Software

What follows is a list of some of the software that I think is worthy of a special mention. It is all software I've used personally or professionally.

On Servers

Fetchmail

If you want to pull email from a remote POP or IMAP server and pass it over to your local mail system, this is the tool for the job.

Embedded and Portable Devices

DD-WRT
Replacement firmware for a wide range of SOHO (wireless) routers.

Graphics and Audio

Bibble Pro

If you're after something for converting RAW photographs to JPEG, TIFF or PNG this is a brilliant, low cost, tool.

iTunes

For playing music, and turning those CDs into something more portable, it does the job nicely.

On Desktops

Firefox and Thunderbird

Effective and customisable web browser and mail/news client.

OpenOffice

A free and powerful office suite. Gives the commercial options a run for their money.

Virtualisation

VMWare

VMWare workstation is a brilliant way of having a safe playground for experimenting with operating systems and applications. Well worth the cost.

XEN

Server grade virtualisation. It's free and it works really, really, well. Full virtualisation (HVM) requires hardware that supports it, but para-virtualisation (PVM) doesn't.

Security

OpenVPN

A free, secure, and effective SSL based VPN. Version 2.1 includes the ability to hide the VPN server behind an HTTPS web server.