Maybe you need to connect your network to terminals in different locations securely using the internet. Well a great tool, an Open Source tool lets you do that in a secure and safe manner.

OpenVPN is the best software to accomplish that. This software used for little, medium and large companies is recognized as the “Best SSL VPN” in 2007 and “Best Open Software Award”.

I had to create a network between 3 offices; Cancun, Mexico City and San Luis Potosi and it took me 15 minutes to do it with this tool.

A virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network in which some of the links between nodes are carried by open connections or virtual circuits in some larger network (e.g., the Internet) instead of by physical wires.

About OpenVPN

OpenVPN is a full-featured open source SSL VPN solution that accommodates a wide range of configurations, including remote access, site-to-site VPNs, Wi-Fi security, and enterprise-scale remote access solutions with load balancing, failover, and fine-grained access-controls. Starting with the fundamental premise that complexity is the enemy of security, OpenVPN offers a cost-effective, lightweight alternative to other VPN technologies that is well-targeted for the SME and enterprise markets.

OpenVPN combines security with ease-of-use

OpenVPN’s lightweight design sheds many of the complexities that characterize other VPN implementations. The OpenVPN security model is based on SSL, the industry standard for secure communications via the internet. OpenVPN implements OSI layer 2 or 3 secure network extension using the SSL/TLS protocol, supports flexible client authentication methods based on certificates, smart cards, and/or 2-factor authentication, and allows user or group-specific access control policies using firewall rules applied to the VPN virtual interface. OpenVPN is not a web application proxy and does not operate through a web browser.

Best of all is that you can use this software on Windows, Linux and Mac OS. So if you want to download it go to main site of OpenVPM or download GUI for  Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

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There are plenty of programs of any type for Linux all of them of great quality and performance but talking about messengers I think emscense is the best one and maybe more for people who comes to Linux from Windows.

It easy to install, works in any flavor of Linux (Ubuntu, SuSe, Fedora, etc.) and works really great. Is like have MSN Messenger working on Linux. Even you can use it inside windows too instead of Microsoft’s.

The new features on the last version are:

• Clean and easy to use GUI
• Tabbed chat
• Custom emoticons
• File transfers
• Offline messaging
• Personal messages
• Nudges
• Multilingual GUI
• Customization
  • Themes
  • Smiles
  • Sounds
  • GUI
  • Conversation format
• Plugins
• MSN Plus!
• Chat logging

You can download it here.

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This tool enables you to experiment with high-dynamic range lighting in a photo or 3D image that might be used in a game or 3D world. The options for controlling HDR lighting are simple: adjust a slider for gamma correction, load a tonal mapping tool to adjust light sources and other variables. Then, save your work for modeling in a 3D world.

Qtpfsgui is an open source graphical user interface application that aims to provide a workflow for HDR imaging.

Supported HDR formats:

• OpenEXR (extension: exr)
• Radiance RGBE (extension: hdr)
• Tiff formats: 16bit, 32bit (float) and LogLuv (extension: tiff)
• Raw image formats (extension: various)
• PFS native format (extension: pfs)

Supported LDR formats:

• JPEG, PNG, PPM, PBM, TIFF(8 bit)

Supported features:

• Create an HDR file from a set of images (formats: JPEG, TIFF 8bit and 16bit, RAW) of the same scene taken at different exposure setting.
• Save and load HDR images.
• Rotate and resize HDR images.
• Tone map HDR images.
• Copy exif data between sets of images.

Qtpfsgui is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X

Why this name?
Qt: the program uses Qt4 to show its graphical widgets.
pfs: the main backend library and original source code base.
gui: this stands simply for graphical user interface.

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This is a list of the top free antivirus software you can use for your computer protection.

 

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition

From AVG Technologies:

AVG Free Edition is the well-known antivirus protection tool. AVG Free is available free of charge to home users for the life of the product. Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Free is easy to use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements. Highlights include automatic update functionality, the AVG Resident Shield, which provides real-time protection as files are opened and programs are run, free Virus Database Updates for the lifetime of the product, and AVG Virus Vault for safe handling of infected files.

 

Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus

From Avira:

Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus is a comprehensive, easy to use antivirus program, designed to offer reliable free of charge virus protection to home-users only. Avira offers: Extensive Malware Recognition of viruses, Trojans, backdoor programs, worms, etc. Automatic incremental updates of antivirus signatures, engine and entire software. Permanent virus protection, with Virus Guard real time monitoring. Install and configuration in just a couple of steps. Virus protection against known and unknown threats, using an advanced heuristic system. Scheduler where you can set the scanner to make automatic virus scans or updates on your system. Forum and phone support, Knowledge Base with virus descriptions available on Web site. Rootkit Detection and Removal. Version 8 adds an enhanced interface, a modularized AV-search engine for improved scan performance, an integrated failsafe security system, SMTP support for AntiVir MailGuard and a new Fast Activation Tool (FACT).

