Java standards I adopted, sorta.

MySQL + OOo by Jym Dyer -- The hoops you need to jump through to get two leading free software releases to talk to each other.

Photoshop Tips from Laurie McCanna -- Quite helpful, better than some of those books that you could pay too much money for!

Position Is Everything -- Make things work well on the web, despite a certain browser that's trying to thwart interoperability.

Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" -- Two approaches, one of which is more about freedom.

Now remember, don't ever say a negative word about anything remotely associated with this, the best of all possible workplaces, or any other workplace for that matter. You wouldn't want anyone saying you have an attitude problem. Love your job. Use the company mission statement as your life's philosophy, and be cheerful with everyone at all times, especially the fine system administrators and helpful tech support staff, and everyone will work well together. Don't ever read Dilbert. That guy just isn't a Team Player.

Once upon a time I worked for a small company that was taken over by a large company. The large company sent in all these white men in dark suits to watch over us. The few who knew anything about computers knew COBOL.

One time, my coworker Gene was patiently trying to explain his C code to one of the Suits:

Suit: Why does this array start at 0?
Gene: That's how C works. The first item in the array is offset 0 from the pointer.
Suit: This goes from 0 to 9.
Gene: A total of 10 values, yes.
Suit: Can you make it go from 1 to 10?
Gene: The language doesn't work that way.
Suit: Can you make it go from 0 to 10, and not use 0?
Gene: No, that wouldn't work ...

After a long and grueling debate on starting with 0 or 1, the Suit left. Gene came over to my cubicle, looked at me, and said, "but this one goes up to 11!"