The Gnome application Ekiga, version 3.2.5, with full support for the SIP and H.323 protocols has been released. It includes features like call forwarding, call transfer, call hold, instant messaging, and text chat. It uses advanced audio quality (Wideband codecs), including echo cancellation. Besides the capability of making voice and video calls to other computers, it is possible to make calls to regular telephones and receive calls from regular telephones.

Unlike Skype, Ekiga is a Linux native. It is free, released under the GPL license, and can be downloaded from the Ekiga web site.

While most software development, web page design, etc. nowadays is done using graphical user interfaces, experienced UNIX/Linux people appreciate the simplicity and efficiency of the powerful text-based tools available on those platforms. If you are familiar for example with one of the powerful text editors, such as Emacs or VI, it is very easy to work remotely (over the Internet or intranet) on other computers using Telnet or SSH connections. Read more...

ImageMagick is a free and open source software package for modifying and creating images. Unlike graphics packages such as The GIMP that provide tools for manual creation and manipulation of images, ImageMagick is meant to be used by programs to generate and adjust images automatically. Interfaces are available for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Java, Lisp, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl/TK. It can also be used from the command line. Read more...

KompoZer is a WYSIWYG editor for designing and maintaining web pages. WYSIWYG, pronounced "we-see-wig", stands for "What You See Is What You Get", which means that the page that you look at while you write and edit, looks just like the way the page will look when it is viewed through a web browser (as opposed to writing HTML code where you have to guess and test how it may look). Read more...