Linux Biblen 2008 Edition Boot Up to Ubuntu, Fedora, KNOPPIX, Debian, openSUSE, and 11 Other Distributions phần 8 pot

Choosing an E-Mail Client Choices of e-mail clients range from those that look like clones of popular Windows e-mail programs to those that run in plain text from the shell, and IN THIS

devices.html, with USB scanners listed at usb.html As for applications, some of the more widely used tools available today include:

www.buzzard.me.uk/jonathan/scanners- xsane — An X-based graphical front end for SANE scanners, xsane can work as a GIMP

plug-in or as a separate application (from most KDE desktops, select Graphics ➪ Scanning)

It supports 8-bit output in JPG, TIFF, PNG, PostScript, and PNM formats There is mental 16-bit support for PNM (ASCII), PNG, and raw formats

experi- scanimage — Use this command-line interface to obtain scanned images The command

acquires the scanned image, and then directs the data to standard output (so you cansend it to a file or pipe it to another program) It supports the same formats as xsane

In addition to these applications, the OpenOffice.org suite supports SANE

Because of the architecture of SANE scanner drivers, it is possible to separate scanner drivers fromscanner applications This makes it possible to share scanners across a network

Summary

In recent times, modern GUI-based publishing tools have augmented the text-based publishingtools that have always been available with Linux Powerful open source publishing tools such asOpenOffice.org are becoming competitive with commercial office suites Traditional publishingtools such as Groff (which implements traditional troff/nroff text processing) and LaTeX (a TeXmacro interface particularly suited for scientific and mathematical publishing) are still availablewith many Linux distributions

Web browsers and e-mail clients available with Linux have seen

incredible improvements over the past few years Their featuresrival those you can get on the most popular Windows clients

Security issues with Outlook mail clients and Internet Explorer browsers

have many people taking a fresh look at Linux and open source software for

accessing the Internet

This chapter describes some of the best Web, e-mail, chat, and related tools

for accessing the Internet that you can get with the Linux distributions

described in this book If you have never worked with the Internet from

Linux, or haven’t for a few years, you might be blown away by what’s

avail-able today

Using E-Mail

Any Linux desktop system worth the name “desktop system” will have at least

one or two applications for sending, receiving, and managing your e-mail

Many users believe that superior tools for managing spam and generally

bet-ter security mechanisms make Linux a great desktop platform for managing

your e-mail

Choosing an E-Mail Client

Choices of e-mail clients range from those that look like clones of popular

Windows e-mail programs to those that run in plain text from the shell, and

IN THIS CHAPTERReading e-mail with

Thunderbird Mail Managing e-mail in Evolution Using text-based e-mail clients Browsing the Web with Firefox Using text-based Web browsers

E-Mailing and Web Browsing

interfaces vary widely with the e-mail clients that are available with Linux Here are some ent ways in which e-mail clients are integrated into Linux:

differ- Standalone — These days, most e-mail clients are standalone applications in their own right.

The primary standalone e-mail application is Mozilla Thunderbird 2 (www.mozilla.com/ en-US/thunderbird/), although you can find 50 or more choices on Linux, such asSylpheed (sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/)

 With a Web browser — Many popular Web browsers include an integrated e-mail client.

By configuring the e-mail client that comes with your browser, you are ready to launch anew e-mail message by clicking on a mailto link from a browser window You can alsoeasily open the e-mail client from your Web browser’s toolbar

Feature-rich Mozilla Mail (www.mozilla.org) is probably the most popular e-mail clientfor Linux to come with a Web browser Netscape Communicator (www.netscape.com)

is another Web browser that has its own mail client (although it has been dropped frommany Linux distributions because of licensing issues) Most users, however, use the sepa-rated clients Thunderbird for e-mail and Firefox for Web browsing These applicationswere split out of the unified Mozilla suite (now called SeaMonkey)

The Opera Web browser (www.opera.com) also includes an integrated e-mail client It isperhaps the most elegant of the e-mail clients that comes with a Web browser Opera isavailable for personal use without cost

 With groupware — Some e-mail clients have been bundled with other personal

produc-tivity applications to form integrated groupware applications The most popular of these

in Linux is Evolution, which is bundled as the default e-mail client with several differentLinux distributions Besides e-mail, Evolution includes a calendar, task list, and contactsdirectory (A company named Ximian originally produced Evolution Novell, Inc pur-chased Ximian, and then later renamed and rebranded Ximian Evolution as NovellEvolution.)

 From the shell — Many old-school UNIX and Linux power users prefer to use an e-mail

client that runs without a graphical desktop Although not always intuitive to use, based e-mail readers run much faster than their graphical counterparts The mailcom-mand dates back to the earliest UNIX systems (where there was no GUI) The mutt e-mailclient is popular among power users because of its capability to manage large mailboxesand attachments efficiently

text-Features inside each e-mail client can help you distinguish between them While most e-mail clientslet you get, compose, send, and manage e-mail messages, here are a few extra features you mightlook for:

 Filters and spam catchers — Thunderbird, Evolution, and other mail clients offer

mes-sage filters and junk mail detectors You use filters to set up rules to sort incoming mailinto different folders, delete certain messages, or otherwise respond to incoming mail.Some e-mail clients also have features that try to automatically detect when junk mailhas arrived If you get a lot of e-mail, these can be invaluable tools for managing your

e-mail (Select the Tools menu from your e-mail client, and then look for a Filters or JunkMail selection.)

 Security features — E-mail clients such as Thunderbird (www.mozilla.com/en-US/

thunderbird/) enable you to use message encryption, digital signatures, and othersecurity features to keep your e-mail private

 Sorting, searching, marking, and displaying — Again, if you are managing lots of

e-mail messages at once (some people manage thousands of messages), the capability torefer back to the one you want can be critical Some clients let you sort by date, sender,priority, subject, and other items You might be able to search message contents for text

or choose how to display the messages (such as without showing attachments or withsource code shown)

 Mail composition tools — Some mail composers let you include HTML in your messages,

which enables you to add images, links, tables, colors, font changes, and other visualenhancements to your messages One warning: Some mailing lists don’t like you to sendmessages in HTML because some people still use plain-text readers that aren’t HTML-aware

 Multiple accounts — Many e-mail clients enable you to configure multiple e-mail

accounts to be served by your e-mail reader Early plain-text e-mail clients pointed toonly one mailbox at a time

 Performance — Some lightweight graphical e-mail clients give you much better

perform-ance than others In particular, the Sylpheed e-mail client (which comes with Damn SmallLinux) was created to use a minimal amount of memory and processing power, yet stillprovide a graphical interface E-mail clients that run from the keyboard, in particular themutt e-mail client, will run much faster than, say, most full-blown graphical e-mail clientssuch as Evolution

For most home and small business users, Evolution and the standalone Thunderbird are often available from a Linux desktop and will give you much the same experience you would expect from Microsoft Windows mail clients, such as Outlook Express If you are using the KDE desktop, you can use the KDE groupware client Kontact, which includes Kmail (the e-mail client), along with a contact manager, calendar, to-do list application, and more

Even though the Linux distribution you are using may have only one or two of the e-mail clientsdescribed in this section, you can always add a client that interests you

Getting Here from Windows

To understand how to transition your e-mail client from Windows to Linux, you need to know abit about your current e-mail setup Whether you are using Outlook, Outlook Express, or anyother e-mail client running in Windows, here are some things you should know:

 Server type — Is your e-mail server a POP3 or IMAP server? If it is an IMAP server, all

your messages are being stored on the server Transitioning to a different e-mail servermight simply mean pointing the new e-mail client at your server and continuing to usee-mail as you always have If it is a POP3 server, your messages have probably been

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bring your current mail folders over to your new client, which is a potentially trickyundertaking.

