IPCop is a specialized Linux distribution whose sole purpose is to safeguard the computers and networks it is installed on. The distro proudly claims, "The Bad Packets Stop Here!" I recently installed IPCop 1.4.16 on my SOHO LAN, and found that it accomplishes what it sets out to do.

Even if you work only in Linux, you’ll likely have to use Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM) files at one time or another. Several open source projects use this common format, including Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Python, and PHP.

Creating a high-quality chart for the Web can be a challenging task, but open source software like Open Flash Chart (OFC) makes it a cinch. As you might guess from its name, the core engine of OFC is written in Adobe Flash. Although this means that users need a Flash browser plugin to view charts created with OFC, this approach has a significant advantage: it allows you to produce professional-quality graphs with minimum effort, because the core engine does all the heavy lifting, and all you need to do is to specify configuration options for your chart and feed data into it.

Slackware Linux today features a powerful and easy-to-use package management system, but making Slackware packages has not always been straightforward. Now Slackware application developers have a tool for easily making Slackware packages from source code and precompiled binaries. Src2pkg, now in version 1.6, very nearly lives up to its author’s tag of being Slackware’s "magic package maker."

For many average users, GNU/Linux support for PDF files may seem reasonably advanced. They can create PDF files in programs like OpenOffice.org, read them with programs like Kpdf, and edit them in programs like pdftk or PDFedit. But that’s not the whole story, says José Marchesi, founder of the recently created GNU PDF project. "Unfortunately, there are a lot of missing features in the existing free implementations," he says. That’s the main reason why the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has declared GNU PDF a high priority project, and is actively seeking donations to speed its progress.

poMMo, the "post modern mass mailer" with the not-quite-right acronym, is a powerful Web server-based mass mailing program firmly rooted on a Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP (LAMP) base. poMMo has been developed with the end user in mind, which shows in its quick Web-based installation, in its powerful yet simple way of creating and sending mailings, and in its intuitive usage.

Try to describe Hotwire, and you’ll eventually wind up saying something that sounds like an oxymoron, like "command-line GUI," "graphical shell" or "GUI xterm." Well, that’s pretty much what Hotwire is: something halfway between a text-based shell and a modern graphical user interface.