OpenOffice.org is a stable open source equivalent to Microsoft Office including a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), a database manager (Base), a presentation manager (Impress), a drawing program (Draw), and a formula editor for generating mathematical equations and formulas (Math). The user interface is similar to the Microsoft Office suite. For more details, see http://www.openoffice.org/ or read Chapter 1, The OpenOffice.org Office Suite.

StarOffice, a proprietary office suite software developed by Sun Microsystems, is similar to OpenOffice.org. It is available on multiple platforms like Linux, Windows and Solaris. It contains the same modules as the OpenOffice.org suite. It also includes certain advanced features not available with the open source version. For more details, see http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/.

KOffice is the fully integrated office suite designed for the KDE desktop. It comes with various modules, like word processing (KWord), spreadsheets (KSpread), presentations (Kpresenter), several image processing applications (Kivio, Karbon14, Krita), a database front-end (Kexi) and many other applications. For more details, see http://www.koffice.org/.

Writer is the stable word-processing and desktop publishing module of the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. The StarOffice Writer features some advanced functionalities not available with OpenOffice.org. For more details, see http://www.openoffice.org/product/writer and http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice.

KWord is the stable frame-based word-processing module of the KOffice Suite. KWord's easy-to-use features help you to create professional looking documents and it can handle large amounts of texts. For more details, see http://www.koffice.org/kword/.

Calc is the spreadsheet and data plotting module of the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice suites. It is easy to learn and offers a wide range of features. For more details, see http://www.openoffice.org/product/calc.html and http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice.

KSpread is the spreadsheet module of the KOffice Suite. It is a scriptable spreadsheet program which provides both table-oriented sheets and support for complex mathematical formulas and statistics. For more details see http://www.koffice.org/kspread/.

Gnumeric is a spreadsheet solution for the GNOME desktop environment that can also read files created with other spreadsheets. It's built-in functions and tools are extremely accurate. For more details, see http://www.gnumeric.org.

Impress is the presentation module of the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice suites. Impress lets you create multimedia presentations with 2D and 3D clip art, special effects, animation, and drawing tools. Impress can create PDF files from your presentations, and it is able to view, edit and save files in several file formats, including the *.ppt format, which is used by Microsoft PowerPoint. For more details, see http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html. and http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice.

KPresenter is the presentation module of the KOffice Suite. KPresenter can prepare complete sets of slides containing text and graphics in a variety of formats, and embed all sorts of objects. KPresenter is also able to load presentations from Microsoft PowerPoint, MagicPoint and OpenOffice.org Impress documents. For more details see http://www.koffice.org/kpresenter/.

See Calc.

Gnuplot is a very powerful and portable command line controlled data plotting software. It is also available for MacOS and Windows platforms. Plots created by Gnuplot can be exported to various formats, such as PostScript, PDF, and SVG, allowing you to process these plots easily. For more details see http://www.gnuplot.info/index.html.

Grace is a 2D plotting tool for many platforms including Linux. It can create and edit plots with a graphical user interface. Grace supports an unlimited number of graphs per plot. For more details, see http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/

Kst is the data plotting module for the KOffice suite. It allows for real-time data viewing and plotting with basic data analysis. For more details, see http://kst.kde.org/.

LabPlot is a plotting tool for creating and managing 2D or 3D data plots and was written for KDE. Graphs can be produced both from data and functions and one plot may include multiple graphs. It also offers various data analysis methods. For more details, see http://labplot.sourceforge.net/.

Base is the database module of the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice suites. It can be used to create “self-contained” database documents with all relevant data, table definitions, reports, and forms. For more details, see http://www.openoffice.org/product/base.html and http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice.

GNOME-DB provides a unified data access architecture to GNOME. It is useful for any application that accesses persistent data. It consists of a data abstraction layer (Libgda), a database widget library and a database front-end (Mergeant). For more details, see http://www.gnome-db.org/.

Kexi is an integrated data management application. It can be used for creating databases, inserting data, performing queries, and processing data. Forms can be created to provide a custom interface to your data. For more details, see http://www.koffice.org/kexi/.

PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, and user-defined types and functions. For more details, see http://www.postgresql.org/.

Rekall is a database management tool that supports many database applications like MySQL,PostgreSQL and Xbase. Rekall can be used for many tasks such as reports, forms, queries and others. For more details, see http://www.thekompany.com/products/rekall/.

KmyMoney is a personal financial manager for the KDE desktop. It enables users of open source operating systems to keep track of their personal finances and offers a broad array of financial features and tools. For more details, see http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net.