 Address book — You need to export your current address book to a format that can be

read by your new e-mail client, and import it to your new e-mail client

To transition to Linux, you may want to add a cross-platform e-mail client such as Thunderbird toyour Windows system so that you can get at your resources (addresses, stored mail messages,and so on) during the transition to your new mail client When you eventually move off Windowsaltogether, Thunderbird for Linux will work almost exactly as it does in Windows

If your current e-mail server is a Microsoft Exchange server (2000 or 2003), you need to get aXimian Connector for Microsoft Exchange license to allow Evolution to access information fromthat server The connector now comes from Novell, which purchased Ximian, and is availableunder an open source license

Getting Started with E-Mail

Most Linux systems include an e-mail client that you can select on a panel or by left-clicking onthe desktop to bring up a menu Look for an envelope icon on a panel or a submenu labeled some-thing like Internet If you want a graphical e-mail reader, you can start by looking for one of theseclients: Evolution, Mozilla Mail, Thunderbird, or KMail

After you have launched your chosen e-mail client, you need some information to use it Whenyou first start most graphical e-mail clients, a configuration screen of some sort asks you to set up

an account Here’s how to begin setting up a mail account for the e-mail clients described in thischapter:

 Evolution — The Evolution Setup Assistant starts the first time each user opens Evolution.

After that, select Tools ➪ Settings from the main Evolution window Then choose MailAccounts and double-click the mail account you want to modify

 Mozilla Mail — An account wizard starts the first time you open Mozilla Mail After that,

you can set up or modify accounts from the Mozilla Mail window by clicking Edit ➪ Mail

& Newsgroups Account Settings

 Thunderbird — This is the next-generation mail client from the people that bring you

Firefox and Mozilla (mozilla.org) Now at version 1.5, and with more advanced rity features, you might consider Thunderbird Not only is it faster than Mozilla Mail andEvolution, Thunderbird is an ideal complement to Mozilla Firefox Web browser Firefoxand Thunderbird run on a number of operating systems, including Linux, Solaris,Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X

secu- KMail — From the KMail window, select Settings ➪ Configure KMail From the Configure

KMail window that appears, select the Network icon From there, you can click Sending

or Receiving tabs to configure your outgoing and incoming e-mail settings

Initial configuration for text-based e-mail clients is described later in this chapter

Information you will need to configure your e-mail accounts is much the same for the differentgraphical e-mail clients covered in this chapter:

 Name — Enter your name as you want it to appear on outgoing messages.

 Email Address — Enter the e-mail address from which you are sending You may also be

offered the opportunity to supply a different reply-to address, if you want replies to go to

an address other than the one you sent from

 Mail server type — Most mail servers are POP3 or IMAP servers (Configuring those

types of servers is discussed in Chapter 25.)

 Server names — Enter the names of the servers you will use to send outgoing e-mail

and receive incoming e-mail The names can be fully qualified domain names (such

as mail.linuxtoys.net) or IP addresses In many cases, the incoming and outgoingmail servers are the same

 Username — Enter the name by which the mail server knows you For example, if your

e-mail address is chris@linuxtoys.net, your username to the mail.linuxtoys.net servermight simply be chris However, it’s possible that your username on the mail server might

be different, so you should find that out from the administrator of your mail server

 Account title — Enter the name that you want to call this mail account so you can refer

to it later in your list of mail and news group accounts

 Authentication type — Indicate the type of authentication to use when you get your mail

(sometimes authentication is needed to send your mail as well) Password authentication

is normal Usually you can have your e-mail client remember your password if you want.Typically, you are prompted for the password the first time you connect to get your mail

That is most of the basic information you need to start getting and sending e-mail However, youmay want to further tune how your e-mail client interacts when it gets and sends e-mail

Tuning Up E-Mail

With your basic settings done, you should be ready to start sending and receiving your e-mail Beforeyou do, however, you should consider some of the other settings that can affect how you use mail:

 Automatically check messages — You can set your e-mail client to automatically check

and download your messages from the mail server every few minutes

 Leave messages on server — If you turn this feature on for a POP server, your e-mail

messages remain on the server after you have downloaded them to your e-mail client

People sometimes turn this feature on if they want to check their mail messages whilethey are on the road yet want to download their messages from their permanent desktopcomputer later

 Certificates — Your e-mail client may provide a way of using certificates to sign your

outgoing messages For example, Evolution and Mozilla Mail both have Security tabs foryour mail settings that let you enter information about your certificates and indicate thatyour e-mail be signed You can also choose to use the certificates for encryption

Step through your mail account settings because they are slightly different for each e-mail client.

Reading E-Mail with Thunderbird

The Thunderbird e-mail client program is a full-featured mail and newsgroup reader that usuallycomes with most Linux systems

In the past, you may have run the integrated Mozilla suite of applications, now called Mozilla SeaMonkey The more recent versions of Linux, however, have replaced SeaMonkey with separate e-mail and Web-browsing applications, Thunderbird and Firefox, respec- tively If you are used to the older Mozilla suite, you should consider upgrading to Thunderbird.

Thunderbird includes features for:

 Sending, receiving, reading, and managing e-mail

 Managing multiple mail and newsgroup accounts

 Composing HTML e-mail messages

 Controlling junk e-mail

 Message encryption and signing

Thunderbird runs on Windows as well as Linux, so you can convert your organization to Thunderbird now, and then later migrate to Linux.

On most Linux systems, either Thunderbird or Evolution will be the primary e-mail client for yourLinux distribution You can launch the e-mail application from the desktop from a menu such asInternet For example, in Fedora, you run an e-mail client from the Applications ➪ Internet menu.Fedora defaults to Evolution as the primary e-mail client, so Evolution is listed simply as Email onthe Applications ➪ Internet menu Thunderbird is listed as Thunderbird Email

When you launch Thunderbird for the first time, the application will offer to import your e-mailfolders from another application, which is really, really handy, especially if you use a POP3 e-mailserver, as described previously

The first time you launch Thunderbird, you will see a window like that in Figure 22-1

In Figure 22-1, Thunderbird detected no other compatible e-mail applications to import data from

On your system, you may see a dialog to import e-mail

Next, Thunderbird presents the New Account Setup dialog, which leads you through setting up

an e-mail account (you can create more than one) Figure 22-2 shows this window In most cases,you’ll want to begin by setting up an e-mail account, as shown here

Figure 22-3 shows the information you need to enter for your identity, including your e-mailaddress

Figure 22-4 shows the server information you need to enter In most cases, the incoming and going servers will be the same system

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Figure 22-5 shows the window where you enter your username on the e-mail server.

FIGURE 22-5

Enter your username on the e-mail server

Next, the window shown in Figure 22-6 allows you to enter a name for this e-mail account Youcan use the default value (your e-mail address) or enter anything you’d like

After you enter all this data, the confirmation screen shown in Figure 22-7 appears

If you want, check the Download messages now box to download all the messages from the e-mailserver Thunderbird downloads messages again every 10 minutes, or you can click the Get Msgsbutton at any time in the main Thunderbird window

When you are all done, Thunderbird displays the mail user interface, shown in Figure 22-8

With the Junk Mail feature, Thunderbird automatically tags any message it believes to be junk mail with a blue recycle-bin icon Using the Junk toolbar, you train the Junk Mail feature by telling it when a message is or isn’t junk mail After you have identified which messages are junk mail, you can automatically move incoming junk mail to the Junk folder.

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FIGURE 22-8

Handle multiple mail accounts in Thunderbird

Connecting to the Mail Server

After you have set up your mail accounts in Thunderbird, you can explicitly ask to download anyavailable mail messages from the server (for POP accounts) To do that, click the Get Msgs button.You are prompted for the password for your account on the mail server Using that password,Thunderbird downloads all your messages from the mail server It downloads messages againevery 10 minutes, or you can click the Get Msgs button at any time

If you want to change how often mail is downloaded, or other features of your account, chooseEdit ➪ Account Settings Under the e-mail account you added are categories to change the setupand behavior of the account (Click Server Settings to change how often, if at all, new messages are automatically downloaded from the mail server.)

Managing Incoming Mail

There are various ways to store and manage e-mail messages in Thunderbird Here’s a quick rundown of how to manage incoming mail:

 Mail folders — Mail messages are stored in folders in the left column There should be a

separate heading for each mail account you have For each mail account, incoming sages are stored (by default) in your Inbox folder You can create additional folders tobetter keep track of your mail (right-click on Inbox, and select New Folder to add afolder) Other folders contain drafts of messages set aside for a time (Drafts), templates

mes-for creating messages (Templates), messages you have sent (Sent), and messages that youhave discarded (Trash) You can also specify that Thunderbird use a global Inbox wheremessages from all accounts get placed in the same Inbox folder.

