Internet and networking software has always been one of Linux's strongest areas.
Anti-Spam Tools - Proficient Linux anti-spam tools featuring whitelisting, spam buckets, Bayesian filtering, fuzzy logic techniques, and attachment scanning.
DNS Servers - Domain Name System (DNS) is the internet’s directory service: It takes a human readable name and converts it to a machine readable “IP” address.
Email Clients (Console) - Work your mailbox from a terminal with these extremely lightweight email clients.
Email Clients (Graphical) - Email clients offer a variety of features. Many email clients offer a slew of features, some stick with just the basics. At the end of the day, what is important is that you find an email client that offers what you need, it is reliable, and works well on your computer.
Email Clients (Web-Based) - We explore alternatives to Gmail that don't feature automated scanning of your email content.
Email Encryption Tools - Sending encrypted messages is one method of ensuring electronic privacy. OpenPGP is the most widely used email encryption standard.
Email Servers - Email remains the killer information and communications technology. We feature the best free and open source email servers.
FTP Clients - File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a time-honored method of transferring files to and from a remote network site.
FTP Clients (Command-Line) - We're again focusing on FTP, the time-honored method of transferring files. But these clients are all designed for the command line.
FTP Servers - An FTP server is a software application which enables the transfer of files from one computer to another. It plays the role of a server in a client–server model.
Google Drive Clients - We explore clients for Google Drive, a file storage and synchronization service. Store files in the cloud, share files, and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with collaborators.
HTTP clients (Command-line) - Besides downloading files, these clients can be used for testing, debugging and interacting with HTTP servers and web applications.
Instant Messaging Clients - Real-time text communication between two or more individuals over a network such as the internet. There are so many different instant messaging clients available.
Intrusion Prevention for SSH - Cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network.
IRC Clients - IRC is a type of real-time Internet text messaging. IRC is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but it also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfers.
IRC Clients (Console) - These IRC clients are a good fit; small, lean clients, that can be run on any hardware, and still make full use of the power of IRC.
IRC Servers - IRC is a type of real-time Internet text messaging. IRC is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but it also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfers.
LDAP Solutions - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for accessing directory services. This protocol is specifically targeted at management applications and browser applications that provide read/write interactive access to directories.
Load Balancers - Load balancing is defined as the methodical and efficient distribution of network or application traffic across multiple servers in a server farm. Each load balancer sits between client devices and backend servers, receiving and then distributing incoming requests to any available server capable of fulfilling them.
MAC/RBAC Tools - These controls include authentication, authorisation and audit. Mandatory Access Control (MAC) / Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).
Mail Notification - A mail notification tool lets you know when new emails are received. Never miss an important email with these email notification tools that are frugal on your system resources.
Mailing List Managers - Mailing list software enables users to manage electronic mail discussion and e-newsletter lists. There is a good range of mature open source mailing list software available for the Linux platform.
Mastodon: Graphical Clients, Text-Based Clients - Mastodon is a free and open source microblogging platform similar to Twitter, but with user privacy and decentralization in mind. We explore the finest Mastodon clients.
Matrix Clients - Matrix is an open standard for interoperable, decentralised, real-time communication over IP. We pick the best clients.
Network Authentication Servers - Connection authentication, authorization, and accounting management. There are a few mature, highly proficient, and feature-laden servers.
Network Inventory Management - Collate all network infrastructure data and keep it up to date with these great network inventory management tools.
Network 'top' Tools (Console) - We explore small network tools that derive inspiration from the 'top' troubleshooting tool.
News Aggregators - Collect news, weblog posts, and other information from the web using RSS and Atom feeds.
Port Scanners - For network inventory and the verification of the security of a network. These are important tools for users and system administrators to verify the security policies of their computers and network.
Remote Display Software - Use the mouse and keyboard to control another computer remotely. These tools offer significant benefits to employees and employers alike.
Social Networking - Create your own Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. The open source community plays an important role in the social networking space.
System Monitoring Tools - Real-time incident notification, performance analysis, system health verification, and more with these great system monitoring tools.
Tox Clients - Tox is a peer-to-peer instant-messaging and video-calling protocol that offers end-to-end encryption. We pick the finest clients that use this protocol.
UPnP Servers - Share your music, photos and videos with your network. UPnP is an acronym for Universal Plug and Play, a collection of networking protocols.
Usenet Tools - Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. We highlight Usenet newsreaders suited for discussions and downloading files.
Voice Over IP Software - Telephone-like voice conversations across IP based networks. SIP is the most popular VoIP protocol.
Web Browsers (Graphical) - The quintessential desktop application that retrieves and presents information from the web. These are full-blown graphical web browsers.
Web Browsers (Console) - The quintessential desktop application that retrieves and presents information from the web using a terminal.
XMPP Clients (Console) - Real-time communication using this secure battle-tested protocol. XMPP is also known as Jabber.
XMPP Clients (Graphical) - Real-time communication. The “X” in XMPP stands for “Extensible”, which means the core protocol is updated and extended with more features.
XMPP Clients (Web Based) - Real-time communication which powers a wide range of applications including instant messaging, presence, media negotiation, whiteboarding, collaboration, lightweight middleware, and content syndication.
XMPP Servers - Set up your own XMPP service on your server. XMPP is designed for real-time communication.
Big Data
Big Data is an all-inclusive term that refers to data sets so large and complex that they need to be processed by specially designed hardware and software tools.
Data Analysis Tools - Examine huge quantities of unstructured data to find patterns, correlations, and more with these distributed systems.
File Systems - We examine storage solutions which are designed to scale out on multiple servers. They support high performance data and offer consistent access to a common set of data from multiple servers.
Key Value Stores - Key value stores refers to a general concept of database where entities (values) are indexed using a unique key. They allow the application to store its data in a schema-less way. Data can be stored in a datatype of a programming language or an object.
Native XML Databases - Store data and documents without requiring a database schema. An XML database allows data to be stored in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) format.
Search Engines - Full-featured search engines through an application programming interface which are designed for performing information retrieval functions on Big Data.
Cloud Computing & Virtualization
Run programs simultaneously on many connected computers.
Cloud Development Tools - Developers need a broad set of powerful tools to use the cloud.. We feature four tools that warrant further investigation.
Functions-as-a-Service - Often known as serverless this is a category of cloud computing services that abstracts server management and low-level infrastructure decisions away from developers.
Infrastructure as a Service - Virtualised hardware, in other words, computing infrastructure. It's a service model where an organization outsources the equipment used to support storage, hardware, servers and networking components.
OS-level Virtualization (Containers) - An operating-system-level virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems on a control host using a single Linux kernel.
Platform as a Service - Develop new applications or services in the cloud. PaaS solution stacks offers a number of advantages.
Type 1 Hypervisors - Native / bare-metal running directly on the host's hardware. The hypervisor performs the function of controlling the host processor and resources, determining their allocation to the guest operating systems.