GnuCash is a software tool to control personal and business finances. It enables users to keep track of income and expenses and it is also used to manage bank accounts, and stock portfolios. For more details, see http://www.gnucash.org/.

Planner is a project management tool for the GNOME desktop aiming to provide functionality similar to the project management tools used under Windows. Amongst its features are Gantt charting and different display types for tasks and resources. For more details see http://www.imendio.com/projects/planner/.

Taskjuggler is a project management tool that enables the user to control projects using Gantt charting features. It can also be used to generate reports in different formats (XML, HTML or CSV). Taskjuggler can be controlled from the command line but also offers a graphical front-end. For more details see http://www.taskjuggler.net.

FreeMind is a mind-mapping like tool for structuring ideas, thoughts and concepts. It can copy nodes (or the style of nodes) and paste texts from sources such as HTML, RTF, and mails. The mind maps can be exported into various formats, such as HTML and XML. For more details, see http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page.

VYM (View Your Mind) is a mind-mapping like tool for structuring ideas, thoughts and concepts. VYM mind maps are created in XML which can be exported to HTML. For more details see http://insilmaril.de/vym.

Semantik (previously KDissert) is a mindmapping-like tool for structuring idea. Users can generate various outputs from the mind map, such as PDF files, text documents and HTML files. For more details see http://freehackers.org/~tnagy/kdissert/.

Epiphany is a lean, but powerful Web browser for the GNOME desktop. Many of its features and extensions are similar to Firefox. For more details, see http://projects.gnome.org/epiphany/.

Firefox is a Web browser that runs on various platforms, including Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Its main features include customizable searches, pop-up blocking, RSS news feeds, password management, tabbed browsing, and some advanced security and privacy options. For more details, see http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ or read Chapter 14, Browsing with Firefox.

Konqueror is a multiple application created for the KDE desktop. It acts as web browser, file manager and document viewer. It supports most common web standards, such as CSS(2), Java applets, JavaScript and Netscape plug-ins, DOM, and SSL. For more details, see http://www.konqueror.org/ or read Chapter 13, Konqueror: Browsing the Web.

Opera is a powerful web browser with an optional e-mail client and a chat module. Opera offers pop-up blocking, RSS feeds, built-in and customizable searches, a password manager, and tabbed browsing. For more details see http://www.opera.com/.

Evolution is a personal information management application for the GNOME desktop. It includes e-mail, calendar, and address book functionalities. For more details, see http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/ftp or read Chapter 6, Evolution: E-mailing and Calendaring.

Kontact is the personal information management suite for the KDE desktop. It includes e-mail, calendar, address book and Palm sync functionalities. For more details, see http://www.kontact.org/ or read Chapter 5, Kontact: E-Mailing and Calendaring.

Mozilla Thunderbird is the e-mail client of the Mozilla suite. It is also available for Microsoft Windows and MacOS. For more details, see http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/.

Empathy is an instant messenger tool for the GNOME desktop. It consists of a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client. For more details, see http://live.gnome.org/Empathy .

Konversation is the IRC client of the KDE desktop with many functionalities. For more details, see http://konversation.kde.org.

Kopete is an easy-to-use instant messenger tool supporting many protocols. For more details, see http://kopete.kde.org/ or read Chapter 10, Kopete: Instant Messaging.

Pidgin (previously Gaim) is a multi-platform instant messaging client supporting many commonly used instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to log into various different services from a single application. For more details, see http://pidgin.im/ or read Chapter 11, Instant Messaging with Pidgin.

Ekiga (previously GNOMEMeeting) is a free and open source video conferencing and VoIP application. Ekiga supports both the SIP and H.323 protocols, and is fully interoperable with Microsoft NetMeeting and LifeMeeting. For more details see http://www.ekiga.org/ or read Chapter 12, Using Voice over IP with Ekiga.

Skype is an application for several platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac Os X) that can be used for phone calls over the Internet with a good sound quality and with end-to-end encryption. When using Skype, configuring the firewall or router is not necessary. For more details, see http://www.skype.com/. Information on Skype and openSUSE is avaiable from http://en.opensuse.org/Skype_HOWTO.

gftp is an FTP client using the GTK toolkit. Its features include simultaneous downloads, resume of interrupted file transfers, file transfer queues, download of entire directories, FTP proxy support, remote directory caching, passive and nonpassive file transfers, and drag and drop support. For more details, see http://gftp.seul.org/ or read Chapter 15, gFTP: Transferring Data From the Internet.