 Sort messages — Messages are sorted by date for the folder you select, in the upper-right

corner of the display Click the headings over the messages to sort by subject, sender, orpriority

 Read messages — When you select a message, it appears in the lower-right corner of the

display Click the e-mail address from the sender, and a menu enables you to add thataddress to your address book, compose mail to that address, copy mail to that address, orcreate a filter from that message

 Filter mail — When Thunderbird grabs your e-mail from the mail server, it drops it into

the Inbox associated with your mail account by default Thunderbird provides some nicefeatures for checking each message for information you choose, and then acting on thatmessage to move it to another folder, label it, or change its priority See the section “FilteringMail and Catching Spam” later in this chapter for details

 Search messages — You can use the search feature to retrieve messages that are in one of

your mail folders With the folder you want to search being the current folder, type a word

to search on into the Subject or Sender Contains box Messages with sender names orsubject lines that don’t contain that string will disappear from the list of messages To domore detailed searches, choose Edit ➪ Find ➪ Search Messages

Composing and Sending E-Mail

To compose e-mail messages, you can either start from scratch or respond to an existing e-mailmessage The following are some quick descriptions of how to create outgoing mail:

 New messages — To create a new message, choose Message ➪ New Message (or click

Write on the toolbar)

 Reply to messages — To reply to a mail message, click the message on the right side of

your screen and then choose Message ➪ Reply (to reply only to the author of the sage) or Message ➪ Reply to All (to reply to everyone listed as a recipient of the message)

mes- Forward messages — To forward a mail message, click the message on the right side of

your screen and then choose Message ➪ Forward You can also forward a message andhave it appear in the text (Message ➪ Forward As ➪ Inline) or as an attachment(Message ➪ Forward As ➪ Attachment)

In each case, a Compose window appears, in which you compose your e-mail message As youcompose your message in the Compose window, you can use the following:

 Address book — Add e-mail addresses from your personal address book (or from one of

several different directory servers) by selecting Tools ➪ Address Book Click the Contactsbutton to select recipients for your missive

 Attachments — Add attachments such as a word processing file, image, or executable

to attach (You can also choose File ➪ Attach ➪ Web Page to choose the URL of a Webpage that you want to attach.)

 Certificates — Add certificates or view security information about your mail message by

selecting View ➪ Message Security Info

When you are finished composing the message, click Send to send the message If you prefer,queue the message to be sent later by choosing File ➪ Send Later (Send Later is useful if you have

a dial-up connection to the network and you are not currently online.)

If you want to quit and finish the e-mail message later, choose File ➪ Save As ➪ Draft, and then click the X in the upper-right corner to close the window When you are ready

to resume work on the message, open the Draft folder in the Thunderbird window and double-click the message.

Filtering E-Mail and Catching Spam

Thunderbird can do more with incoming messages than just place them in your Inbox You can set

up filters to check each message first and then have Thunderbird take an action you define when amessage matches the rule you set up

For example, your filter can contain a rule that checks the subject, sender, text body, date, priority,status, recipients, or age in days of the message for a particular word, name, or date, as appropri-ate If there is a match, you can have Thunderbird put that message in a particular folder, label itwith a selected phrase, change its priority, or set its junk mail status You can add as many rules asyou like For example, you can:

 Have all messages sent from a particular address sorted into a separate mail folder Forexample, I do this so that important mail doesn’t get lost when there’s a lot of activity onthe mailing lists to which I subscribe

 Mark incoming messages from important clients as having highest priority

 Have messages from particular people or places that are being mistakenly marked asspam change their junk status to Not Junk

To set up filter rules in Thunderbird, click Tools ➪ Message Filters The Message Filters pop-upappears If you have multiple mail accounts, select the account you want to filter Then click New.From the Filter Rules pop-up window, choose the following:

 For incoming messages that — There are different ways to check parts of a message For

example, you can check whether the Sender is in the address book You can check whatthe Priority is: low, medium, or high You can create multiple rules for a filter (click More

to add another rule), and then choose if you want to match all or any of the rules to tinue to the action

con- Perform these actions — The information in this section describes what to do with a

message that matches the rules you’ve set You can have the message moved to any ing folder, or label the message With labels, the message appears in a different color

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Figure 22-9 shows a rule I created to highlight mail from my friend Tweeks in red (Important)when it comes in.

FIGURE 22-9

Create filter rules to sort or highlight your e-mail messages

A nice feature of Thunderbird’s filtering rules is that you can apply the rules after the fact as well Ifyou decide you want to move all messages in your Inbox from a particular person to a differentfolder, for example, you can open the Message Filters window, create a rule to move the selectedmessages, select Inbox, and click Run Now

For junk mail, with a mail message selected, click the Junk button in the toolbar The message ismarked as junk Your selection helps teach Thunderbird what you think is junk mail Click Tools ➪Run Junk Mail Controls on Folder, and Thunderbird looks for other messages that look like junkmail (You can take the junk marker off of any message you think is not junk.) Then select Tools ➪Delete Mail Marked as Junk in Folder, and the junk mail is deleted To open a window to configurehow you handle junk mail, select Tools ➪ Junk Mail Controls

Managing E-Mail in Evolution

If you are using Fedora or Debian, Evolution is the e-mail client that you can start right from thedesktop (look for the envelope icon on the panel) After you launch Evolution for the first time andrun the Startup Assistant, the Evolution window appears, showing the different types of operationsyou can perform Figure 22-10 shows an example of the Evolution window

FIGURE 22-10

Evolution can be used to manage your mail, appointments, and tasks

Evolution is a groupware application, combining several types of applications that help groups ofpeople communicate and work together The features of Evolution include:

 E-mail — A complete set of features for getting, reading, managing, composing, and

sending e-mail on one or more e-mail accounts

 Contacts — Create contact information such as names, addresses, and telephone

num-bers for friends and associates A Categories feature helps you remember who getsbirthday and anniversary gifts

 Calendar — Create and manage appointments on your personal calendar You can e-mail

appointment information to others and do keyword searches of your calendar

 Tasks — Organize ongoing tasks into folders.

Evolution provides a default interface that looks a lot like that of Microsoft Outlook, making it easy for new users to make a smooth transition to a Linux system.

New features recently added to Evolution include improved junk mail handling and Search Folders(for managing multiple physical folders as one folder)

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Receiving, Composing, and Sending E-Mail

Evolution offers a full set of features for sending, receiving, and managing your e-mail Here’s aquick rundown of these tasks:

 Read e-mail — Click Inbox in the left column Your messages appear to the right.

Message headers are in the upper right; the current message is displayed in the lowerpane Double-click a message header to display it in a separate window

 Delete e-mail — After you have read a message, select it and press the Delete key Click

View ➪ Hide Deleted Messages to toggle whether you can see deleted messages ClickFolder ➪ Expunge to permanently remove all messages marked for deletion in the cur-rent folder

 Send and receive — Click the Send/Receive button to send any e-mail queued to be sent

and receive any e-mail waiting for you at your mail server (You may not need to do this

if Evolution is configured to download your messages every few minutes Check Edit ➪Preferences, and then double-click on your mail account The Receiving Options tabindicates if automatic mail checking is being done.)

 Compose e-mail — Click New ➪ Mail Message A Compose a Message window appears.

Type your recipient’s e-mail address, enter a subject line, and fill in the body of the sage Click Send when you are finished Buttons on the Compose window enable you toadd attachments, cut and paste text, choose a format (HTML or plain text), and sign themessage (if you have set up appropriate keys)

mes- Use address books — Click the View ➪ Window ➪ Contacts menu choice to see a list

of names, addresses, and other contact information for the people in your address book.When you compose a message, click the To or CC button to select addresses from thebook to add as recipients for your message

 Create folders — If you like to keep old messages, you may want to save them outside

your Inbox (so it won’t get too junked up) To create a folder in which to keep them,right-click on the Inbox and select New Folder You can choose to store the new folder as

a subfolder to any existing folder Type a folder name and click OK

 Move messages — With new folders created, you can easily move messages from your

Inbox to another folder The easiest way is to simply drag-and-drop each message (or aset of selected messages) from the message pane to the new folder

 Search messages — Type a keyword in the search box over your e-mail message pane

and select whether to search your message subject lines, sender, recipient, or messagebody Click Find Now to search for the keyword After viewing the messages, click Clear

to have the other messages reappear

Managing E-Mail with Search Folders

Managing large amounts of e-mail can become difficult when the messages you want to refer tospan several folders, dates, or senders With Search Folders (also called virtual folders or vFolders),you can identify criteria to group messages from all your mail folders so you can deal with them inone Search Folder

Where have vFolders gone? Search Folders used to be called vFolders If you are familiar with older versions of Evolution, note that the name changed to Search Folders.

