Linux

Thunderbird

March 18, 2015 by Andy Voelker
Categories: Network & Communications

Mozilla_Thunderbird_logo

Availability: Free Download
Comparable: Outlook

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, extensible, cross-platform email, news, and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.

Thunderbird is an email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP, IRC, Twitter) client. It supports POP and IMAP methods of connecting to email servers. It also supports LDAP (directory) address completion. The built-in RSS/Atom reader can also be used as a simple news aggregator. Thunderbird supports the S/MIME standard, extensions such as Enigmail add support for the OpenPGP (security)standard. The vanilla version is not a personal information manager, although the Mozilla Lightning extension adds PIM functionality. Additional features, if needed, are often available via other extensions.

Tags: news

yEd Graph Editor

March 18, 2015 by Andy Voelker
Categories: Productivity & Utility

yworks logo

Availability: Free Download
Comparable: Dia, FreeMind, Inspiration, Visio

yEd is a free of charge general-purpose diagramming program with a multi-document interface.  It is a cross-platform application written in Java that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and other platforms that support the JVM.

yEd can be used to draw many different types of diagrams, including flowcharts, network diagrams, UML diagrams,BPMN diagrams, mind maps, organization charts, and Entity Relationship diagrams. yEd also allows the use of custom vector and raster graphics as diagram elements.

yEd loads and saves diagrams from/to GraphML, an XML-based format. The application can print diagrams including very large diagrams that span multiple pages.

FreeMind

March 18, 2015 by Andy Voelker
Categories: Productivity & Utility

128px-Free_Mind

Availability: Free Download
Comparable: Inspiration, yEd Graph Editor

FreeMind is a free, open source mind mapping application written in Java.  It provides extensive export capabilities. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X via the Java Runtime Environment.

As with other mind mapping software packages, FreeMind allows the user to edit a hierarchical set of ideas around a central concept. The non-linear approach assists in brainstorming new outlines and projects as ideas are added around the mind map. As a Java application, FreeMind is portable across multiple platforms and retains the same user interface, causing some amount of variation from the common interface on each platform. Mac users may notice the most difference from their traditional user interface, but  the software’s features should still appeal to the segment of users who accept function over form.