KBear is a graphical FTP client that can connect to multiple hosts simultaneously. The user can copy or move files or directories between the hosts by drag and drop or cut and paste. It also has a dynamic site database. For more details, see http://sourceforge.net/projects/kbear/.

Amarok is a powerful media player for the KDE desktop. It handles various audio formats and plays streaming audio broadcasts of radio stations on the Internet. For more details, see http://amarok.kde.org/ or read Section 19.2.1, “Amarok Music Player”.

Banshee is a media player that can encode and decode various media formats. Banshee can play, import, and burn audio CDs. For more details, see http://banshee-project.org/ or read Chapter 20, Playing and Managing Your Music with Banshee.

Grip is a CD-player and ripper for the GNOME desktop. It has the ripping capabilities of cdparanoia built in, but can also use external rippers. For more details, see http://www.nostatic.org/grip/.

Kaffeine is a multimedia application that supports many audio and video formats. For more details, see http://kaffeine.kde.org/.

KsCD is a CD player application for the KDE desktop. Its user interface is very similar to that of a normal hardware CD player. For more details, see http://docs.kde.org/en/3.3/kdemultimedia/kscd/.

MPlayer supports many media formats and can also save all streamed content to a file. For more details, see http://www.mplayerhq.hu/.

RealPlayer is a proprietary cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats. For more details, see http://uk.real.com/player/.

Totem is the default multimedia player for the GNOME computer desktop environment. Totem is fully integrated with GNOME Nautilus. For more details, see http://projects.gnome.org/totem/ or read Chapter 21, Playing Videos with Totem.

Xine is a multimedia player for Linux that supports different front-end player applications. Another important feature is the ability to manually correct the synchronization of audio and video streams. For more details, see http://xinehq.de/.

The X Multimedia System 2 (XMMS2) is an audio player for Linux systems that supports audio and video formats. For more details, see http://wiki.xmms2.xmms.se/wiki/Main_Page/.

See above for Banshee.

Brasero is a disc-burning program for the GNOME Desktop allowing users to burn audio and data CD/DVDs on the fly. For more details, see http://projects.gnome.org/brasero/ or read Chapter 23, Brasero: Burning CDs and DVDs.

K3b is a CD and DID authoring application for the KDE desktop environment for Unix-like computer operating systems. It provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks and contains a built-in DID ripper. For more details, see http://www.k3b.org/ or read Chapter 22, K3b: Burning CDs and DVDs.

See above for Grip.

KAudioCreator is a front-end tool for ripping audio CDs and encoding WAVE files. For more details, see http://www.icefox.net/programs/?program=KAudioCreator.

Sound Juicer is a front-end application to the cdparanoia CD ripping library. It allows the user to extract audio output from compact discs and convert it into audio files that a personal computer or digital audio player can understand and play. It supports ripping to many audio codecs. For more details, see http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/sound-juicer.

Audacity is a digital audio editor application. Its cross-platform allows users to mix tracks, apply effects to them, and export the results to WAV or Ogg Vorbis. For more details, see http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.

ALSA mixer is the mixer program for the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). It is used to configure sound settings and to adjust the volume. It has an ncurses user interface and does not require the X Window System. It supports multiple sound cards with multiple devices. For more details, see http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page.

LilyPond is a music sheet editor. Because the input format is text- based, the user can work with any text editor to create note sheets. Users do not need to tackle any formatting or notation issues, like spacing, line-breaking, or polyphonic collisions. For more details, see http://lilypond.org/web/.

MusE is at the moment a MIDI/Audio sequencer with recording and editing capabilities. The project works on a complete multitrack virtual studio for Linux. For more details, see http://www.muse-sequencer.org/.

Noteedit is a powerful score editor for Linux. It creates sheets of notes and exports and import scores to and from many formats. It features a graphical user interface. For more details, see http://noteedit.berlios.de/.

Rosegarden is a free music composition and editing environment. It features an audio and MIDI sequencer and a score editor. For more details, see http://rosegardenmusic.com/.

Kino is an easy and reliable digital video editor with export to many formats. The program supports many basic video editing and assembling tasks. It captures video to disk in Raw DIV, AVI, and Quicktime formats. For more details, see http://www.kinodv.org.

xawtv is a TV viewer and recorder suite. It supports both analog and digital audio and video broadcasts using either a TV tuner or a Satellite receiver card DB-S. For more details, see http://linux.bytesex.org/xawtv/.

kdetv is a TV viewer and recorder application for the KDE desktop supporting TV using a tuner card. For more details, see http://www.kdetv.org.