Here’s a procedure for creating a Search Folder:

1. With Evolution open to read mail (click Inbox to get there), select File ➪ New ➪ Folder

A Create New Folder pop-up appears

2. Select Search Folders, type a folder name (such as FromJohn), and select OK A NewSearch Folder pop-up appears

3. Click Add and select criteria for including a message in your Search Folder You cansearch to see if the sender, recipient, subject, message body, or other part of the messagecontains or doesn’t contain the string you type in the next box Click Add again if youwant to add more criteria

4. If you want to search only specific folders, click Add in the Search Folder Sources boxand select the folder you want to search You can repeat the Add to choose more thanone folder Otherwise, you can select to search all local folders, all active remote folders,

or all local and active remote folders Then click OK

5. Make sure the folder bar is visible (View ➪ Layout ➪ Show Side Bar) The folder you justcreated is listed under the Search Folders heading Click that folder to see the messagesyou gathered with this action

At this point, you can work with the messages you gathered in the Search Folder Although itappears that there are multiple versions of each message across your mail folders, there is reallyonly one copy of each So deleting or moving the message from a Search Folder actually causes it

to be deleted or moved from the original folder in which the real message resides

You can also create a Search Folder by performing a search, a sort of query by example Select Search ➪ Create Search Folder from the Search menu and enter your search criteria

Filtering E-Mail Messages

You can take action on an e-mail message before it even lands in your Inbox Click Message ➪Create Rule, and then select the type of filter to create Evolution shows a Filters window toenable you to add filters to deal with incoming or outgoing messages Click Add to create crite-ria and set actions

For example, you can have all messages from a particular sender, subject, date, status, or sizesorted to a selected folder Or you can have messages matching your criteria deleted or assigned

a color, or play a sound clip

Evolution also supports many common features, such as printing, saving, and viewing e-mailmessages in various ways The help system that comes with Evolution (click the Help button)includes a good manual, FAQ, and service for reporting bugs

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Reading E-Mail with Mozilla Mail

The Mozilla Mail client program is a full-featured mail and newsgroup reader that comes with theMozilla suite on many Linux systems In general, the Mozilla suite is considered an older application,replaced by Thunderbird and Firefox, the e-mail and Web browser clients, respectively Thunderbirdand Firefox were split from the large Mozilla suite and each now runs as a separate application Ifyou are used to the older Mozilla suite, now called SeaMonkey, you should consider upgrading toThunderbird

In most respects, Mozilla Mail works like Thunderbird, described previously The only difference

is that Mozilla Mail, because it’s an older application, won’t have all the features of the latestThunderbird This is a big change In the last year or so, Thunderbird has all but replacedMozilla Mail

You can download the Mozilla SeaMonkey suite from www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Working with Text-Based E-Mail Readers

The first text-based mail clients could be configured quite simply Mail clients such as mutt, mail,

or pine were often run with the user logged in to the computer that was acting as the mail server

So instead of downloading the messages, using POP3 or IMAP, the mail client would simply openthe mailbox (often under the user’s name in /var/spool/mail) and begin working with mail.There are many text-based mail programs for reading, sending, and working with your mail Many

of these programs have been around for a long time, so they are full of features and have been welldebugged As a group, however, they are not very intuitive

Most of these programs use the value of your $MAIL environment variable as your local

mailbox Usually, that location is /var/spool/mail/user, where user is your

user-name If you use Thunderbird but want to try out one of the text-based e-mail clients, you can set your

$MAILso that it points to your Thunderbird mailbox This will enable you to use either Thunderbird or

a text-based mail program Add the following line to one of your startup files:

export MAIL=$HOME/.thunderbird/*.default/*/Mail/accountname/Inbox

Replace accountname in the command with the name of an e-mail account you set up If you usually

use Thunderbird for mail, set this variable temporarily to try out some of these mail programs.

Mail readers described in the following sections are text-based and use the entire Terminal window(or other shell display) Although some features are different, menu bars show available optionsright on the screen

Mutt Mail Reader

The muttcommand is a text-based, full-screen mail user agent for reading and sending e-mail The

interface is quick and efficient Type mutt to start the program Move arrow keys up and down to select from your listed messages Press Enter to see a mail message, and type i to return to the Main menu.

The menu bar indicates how to mark messages for deletion, undelete them, save messages to a

direc-TIP

(vi, for example) to create the message Type y to send the message If you want to read mail

with-out having your fingers leave your keyboard, mutt is a nice choice (It even handles attachments!)

Pine Mail Reader

The pine mail reader is another full-screen mail reader, but it offers many more features than doesmutt With pine, you can manage multiple mail folders and newsgroup messages as well as mailmessages As text-based applications go, pine is quite easy to use It was developed by a group atthe University of Washington for use by students on campus, but has become widely used in UNIXand Linux environments

Start this mail program by typing pine After a brief startup message that invites you to count

your-self as a pine user, you should see the following menu, from which you can select items by typingthe associated letter or using up and down arrows and pressing Enter:

? HELP - Get help using Pine

C COMPOSE MESSAGE - Compose and send a message

I MESSAGE INDEX - View messages in current folder

L FOLDER LIST - Select a folder to view

A ADDRESS BOOK - Update address book

S SETUP - Configure Pine Options

Q QUIT - Leave the Pine program

To read your e-mail, select either Ior L Commands are listed along the bottom of the screen andchange to suit the content you are viewing Use the left (←) and right (→) arrow keys to step back-ward and forward among the pine screens

Mail Reader

The mailcommand was the first mail reader for UNIX It is text-based, but not screen-oriented Type

mail, and you will see the messages in your mailbox You get a prompt after message headings are

displayed — you are expected to know what to do next (You can use the Enter key to step through

messages.) Type ? to see which commands are available.

While in mail, type h to see mail headings again Simply type a message number to see the message.

Type d# (replacing # with a message number) to delete a message To create a new message, type

m To respond to a message, type r# (replacing # with the message number).

Choosing a Web Browser

Many Web browsers available in Linux are based on the Mozilla Web browser engine, called Gecko.Web browsers that might come with your Linux distribution include:

 Mozilla Navigator — Based on the former industry-leading Netscape Navigator browser,

Mozilla Navigator was once the most popular open source Web browser It has been allbut replaced by Firefox

 Konqueror — Comes as the default browser with many KDE desktop environments.

 Firefox — Being touted as Mozilla’s next-generation browser, Firefox is designed to be

fast, efficient, and safe for Web browsing

 Opera — A commercial application that runs on many small devices such as mobile

phones or the Nokia Linux–based Internet Tablet, this browser is available for free onMac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux

 links, lynx, and w3m — If you are in a text-based environment (operating from the

shell), these are among several text-based Web browsers you can try out

Some streamlined Linux versions, such as Damn Small Linux, include a very lightweight Web browser called dillo (www.dillo.org) Although its small size (only about 350KB binary) comes with some limitations (such as limited font and internationalization support), dillo is a good choice for displaying basic HTML on handheld devices and mini Linux distributions Another small-footprint browser is minimo (www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/), short for mini-Mozilla.

The following sections describe Mozilla, Firefox, and some text-based Web browsers that are able with many Linux systems

avail-Exploring the Mozilla Suite

During the early 1990s, Netscape Navigator was the most popular Web browser When it becameapparent that Netscape was losing its lead to Microsoft Internet Explorer, its source code wasreleased to the world as open source code

Mozilla.org (www.mozilla.org) was formed to coordinate the development of a new browserfrom that code The result was the Mozilla browser that is now available with many computingplatforms, including many Linux distributions The availability on multiple platforms is great,especially if you must switch between Linux and Windows — for example, using Windows atwork and Linux at home Mozilla looks and acts the same on many platforms

As mentioned earlier, the original Mozilla is actually a suite of Internet communications tools Inaddition to viewing Web pages, you can also manage e-mail, newsgroups, IRC, and address books,and even create your own Web pages with Mozilla Composer

Recently, the Mozilla Project’s development has been diverted away from the Mozilla browser (andassociated composer, mail, and chat components) to focus on development of the Firefox Webbrowser and Thunderbird e-mail client Most Linux distributions have made the move to Firefox

as their featured browser (including Fedora), replacing Mozilla In most respects, however, theMozilla Web browser acts the same as an older version of Firefox The development effort hasclearly been with Firefox for the last few years

Slackware kept Mozilla so that the project could offer the Mozilla Composer The Slackware project noted that Mozilla Composer is a WYSIWYG HTML editor that is still used by many open source enthusiasts as an alternative to Microsoft FrontPage for ease-of-use Web page development.

