I love to write witty titles, in many cases more than the actual article, but this title kinda says it all (if you don’t understand it, read this). If there are still those of you that are avoiding free software, give up. You lose. To view this blog entry alone you’ve used dozens of free software products.

Everyone loves IRC (stands for Internet Relay Chat; a kind of group chat room often used by open source/free software projects and developers, or as support channels), unfortunately the open source IRC clients out there are often hidden away. In this week’s article, I’m going to show you how to set up your IRC client in under 5 minutes using only free software.

Now that the new versions of Ghostscript are available under the free software GPL license other projects relying on Ghostscript can be fully GPL software as well. One of these projects, PDFCreator, I recently tested and I must admit I’m impressed.

PDFCreator allows you to make a PDF of anything you can print, documents, spreadsheet, presentations, anything with a print function. PDFCreator even has encryption and security features that would make it perfect for a corporate environment.

Do you like gallery tools such as Flickr, but want to control your photos, or get rid of any of their limits? Now you can have your own custom gallery using PHP, a script called Picy, and 5 minutes of your time!

Imagine this picture…you turn on your PC, use Google Desktop to find a document, open it in Word 2003 and then print it to your Windows-only printer. A normal Windows users day right? Did I mention this person’s OS is free software, is developed by a community and is in active development now?

That’s right, there is a Windows replacement in the works (and now partially working!) that plans binary compatibility with Windows XP. That means you can use the same applications, the same drivers and have an easy UI. Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

Digg it!

Nowadays, with more and more governmental censorship (and with it getting worse by the day, just look at Slashdot’s privacy section) and reports of hacking into major servers becoming almost a daily occurrence, we all want the maximum security and privacy possible online. Thankfully, some great free software projects have risen to the challenge! Here are some simple steps to keep your “stuff” safe:

I recently bought a U3 compliant USB key, the hype and packaging was amazing and for the most part the U3 drive lived up to the expectations. Thunderbird was included on the key, and I was excited about being able to make any computer “my computer”, do my work, and then go without leaving a trace.

Why would you install your own copy of Linux just to have it look like everyone else’s copy? With such a wide array of themes available, there is no reason not to try out a few on your Linux PC.

GNOME-Look is a great source for wallpapers, window decorations, splash screens and everything else you need to customize a Gnome based distribution (such as Fedora or Ubuntu). Thanks to the wide selection, the possibilities are almost limitless.