2.6. Internet related software.

Section quote:

• "The World Wide Web has the potential to develop into a universal encyclopedia covering all areas of knowledge,(...). But corporations are mobilizing now to direct the future down a different track--one in which they control and restrict access to learning materials, so as to extract money from people who want to learn."
      -- Richard Stallman

Section contents:

• 2.6.1. Setting dialup connection.
• 2.6.2. The Web.
• 2.6.3. Mail User Agents.
• 2.6.4. Interactive Internet.
• 2.6.5. Peer to peer file sharing.

2.6.1. Setting dialup connection.

If you are using a modem to connect, then you have use PPP service to connect and disconnect. There are many GUI front-ends to it like 'kppp' and 'gnome-ppp', if you are using Mandrake you may do the configuration from Mandrake Control Center, and you may use 'pppconfig' in Debian. If you have a soft modem, PPP configuration should be done after you install your soft modem driver, see '4.1. Hardware configaration.' section.

You may do the configuration from 'kppp' and 'gnome-ppp', first create a new connection profile by selecting 'new' and give it a name, follow the instructions to enter your login name,password and phone number, then save it, to connect later click on the saved profile and 'connect', you can see the log while it's connecting, clicking 'log' button in 'kppp' or slecet log from view menu in 'gnome-ppp', if it success it will give you a timer and a button to disconnect, now your browser can conncet.

Tip

Each user accounts (saved profiles) in 'gnome-ppp' and 'kppp' are saved separately, for example if you save an accounts to connect other users(your kids) can't see it. If you use Mandrake Control Center to configure PPP it will be for root. To allow other users to connect you have to enter the settings for them too, this may look annoying but you will know why when you receive the bill.

Tip

If you are in LAN connecting using a server, you don't need to use PPP to create the link, if it's a gateway server then you don't need any configuration, but if it's a proxy server then you have to tell your web browser it's address and port number, each browser has a different way to tell it that, in Mozilla select preferences -> advanced -> proxy, , for the new GNOME select proxy from GNOME control center, and for KDE you may do that from KDE control center or from it's browser select settings -> proxy, but for command line tool we set it by http_proxy environment variable see '5.2. Working in networks.' section.

2.6.2. The Web.

Browsing the web is the most widely used service on the Internet, it's called World Wide Web (WWW for short), you access to it using a web browser like Mozilla, Explorer, Netscape Navigator and before all Mosaic (see www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/MetaIndex.html) one of the first graphical browsers and many (most) browsers have peice of it's code (yes it's an open source). Those programs displays (render) web pages that are saved as marked up text files like HTML format combining text, tables, colors, pictures,...etc those files are retrieved using standard protocols like HTTP and locations are represented in a uniform standard syntax accross all platforms called Uniform Resource Location (URL for short), if you don't know the URL of the web page you could look in web directories (a classified lists of pages based on the subject of it's contents) or may be it's better to use a search engine (Web Crawler robots) they are smart AI programs scanning the web and updating their database when they hit a page they collect all links to other pages found on it, a link to another page is considered as a vote, when they search they drop common words (eg. "for") and give higher weight to key words from different contexts, the largest one is www.google.com which is powered by Linux on many large powerful computer clusters, Google could translate many non-english languages (Arabic is not one of those) into english, it could scan non HTML files like PDF and view them as HTML, Google mean a number having many digits, it could find too many pages (they are sorted). The following list is for most famous search engines (in random order):

www.google.com		www.yahoo.com		www.webcrawler.com
www.altavista.com	www.excite.com		www.lycos.com
www.metacrawler.com	www.search.com		www.go.com

Mozilla (www.mozilla.org) is considered to be the father of other Linux browsers, it's THE standard browser, Mozilla plugins will work in all other browsers in Linux. Netscape launched this free and open project (Netscape browser and Mozilla are compitable but independent), Mozilla has a heavy user interface specially when you use Modern theme, many people like Classical theme because it's faster. Mozilla browser is a complete suite of applications, Mozilla messenger a mail user agent, and Mozilla Composer web page editor (like MS Front Page), you may get more themes for it from 'http://themes.mozdev.org',

Mozilla classical theme.

The next generation Mozilla web browser is Mozilla FireFox (it was called FireBird and Phoenix), it is a revolution in browsing, it's the fastest full featured web browser, for more themes visit 'http://firefox.mozdev.org'

File managers for KDE and GNOME like Konqueror and Nautilus can browse the web, they use Mozilla libraries with their interface.

Galeon (http://galeon.sourceforge.net), and Epiphany (www.gnome.org/projects/epiphany/) are GNOME browsers, new distributiton only include 'epiphany', the only difference between them as seen in their documents are the name!! Debian description suggest that Epiphany is easier. Epiphany is may favorite, it has very light interface, the usual GNOME looking interface, visite 'http://epiphany.mozdev.org' for themes, also GNOME themes apply to it, to set it's proxy use GNOME control center 'Main Menu->Preferences->Proxy'.

Themes for all Mozilla compitable browsers visit 'http://themes.mozdev.org', to get flash plugin download it from http://macromedia.mplug.org your distribution package repositories, you should get a package for your specific distribution version (or the nearest older version), for example flash-plugin-6.0.79-1.i386.rpm for RedHat Linux see '3.4. Installing pre-compiledsoftware packages.' section, you may also download generic tarball 'install_flash_player_6_linux.tar.gz"' that work every where, Untar it then follow the instruction.

Tip

If java web applets does not work, get 'j2re' from 'http://java.sun.com/linux'

Tip

To specify font in Mozilla and Epiphany selcet 'Edit->Preferences-> Appearance' then you select the language first then select fonts.