NOTE NOTE

In addition to the Navigator Web browser, the Mozilla suite also includes the following features:

 Mail and Newsgroups — A full-featured program for sending, receiving, and managing

e-mail, as well as for using newsgroups (The mozilla-mail RPM must be installed.) MozillaMail has mostly been replaced by the Thunderbird application, covered previously

 IRC Chat — An Internet Relay Chat (IRC) window, called ChatZilla, for participating in

online, typed conversations (The mozilla-chat package must be installed.)

 Composer — A Web page (HTML) composer application.

 Address Book — A feature to manage names, addresses, telephone numbers, and other

contact information This is also part of Thunderbird

Using Firefox

Most Linux distributions ship Firefox as the default browser, instead of the older Mozilla suite Inmany desktop Linux distributions, you start the Firefox Web browser from an Applications menu.For example, in Debian, select Applications ➪ Internet ➪ Firefox Web Browser If you don’t see it

on a menu, you can start Firefox by simply typing firefox from a Terminal window Figure 22-11

shows the Mozilla page for Firefox (www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/) as displayed by thebrowser

FIGURE 22-11

Firefox is the leading open source Web browser based on Netscape source code

Firefox has all the basic features you need in a Web browser plus a few special features The ing sections describe how to get the most out of your Firefox Web browser.

follow-Setting Up Firefox

There are many things you can do to configure Firefox to run like a champ The following sectionsdescribe some ways to customize your browsing experience in Firefox

Setting Firefox Preferences

You can set your Firefox preferences in the Preferences window (see Figure 22-12) To open Firefoxpreferences, select Edit ➪ Preferences

FIGURE 22-12

Change settings for navigating the Web from Firefox’s Preferences window

If you are upgrading from the Mozilla suite, you will notice that the Preferences window looks completely different Don’t despair, however; the browser preferences have not changed much Firefox just sports a simpler window layout.

The following are some Firefox preferences that you might want to change:

 General — Select the location to use as your home page, and choose which buttons you

see on the toolbar Click the Connections Settings button to set further options

TIP

 Proxies — If you have direct access to the Internet, you don’t need to change any proxy

settings However, if you need to access the Internet via a proxy server, you can identifythe location of that server (or servers) here To access the Web via proxy servers, youmust explicitly identify the proxy server to use for each type of content you request(HTTP, SSL, FTP, Gopher, or SOCKS) Set this from the Connections window on theGeneral tab

 HTTP Networking — If you are using a proxy server, that proxy server may require that

you make HTTP requests using either HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1 standards (1.1 is the default).You can set which version of HTTP requests you should use Set this from the Connectionswindow on the General tab

 Tabs — Use these selections to control how Firefox uses tabs, one of the most useful

features of this browser

 Downloads — Choose what you see during downloads from the Internet (a download

manager, a progress dialog box, or nothing)

 Content — Set Content preferences to control how Firefox should render Web content.

This includes whether to block pop-up windows These options include:

 Java and JavaScript — You can control whether these languages are enabled

 Warn on installation — Specify this to warn you when a site tries to install a Firefox

extension or theme This is an important security feature

 Privacy — Choose how long to store a history of addresses of the sites you have typed in

your location bar (These addresses appear in the History tab on the Firefox sidebar.) SetPrivacy preferences to control how Firefox caches data and allows Web sites to find outinformation about you These preferences include:

 Cache — By default, the most recent 4MB of Web pages you visit are stored in RAM,

and the most recent 50MB of pages you visit are stored on your hard disk If a page isnot out-of-date, caching makes it possible to return to a page quickly, without thebrowser’s needing to reload from the original Web server Cache preferences let youchange how much information is cached, and where the hard-disk cache is located

Other preferences let you clear all memory and disk cache immediately

 Passwords — Control whether Firefox saves the passwords you type onto Web forms.

Most of us log into a number of Web services every time we browse the Web, so thissetting can save you a lot of hassle in remembering passwords But, this does open up

a security issue, in that Firefox will now store these passwords on your hard disk

 Cookies — The Web content you choose can try to open, move, resize, raise, and

lower windows It can request to change your images, status bar text, or bits of

infor-mation stored in what are called cookies These preferences let you restrict what the

content you request can do

 Advanced — Set Advanced preferences to fine-tune your Web browsing experience That

includes setting accessibility options, and whether Firefox should automatically downloadupdates Here are some preferences that might interest you:

 Languages — For Web pages that can appear in multiple languages, this sets the order

in which you would prefer languages to be displayed For example, you might chooseEnglish/United States, English, French, and German Then Firefox tries to display aWeb page you open in each of those languages successively, until one is matched Youcan set other advanced features on this tab

 Software Installation — Choose to allow or disallow requested Web content attempts

to install software, such as updates, on your computer

Adding Plug-ins

Although the main type of content provided by Web pages is HTML, many other content types can

be displayed, played, or presented by a Web browser Most additional data encountered by thebrowser is handled by plug-ins

Applications that help Firefox display content, such as a Flash plug-in, used to be called Helper Apps If you are migrating from the Mozilla suite, these helper applications are now called extensions or plug-ins (both names are used).

Plug-ins are self-contained programs that allow data to play within the Mozilla window

At the time you open a Web page and data of a specific type is encountered, the browser evaluatesthe data based on the following criteria, and then launches the appropriate plug-in

 Suffixes — If the browser is reading a file that has a particular extension (such as .exefor an application or .gzfor a compressed zip file), it can use that suffix to determine thefile’s contents When a file’s extension matches a suffix configured for a particular plug-in,the plug-in is used to play or display the data

 MIME type — Because data may come to the browser in a stream or have no suffix, the

browser can use the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) type attached to thedata to determine which plug-in to use

Here are some of the most popular extensions to Firefox that are available from Mozilla.org:

 Downloading tool (FlashGot) — If you like to download groups of files from your Web

browser, FlashGot can be a very useful tool With FlashGot installed, you can select todownload an individual file, files identified by highlighting links on a Web page, or allfiles linked from the current Web page There is also a Build Gallery feature that lets youidentify a range of filenames to download at once

When FlashGot is installed, you can access it from Firefox by selecting Tools ➪ FlashGotand then choosing a feature from the menu In Fedora, FlashGot passes requests to kGet

to complete the download You can get other download tools to use instead of kGet

TIP

 Selectively block ads (Adblock) — Using Adblock, you can selectively prevent ads from

being displayed on the Web pages you visit With Adblock installed, an Adblock buttonappears on the lower-right corner of Firefox Click that button to see a window contain-ing items on the current page you want to block Right-click on an image and selectAdblock Image to choose to block that image Use an asterisk to block all content from aparticular site (for example, www.example.com/*) Open the Adblock preferences win-dow from Firefox (Tools ➪ Adblock ➪ Preferences) to see, edit, or remove blocked sites

 Watch your weather (ForecastFox) — With ForecastFox, the latest weather for any

region you select can be just a click away in Firefox After you install ForecastFox andrestart Firefox, a pop-up window lets you configure ForecastFox options Select at leastFind Code to choose the area in which you want to keep up on weather Save your options,and a weather icon appears in the lower-right corner of Firefox Move your mouse overthat icon to see a quick view of the current weather Double-click the icon to have a moredetailed weather report displayed from www.weather.com

 Check Internet speed (Bandwidth Tester) — The Bandwidth Tester can give you a sense

of how fast you are able to download data over your Internet connection The tester loads five files, based on the type of connection you indicate, and tells you the speed atwhich that data was downloaded

down-Follow the installation instructions that come with the plug-in you downloaded If the plug-incomes in an RPM file, install it as you would any other software package if you are using anRPM-based Linux distribution (rpm -Uvh packagecommand) If the plug-in doesn’t come with instructions, just copy the plug-in file (the .sofile) to the system plug-in directory (such as/usr/lib/firefox*/plugins) or your personal plug-ins directory (probably $HOME/.mozilla/ firefox/plugins), if you are not otherwise instructed When you restart Firefox, the plug-insare automatically picked up from those locations

After you have installed an extension, you need to restart Firefox for it to take effect In somecases, a change to an extension’s option will also require you to restart Firefox

If you want to uninstall an extension, change an extension’s options, or get more extensions,select Tools ➪ Extensions from Firefox The window that appears shows you a list of installedextensions and lets you change them Select Get More Extensions to go directly to Mozilla’sFirefox Extensions page

Changing Firefox Themes

Several themes are available for changing the look and feel of your Firefox window From the Mozillaupdate site (http://addons.mozilla.org), select Firefox themes When you download a themefor Firefox, it knows that it is a Firefox theme and, on the download window, it gives you the option

to install the theme by clicking the Use Theme button

To change a theme later or get more themes, select Tools ➪ Themes After you have installed anew theme and selected it as your current theme, you need to restart Firefox for the new theme

to take effect

Many plug-ins are available for use in most Linux versions of Mozilla To see a list of plug-ins

asso-ciated with the browser, enter about:plugins in the address box where you normally type URLs.

Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/plugins/to download the most popular ins, and look at plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux.htmlfor links to less-popular plug-ins Some ofthe most popular plug-ins are:

plug- Adobe Acrobat Plug-in (www.adobe.com/support/downloads) — Displays files inAdobe Systems’ Portable Document Format (PDF)

 DjVuLibre Plug-in (djvu.sourceforge.net) — Displays images in DjVu image pression technology This plug-in is from AT&T

com- RealOne Player (www.real.com/linux) — Plays Real Audio and Video content RealNetworks and its open source Helix project have recently made RealVideo 10 codecsavailable to the Linux community

 Adobe Flash Player (www.adobe.com) — Displays multimedia vector graphics and tion This plug-in is from Adobe, Inc Flash Player is available for Mozilla, but the Shockwaveplug-in is not yet available for Linux

anima- CrossOver Plugin (www.codeweavers.com) — Linux plug-ins are not yet available forsome of the more interesting and popular plug-ins QuickTime movies, ShockwaveDirector multimedia content, and various Microsoft movie, file, and data formats simplywill not play natively in Firefox Using software built on WINE for Linux on x86-basedprocessors, CodeWeavers created the CrossOver Plugin Although no longer offered as aseparate product (you must buy the entire Crossover Office product for $39.95 US), theCrossOver Plugin lets you play some content that you could not otherwise use in Linux.(Download a demo from www.codeweavers.com/site/products/download_trial

and choose CrossOver Linux.)After you install the CrossOver Plugin, you see a nice Plugin Setup window that lets youselectively install plug-ins for QuickTime 6.5, Windows Media Player, Shockwave 8.5,Flash, iTunes, and Lotus Notes, as well as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint view-ers (Support for later versions of these content formats may be available by the time youread this.) You can also install other multimedia plug-ins, as well as a variety of fonts touse with those plug-ins

security-conscious people Here are some ways that Firefox helps make your Web browsingmore secure:

 ActiveX — Because of major security flaws found in ActiveX, Firefox will simply not play

ActiveX content If you absolutely must be able to play ActiveX content, a plug-in is indevelopment to provide controlled support for ActiveX Follow the progress of this project

at the Mozilla ActiveX Project home page (www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm)

 Pop-ups — When pop-up windows are encountered as you browse with Firefox, a

mes-sage (by default) tells you that “Firefox prevented this site from opening a popup window.”

By clicking on that message, you have an opportunity to allow all pop-ups from that site,just allow the requested pop-up, or edit your pop-up settings

 Privacy preferences — From the Privacy window in Firefox (select Edit ➪ Preferences,

and then click the Privacy button), you can clear stored private information from yourbrowser in a single click This is a particularly good feature if you have just used a com-puter that is not yours to browse the Web You can select to individually clear your History,information saved in forms you might have filled in, any passwords saved by the browser,history of what you have downloaded, cookies, and cached files As an alternative, youcan click Clear All and clear all that information from Firefox in one click

 Certificates — In Firefox, you can install and manage certificates that can be used for

validating a Web site and safely performing encryption of communications to that site

Using the Preferences window (select Edit ➪ Preferences and then click the Advancedbutton), you can manage certificates under the Certificates heading Select ManageCertificates to display a window that lets you import new certificates or view certificatesthat are already installed Firefox will check that certificates you encounter are valid (andwarn you if they are not)

Along with all the excellent security features built into Firefox, it’s important that you incorporategood security practices in your Web browsing Here are some general tips for safe Web browsing:

 Download and install software only from sites that are secure and known to you to be safe

 For any online transactions, make sure you are communicating with a secure site (lookfor the httpsprotocol in the location box and the closed lock icon in the lower-rightcorner of the screen)

 Be careful about being redirected to another Web site when doing a financial transaction

An IP address in the site’s address or misspellings on a screen where you enter credit cardinformation are warning signs that you have been directed to an untrustworthy site

Because new exploits are being discovered all the time, it’s important that you keep your Webbrowser up-to-date That means that, at the least, you need to get updates of Firefox from theLinux distribution you are using or directly from Mozilla.org To keep up on the latest securitynews and information about Firefox and other Mozilla products, refer to the Mozilla SecurityCenter (www.mozilla.org/security/)

Tips for Using Firefox

There are so many nice features in Firefox, it’s hard to cover all of them Just to point you toward afew more fun and useful features, here are some tips for using Firefox:

 Add smart keywords — Many Web sites include their own search boxes to allow you to

look for information on their sites With Firefox, you can assign a smart keyword to anysearch box on the Web, and then use that keyword from the location bar in the Firefoxbrowser to search that site

For example, go to the Linux Documentation Project site (http://tldp.org) click in the Search/Resources search box Select Add a Keyword for this Search from themenu that appears Add a name (Linux Documentation) and a keyword (tldp), and selectAdd to add the keyword to your Bookmarks

Right-After you have added the keyword, you can use it by simply entering the keyword andone or more search terms to the Firefox location box (on the navigation toolbar) Forexample, I entered tldp Lego Mindstormsand came up with a list of HOWTOs forusing Lego Mindstorms in Linux

 Check config — Firefox has hundreds of configuration preferences available to set as you please You can see those options by typing about:config into the location box For

true/false options, you can simply click on the preference name to toggle it between thetwo values For other preferences, click the preference to enter a value into a pop-upbox While many of these values can be changed through the Preferences menu (Edit ➪Preferences), some technical people prefer to look at settings in a list like the one shown

on the about:config page

 Multiple home pages — Instead of just having one home page, you can have a whole set

of home pages When you start Firefox, a separate tab will open in the Firefox windowfor each address you identify in your home page list To do this, create multiple tabs(File ➪ New Tab) and enter the address for each page you want in your list of homepages Then select Edit ➪ Preferences ➪ General and click the Use Current Pages button.The next time you open Firefox, it will start with the selected tabs open to the homepages you chose (Clicking the Home icon will open new tabs for all the home pages.)You can also manually enter multiple URLs into the text box Separate each URL with apipe character (|)

Using Firefox Controls

If you have used a Web browser before, the Firefox controls are probably as you might expect:location box, forward and back buttons, file and edit menus, and so on There are a few controlswith Firefox, however, that you might not be used to seeing:

 Display Sidebar — Select View ➪ Sidebar to toggle the bookmarks or history sidebars

on and off The sidebar is a left column on your Firefox screen for allowing quick access

to Bookmarks and History Use the Bookmarks tab to add your own bookmarks and the

 Send Web Content — You can send an e-mail containing either the current Web page

(File ➪ Send Page) or the URL of the current Web page (File ➪ Send Link) to selectedrecipients Firefox will load your default e-mail client such as Thunderbird or Evolution

to send the e-mail message

 Search the Internet — You can search the Internet for a keyword phrase in many

differ-ent ways Choose Tools ➪ Web Search to start a search Selecting this menu choice movesthe mouse cursor to the search box, where you can enter search terms Press the Enterkey to search

 View Web Page Info — You can view information about the location of a Web page, the

location of each of its components, the dates the page was modified, and other tion by clicking the right mouse button over a Web page and then choosing View PageInfo In the Page Info window, click the Links tab to see links on that page to othercontent on the Web Click the Security tab to see information about verification andencryption used on the page

informa-Improving Firefox Browsing

Not every Web site you visit with Firefox is going to play well Some sites don’t follow standards —they use unreadable fonts, choose colors that make it hard to see, or demand that you use a partic-ular type of browser to view their content To improve your browsing experience, there are severalthings you can add to Firefox

If you encounter a problem with Firefox that you can’t overcome, I recommend that you refer to the Mozilla Bugzilla database (www.mozilla.org/bugs/) This site is an excellent place to search for bugs others have found (many times you can get workarounds to your problems) or enter a bug report yourself.