 

Avast Home Edition

From ALWIL Software:

Avast Home Edition is a complete ICSA & Checkmark certified antivirus, Checkmark certified anti-spyware & anti-rootkit package. Avast includes the following components: On demand scanner with sinkable simple interface, just select what do you want to scan in which way and press the Play button; On access scanner, special providers to protect the most of available e-mail clients; Instant messaging–ICQ, Miranda; Network traffic–intrusion detection, lightweight firewall; P2P protection for Kazaa, BitTorrent; Web shield–monitors and filters all HTTP traffic; NNTP scanner–scans all Usenet Newsgroup traffic and all operations with files on PC; Boot time scanner–scans disks in the same way and in the same time as Windows CHKDSK does.

 

PC Tools Antivirus Free Edition

From PC Tools:

PC Tools Antivirus Free Edition protects you against the most nefarious cyber-threats attempting to gain access to your PC and personal details. Going online without protection against the latest fast-spreading viruses, worms and Trojans can result in infections within minutes. Once infected, the virus will usually attempt to spread itself to your friends, family and associates by accessing your e-mail contacts and networked PCs. The infection may also allow hackers to access files on your PC, use it to launch attacks against other computers and Websites or to send mass spam email. That’s why PC Tools Antivirus Free Edition provides protection, with rapid database updates, IntelliGuard real-time file, Internet & e-mail protection and comprehensive system scanning to ensure your system remains safe and virus free. Version 5 features new improved scan engine, smaller memory footprint, and much improved system performance.

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Continuing with the list of the best open source software of 2008.

Object Database
db4o
db4o began life as a Java database library, but its designers have since created parallel editions for the .NET languages. In 2005, db4o implemented Native Queries, which allow you to express queries as Java (or .NET) methods. Recent additions to the library include Transparent Update and Transparent Activation, which more completely automate object persistence. The engine itself deduces how much of a persistent object’s members must be read from and written to storage, simplifying coding and providing better memory management. Also new in db4o is support for Microsoft LINQ.

Version Control
Git
Distributed version control has become a major need as development teams have become more geographically distributed. Originally the brainchild of Linus Torvalds and currently maintained by Junio Hamano, Git is the revision management tool of choice for several prominent open source projects, including the Linux kernel, X.org Server, One Laptop per Child (OLPC) core development, and the Ruby on Rails Web framework. The Git engine is at least an order of magnitude faster than other revision control systems for large projects, and it has strong support for branching and merging.

Web Client Library
HttpClient
HttpClient is an open-source Java HTTP client library begun in 2001. Formerly a component of Jakarta Commons, it is now being maintained by the HttpComponents project. Though there’s nothing earth-shatteringly new about HttpClient, it is as useful as ever. Particularly helpful are property settings that let you configure HttpClient to dump detailed ‘on the wire’ data to System.out. If you’re a Java programmer with a complex application staring at you, swing by the HttpClient-3.x site and you’ll have your client application done in no time.

Parallel Programming
Intel Threaded Building Blocks
The effective use of multi-core processors is one of the more difficult and pressing problems facing software developers today. Over the years, there have been many proposals to address parallelization, many of which involved new languages. Intel Threaded Building Blocks (TBB) is a portable template-based C++ library that implements a higher-level, task-based parallelism that abstracts platform details and threading mechanism for performance and scalability. The very interesting Microsoft Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework, which implement task-based parallelism through a class library, are not open source.

Business Rule Management System
JBoss Drools
Drools is a worthy rival to leading enterprise competitors Blaze Advisor and JRules, but is available free under the Apache open source license. It combines a very fast runtime engine, a full-featured rule repository, excellent Eclipse-based developer tools, and support for Excel-based decision tables, allowing rules to be written and maintained by business analysts. The developer group is large, and the project moves fast. Drools even has one feature the market leaders lack: the ability to import rules from almost any other BRMS.

Rich Internet Applications
Open Flex
InfoWorld has given high marks to Adobe Flex Builder 3.0, which is a commercial product. We would also like to honor Adobe for open sourcing the Flex SDK (although not the Flex Builder IDE) under the MPL model. This opens the door for open source tools and applications targeting the Flex framework, which in turn is one of our favorite ways of producing Rich Internet Applications. Competitors to Flex include OpenLazlo and better performers such as Curl and Silverlight 2.0, but those last two products are not open source, even though they may be used for free in some scenarios.

JavaScript Framework
Prototype
Prototype, originally the work of Sam Stephenson, is the foundation on which several of the other open source Ajax frameworks, including Scriptaculous and Open Rico, have been built. In turn, the popular Ruby on Rails server framework uses Prototype and Scriptaculous in its Ajax layer. Using Prototype makes writing JavaScript more object-oriented and flexible than “bare” JavaScript, and makes manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM) considerably easier and less prone to breakage. Prototype also adds concise, powerful methods to JavaScript while insulating your own JavaScript code from browser dependencies.

Web Services Test Tool
soapUI
Few SOAP testing tools are as easy and powerful as soapUI. It is available either as a standalone product or as a plug-in for Eclipse, IntelliJ, and NetBeans. Install soapUI’s Eclipse plug-in into the Eclipse IDE, and you have a powerful SOAP debugging and testing toolkit. All you need to do is import the WSDL from the target server, ask soapUI to build test SOAP requests, and turn it loose. Various views let you dig into the wire transactions of the SOAP requests and responses, modify test requests, examine responses, and quickly isolate the SOAP server’s problems.