Other web browsers: Opera famous QT browser. dillo very fast simple (feature less) browser, it could be your best long help document reader. encompass lynx/links/elinks/w3m command line consol browsers, 'links' is more advanced than 'lynx' because it could display tables and it has nice menu interface (press ESC) but 'links' does not support Arabic encodings even if you have a terminal that support it.

Links web browser displaying this book in English

Tip

You may use 'lynx' to convert HTML files to text files as the following
'lynx -crawl -dump from.html > output.txt'.

Web browsers could be used to dounload files, for example you may right click a link then select 'save link target as', and many browsers like FireFox, Epiphany and maybe Konqueror if you enabled KGet, offer you a nice download manager, that allow you for example to pause downloading then continue the nextday, but there are more specialized application for downloading that let you for example download all images at NASA site, some of those are:

• The super powerful 'wget' console tool, see '5.2. Working in networks.' section.
• 'pavuk' as 'wget' with more features see 'http://pavuk.sf.net'
• Prozilla and ProzGUI: multi connection download accelerators with (your could specify any number of connections) the first provide text menu driven interface while the other provide a graphical interface, it could speed up downloads to 200% or even 300%!! it support resume and FTPsearch to find faster mirrors.
• Gnome Transfer Manager (GTM)
• 'kmago'
• 'caitoo'
• QTget/Xget/DAP
• SiteCopy

2.6.3. Mail User Agents.

Another wide service of the Internet, but it's very insecure, you could send or receive texts or marked up text (eg. HTML files) and attach other file, some companies provide this service for free through their web site like www.yahoo.com, www.excite.com, www.eudoramail.com, www.netaddress.com, www.hotmail.com and if you are lucky www.gmail.com the Google way of emails.

Most non-free email servers support POP3 (or IMAP) and a few of the free ones, this technology let you download and read your remote mail box, without loading the web page interface online, instead using a local program called Mail User Agent (MUA), you may read emails after you download it offline, MUA also could send emails, you may write them offline and take your time, and send them later. MUA could have many more features like printing emails,GPG encryption , viewing certifications, spell checking and even news reading, there are many of them like the insecure MS OutLook, The most famous overloaded Linux MUA is Ximian Evlution (http://ximian.com/products/evolution) which is a GNOME application, another full featured GNOME MUA is 'balsa'. A lighter yet powerful KDE MUA is kmail, Mozilla suite has Mozilla Messenger MUA, and the next generation Mozilla ThunderBird. There are some console MUA like 'mutt','gnus' and the non-free 'pine'.

Tip

MUA applications (POP3 clients) could be used to access to your remote mailbox eventhough your account is on a server that does not support POP3 usually those who offer free mail service (called HTTPmail) like msn, hotmail and lycos just by installing a package called 'hotway' which provide a POP3 server on your system (provided that you do not install other POP3 server), you do that the same way as other mail servers discussed in "5.3 Setting up servers." section.

Tip

FetchYahoo (http://fetchyahoo.twizzler.org) is a perl script that does the same for free Yahoo! mail users, it could download their mail from a Yahoo! mailbox to your local mail box.

2.6.4. Interactive Internet.

Web (HTTP protocol) is NOT designed to be interactive, you browse pages and read them, but with CGI web pages some interaction could be made, on the other hand there are many Internet secvices that is designed to be interactive like chat with instant messengers,video conferences, USENET groups and forums and phone calling.

Gnome-Meeting is a video conferences tool, if you have a web camera you may use to meet your friend at your LAN by using his address as a URL starting with 'h323://' then the address and an optional port, or via the Internet similarily using a site like 'ils.seconix.com'.

'skype' is a service for Internet and phone calling, you may use your computer to call a another 'skype' user for free or call any phone number using prepayed cards, It's very high quality secure connection.

Chatting is very useless but wide service, there are many messengers for each specific protocol like kmess and amsn for MSN protocol, and there are multiple protocol messengers. Here a list of other messengers:

• 'gaim' a multiple protocol messenger that support ICQ, MSN, AIM(from AOL), Yahoo and Miranda, for GNOME desktop.
• 'kopete' a multiple protocol messenger that support ICQ,MSN,IRC,Japper and much more, for KDE desktop.
• 'kit' an AIM messenger for KDE desktop.
• 'KSirc' an IRC messenger for KDE desktop.
• 'Xchat' another IRC messenger.
• 'gabber' a messenger for Jabber protocol, but it could be used for other protocols using plugins.

USENET is called news groups, it's not intended to tell you news, it is more like an interactive forums,there are manu readers for it like 'KNode' for KDE and 'pan' for GNOME desktop, you can also reply tto those messages.

2.6.5. Peer to peer file sharing.

A new method for sharing files on the the Internet (or a LAN) that is not based overloading a central server (as in HTTP or FTP), but it distribute the network load over each node, each node in those networks offers what it has for others, this mean that each client is, in the same time, a server that listen for requests from other clients, and the duty of the centeral node of the network (called hup) is to organize logging in and out, searching for file and shape the bandwidth.

Tip

Sometimes, the program used to access and download those networks is called client even though it's a client and a server in the same time, and the central node (the hup) is called server although it does not have the requested files.

Warning

There is no relation between those protocols and PPP used to dial connection.

The benefit from distributing the load a way from the server, is that we protect it from being drown because of massive downloading and uploading coming from everybody trying put their shared file on the central node (as in HTTP free hosting and anonymous FTP upload) and limiting uploading is not a solution because it will limit the service (the number of offered files).

Warning

Getting (unsigned) files from such methods are very dangerous, they could have viruses and many other risks, others could be illegal copying (regrding comercial software).