Adding a Preferences Toolbar

Did you ever run into a Web page that required you to use a particular type or version of a browser

or had fonts or colors that made a page unreadable? The Firefox preferences toolbar called PrefBar3enables you to try to spoof Web sites into thinking you are running a different browser It also letsyou choose settings that might improve colors, fonts, and other attributes on difficult-to-read pages.You can install the neat little toolbar from the Mozdev.org site (http://prefbar.mozdev.org).Click the Install link, and after it is installed, restart Firefox

The default set of buttons lets you do the following:

 Colors — Change between default colors and those set on the Web page.

 Images — Toggle between having images loaded or not loaded on pages you display.

 JavaScript — Allow or disallow JavaScript content to play in Firefox.

 Flash — Allow or refuse all embedded Flash content on the current page.

 Clear Cache — Delete all cached content from memory and disk.

NOTE

 Save Page — Save the current page and, optionally, its supporting images and other

con-tent, to your hard disk

 Real UA — Choose to have your browser identified as itself (current version of Firefox)

or any of the following: Mozilla 1.0 (in Windows 98), Netscape Navigator 4.7 (inMacintosh), Netscape 6.2 (in Linux), Internet Explorer 5.0 (in Macintosh), InternetExplorer 6.0 (in Windows XP), or Lynx (a text-based Web browser)

The user agent (UA) setting is very useful when you’re dealing with Web sites that require InternetExplorer (IE) (and usually IE on Windows, not Mac OS) The IE 6.0 WinXP setting is goodenough to allow Firefox to log on to the Microsoft Exchange webmail service, which is usuallyset up to require IE If you want to run Linux in a mostly Windows organization, install thePreferences toolbar

Click the Customize button to add other buttons to the toolbar You can add buttons to clear yourHistory or Location bar entries You can even add a Popups button to prevent a page from opening

a pop-up window from Firefox

Many of the preferences take effect immediately Others may require you to restart Firefox

Adding Java Support

If you want to display some Java content, but you see only a broken puzzle piece and a failure sage that says you need a plug-in to view application/x-java-whatever content, you can install thesoftware you need from the Sun Microsystems Web site (www.sun.com) Look for the Java RuntimeEnvironment package from java.sun.com/download It should say something like Java Platform,Standard Edition Be sure to select the edition that runs on Linux

mes-Doing Cool Things with Firefox

Some neat bells and whistles are built into Firefox that can make your browsing more pleasant.The following sections explore a few of those features

Blocking Pop-ups

You can block annoying pop-up windows using the Firefox Preferences window Here’s how:

1. Click Edit ➪ Preferences The Preferences window appears

2. Click Popup Windows under the Content category

As the Preferences window notes, by blocking all pop-ups you might keep some Web sites fromworking properly Click the Allowed Sites button to allow pop-ups on certain sites that you choose

Using Tabbed Browsing

If you switch back and forth among several Web pages, you can use the tabbed browsing feature

to hold multiple pages in your browser window at once You can open a new tab for browsing bysimply selecting File ➪ New Tab or by pressing Ctrl+T You can open any link into a new tab byright-clicking over the link and then selecting Open Link in New Tab

You can also tailor how tabbed browsing works from a Web page or from the Location box

Here’s how:

1. Click Edit ➪ Preferences The Preferences window appears

2. Click the Tabs tab

3. Click the tab-related options you desire

A tab for each tabbed page appears at the top of the Firefox pane To close a tab, create a new tab,bookmark a group of tabs, or reload tabs, right-click one of the tabs and choose the function youwant from the drop-down menu

One of the easiest ways to open a link in a tab is to right-click over a link on an HTML page Selectthe Open Link in New Tab choice

Using the DOM Inspector

If you are debugging a Web page that you are creating, the Document Object Model (DOM) Inspectorcan be useful for checking out the structure of your page and dynamically updating the DOM you aretraversing To open the DOM Inspector, from the Firefox window click Tools ➪ DOM Inspector

In the DOM Inspector window, type the URL to the Web page you want to check out The nodesrepresenting the head, body, tables, fonts, and so on appear in the left column Values for eachnode appear in the right column Click a node name, and the selected area is highlighted on thepage below, with the node value appearing to the right You can also use the DOM Inspector toinspect a window

Resizing the Web Page

There is a nice keyboard shortcut that lets you quickly resize the text on most Web pages in Firefox

Hold the Ctrl key and press the plus (+) or minus (–) key In most cases, the text on the Web pagegets larger or smaller, respectively That page with the insanely small type font is suddenly readable.There are many more things you can do with Firefox than I have covered in this chapter If youhave questions about Firefox features or you just want to dig up some more cool stuff aboutFirefox, I recommend checking out the MozillaZine forum for Firefox support:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=38This page has a sticky link to Miscellaneous Firefox Tips and a good FAQ post

Using Text-Based Web Browsers

If you become a Linux administrator or power user, over time you will inevitably find yourselfworking on a computer from a remote login or where there is no desktop GUI available At somepoint while you are in that state, you will want to check an HTML file or a Web page To solve theproblem, many Linux distributions include several text-based Web browsers

With text-based Web browsers, any HTML file available from the Web, your local file system, or acomputer where you’re remotely logged in can be accessed from your shell There’s no need to fire

up your GUI or read pages of HTML markup if you just want to take a peek at the contents of aWeb page In addition to enabling you to call up Web pages, move around with those pages, andfollow links to other pages, some of browsers even display graphics right in a Terminal window!Which browser you use is a matter of which you are more comfortable with Browsers that areavailable include:

 links — You can open a file or a URL, and then traverse links from the pages you open.

Use search forward (/string) and back (?string) features to find text strings in pages.Use up and down arrows to go forward and back among links Press Enter to go to thecurrent link Use the right and left arrow keys to go forward and back among pages youhave visited Press Esc to see a menu bar of features from which to select

 lynx — The lynx browser has a good set of help files (press the ? key) Step through pages

using the spacebar Although lynx can display pages containing frames, it cannot displaythem in the intended positioning Use the arrow keys to display the selected link (rightarrow), go back to the previous document (left arrow), select the previous link (up arrow),and select the next link (down arrow)

 w3m — This browser can display HTML pages containing text, links, frames, and tables.

It even tries to display images (although it is a bit shaky) Both English and Japanese helpfiles are available (press H with w3m running) You can also use w3m to page through anHTML document in plain text (for example, cat index.html | w3m -T text/html).Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to page through a document Press Enter on a link

to go to that link Press B to go back to the previous link Search forward and back fortext using the / (slash) and ? (question mark) keys, respectively

The w3m seems the most sophisticated of these browsers It features a nice default font selectionand seems to handle frames neatly; its use of colors also makes it easy to use The links browserlets you use the mouse to cut and paste text

You can start any of these text-based Web browsers by entering a filename, or if you have an activeconnection to the network, you can use a Web address as an option to the command name Forexample, to read the w3m documentation (which is in HTML format) with a w3m browser, typethe following from a Terminal window or other shell interface:

$ w3m /usr/share/doc/w3m*/MANUAL.html

An HTML version of the W3M Manual is displayed Or you can give w3m a URL to a Web page,such as the following:

$ w3m www.handsonhistory.com

After a page is open, you can begin viewing the page and moving around to links included in it

Start by using the arrow keys to move around and select links Use the Page Up and Page Downkeys to page through text

Summary

A lot of high-quality applications are available to fulfill your needs for a Web browser and e-mailclient in Linux Most Web browsers are based on the Mozilla gecko engine (which came originallyfrom Netscape Navigator) Firefox has become the main Linux Web browser The combination ofsecurity, ease-of-use features, and extensions has made Firefox an extremely popular Web browserfor both Linux and Windows users

Graphical and text-based e-mail clients include Evolution, Mozilla Mail, and KMail Thunderbirdhas become the next-generation e-mail client to replace Mozilla Mail

There are literally hundreds of games that run in Linux Freely

dis-tributed games include popular card games, board games, strategygames, and first-person shooter (FPS) games The list of commercialgames that will run in Linux has also grown steadily in recent years

These days, many native Linux games are also network-enabled You can

battle tanks (BZFlag), create civilizations (freeciv), or play standard board

games (gnuchess) against others on the Internet In most cases, both the

clients (playing the games) and the game servers (managing dozens or

hun-dreds of players) will all run natively in Linux

This chapter provides an overview of the state of Linux gaming today It

describes games that were created specifically to run in Linux, and explains

how to find commercial games that run in Linux (either with a Linux version

or running a Windows version along with Windows compatibility software,

such as Cedega)

Overview of Linux Gaming

Linux is a wonderful platform for both running and, perhaps more especially,

developing computer games Casual gamers have no shortage of fun games

to try Hardcore gamers face a few more challenges with Linux Here are

some of the opportunities and challenges as you approach Linux gaming:

 Plenty to play — If you just like to be diverted by playing some

solitaire or shooting some asteroids, start with the Games menu onyour desktop Both GNOME and KDE desktops come with manymore games than you will get on default desktop Windows systems

I provide a list of popular desktop games later in this chapter If

IN THIS CHAPTERGaming in Linux

Playing open source games Running commercial Linux games Playing Windows games in Linux

Gaming with Linux

 3D acceleration — If you are a more serious gamer, you will almost certainly want a

video card that provides hardware acceleration Open source drivers for some video cardsare available from the DRI project Video cards from NVIDIA and ATI often have binary-only drivers available Fun open source games such as PenguinPlanet Racer, BZFlag, andothers that recommend hardware acceleration, will run much better if you get one ofthese supported cards and drivers

 Commercial games — The latest commercial computer games are not all ported to

run in Linux Boxed commercial games for Linux include Unreal Tournament 2003 and

2004, as well as about 50 first-rate commercial games that have been ported to run inLinux Using Cedega software from Transgaming.com, you can get hundreds morecommercial games to run To see if the game you want is running in Cedega, visit theTransgaming.Org Games Database (http://transgaming.org/gamesdb) CommercialLinux games are described in more depth later in this chapter

 Gaming servers — Many commercial computer games that don’t have Linux clients

available do have Linux game servers associated with them So Linux is a great operatingsystem for hosting a LAN party or setting up an Internet gaming server

 Linux gaming development — Some of the most advanced tools and application

pro-gramming interfaces (APIs) for developing computer games run on Linux systems If youare interested in developing your own games to run in Linux, check out the OpenGL(http://opengl.org) and Simple Directmedia Layer (www.libsdl.org) projects.Blender (www.blender.org) is an open source project for doing animations, 3D mod-els, post-production, and rendering that is being used today in commercial games andmovie animations

An offshoot of the Blender project is GameBlender (www.gameblender.org) Game Blender is working to develop and share technology needed to use Blender for gaming.

While the development tools available for developing open source games are awesome, a primarygoal of this book is to get you up and using Linux as quickly as possible To that end, I want to tellyou first how to get hold of games that already run well in Linux and then how to get games work-ing in Linux that are intended for other platforms (particularly Windows and some classic gamingconsoles)

Basic Linux Gaming Information

There isn’t much you need to know to run basic X Window–based games that come with Linux.The following sections describe basic information about Linux gaming

Where to Get Information about Linux Gaming

Many Web sites provide information about the latest games available for Linux, as well as links todownload sites If you’re looking for information about Linux gaming, start with your distribution’s

NOTE

home page (www.redhat.com, for example) or the home page of your desktop environment(www.kde.orgor www.gnome.com, for example), or simply search for “Linux Games” or yourfavorite game title and “Linux” in any search engine Here are several sites to get you started:

 TransGaming Technologies (www.transgaming.com) — This company’s mission is to

bring games from other platforms to Linux It is the provider of Cedega, formerly known

as WineX, a powerful tool that enables you to play hundreds of PC games on your Linuxsystem

 The Linux Game Tome (http://happypenguin.org) — Features a database ofdescriptions and reviews of tons of games that run in Linux You can do keywordsearches for games listed at this site There are also links to sites where you can get thegames and to other gaming sites

 Linuxgames.com (http://linuxgames.com) — This site can give you some very goodinsight into the state of Linux gaming There are links to HOWTOs and Frequently AskedQuestions (FAQs), as well as forums for discussing Linux games There are also links toWeb sites that have information about specific games

 id Software (www.idsoftware.com) — Go to the id Software site for information onLinux demo versions for Quake and Return to Castle Wolfenstein

 Linuxgamepublishing.com (www.linuxgamepublishing.com) —Linuxgamepublishing.com aims to be a one-stop shopping portal for native Linux games,

as well as for ports of games from other platforms At the time of this writing, it offersabout a dozen games To purchase games from this site, you must create a user account

 Loki Entertainment Software (www.lokigames.com) — Loki provided ports of selling games to Linux but went out of business in 2001 Its products included Linux ver-sions of Civilization: Call to Power, Myth II: Soulblighter, SimCity 3000, Railroad Tycoon II,and Quake III Arena The Loki Demo Launcher is still available to see demo versions ofthese games, and some boxed sets are available for very little money The Loki site alsooffers a list of commercial resellers for its games, which may or may not still carry those games

best- Tux Games (www.tuxgames.com) — The Tux Games Web site is dedicated to the sale

of Linux games In addition to offering Linux gaming news and products, the site lists itstop-selling games and includes notices of games that are soon to be released

 Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org) — In the past few years, Wikipedia hasbecome a wonderful resource for information on both commercial and open source gamesavailable for Linux From the Wikipedia Linux games list (http://en.wikipedia org/wiki/Linux_games) you can find links to free Linux games, Commercial LinuxGames, and Professionally Developed Linux Games

 Linux Gamers’ FAQ (http://icculus.org/lgfaq) — Contains a wealth of tion about free and commercial Linux games It lists gaming companies that have portedtheir games to Linux, tells where to get Linux games, and answers queries related tocommon Linux gaming problems For a list of Linux games without additional informa-tion, see http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php

informa-While the sites just mentioned provide excellent information on Linux gaming, not all games havebeen packaged specifically for every version of Linux Even though you can always nudge a gameinto working on your particular Linux distribution, it’s probably easiest to start with games that areready to run The following list provides information about where to find out about games pack-aged for different Linux distributions:

 Fedora — Much of the recent increase in Fedora games has come from the Fedora Games

SIG (Special Interest Group) You can check out that SIG’s activities for information onother games of interest that have not made it into Fedora at http://fedoraproject org/wiki/SIGs/Games

 Debian — Debian games resources are listed at the DebianLinux.Net wiki Visit the

games section at http://debianlinux.net/games.html

 Ubuntu — The Games Community Ubuntu Documentation page offers some good

infor-mation about available games and gaming initiatives related to Ubuntu (http://help ubuntu.com/community/Games)

 Gentoo — Visit the Gentoo Games project at http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/ desktop/games/index.xmlto select games that are of interest to you that run in Gentoo

 Slackware — While GNOME and KDE games run fine in Slackware, not a lot of gaming

resources are particular to Slackware However, because Slackware contains a solid set

of libraries and development tools, many open source games will compile and run inSlackware if you are willing to get the source code for the game you want and build ityourself

Choosing a Video Card for Gaming

Because 3D games place extraordinary demands on your video hardware, choosing a good videocard and configuring it properly are key to ensuring a good gaming experience For advancedgaming, you need to go beyond what a basic 64-bit card can do for you

Binary-Only Video Card Drivers

Most serious Linux gamers have either an NVIDIA or ATI card, so that’s the short answer to startingout with serious Linux gaming Although open source drivers are available for most NVIDIA andATI cards, those drivers do not support 3D hardware acceleration While that’s fine for most desk-top applications, for gaming you want to get the binary-only drivers for those cards from the fol-lowing locations:

 NVIDIA — To get NVIDIA drivers that run in Linux, go to the Unix Drivers Portal Page

(www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html)

 ATI — To find Linux drivers for ATI video cards, visit the ATI support Knowledge Base

page, which describes Linux drivers, at http://support.ati.com/and click on theKnowledgebase tab