Overview of Internet Applications and Commands

When it comes to features and ease-of-use issues, applications that come with Fedora for accessing the Internet can rival those of any operating system. For every major type of Internet client application, there are at least three or four graphical and command-line tools to choose from.

While Linux has offered high-quality servers for Web, mail, FTP and other Internet services for years , current versions of these desktop Internet applications have become both solid and rich in content. If Web browsing and e-mail are your primary needs in a desktop system, Fedora and RHEL are ready today to let you leave your Windows desktop systems behind.

Figure 9-1 illustrates some of the most valuable Linux applications for using the Internet.

Figure 9-1: Fedora offers choices of Web browsers, e-mail clients , and other Internet client applications.

If you are using Fedora or RHEL as a desktop system, the browsers and e-mail clients make requests to servers available on your LAN or the Internet. Software for configuring a computer as a Web, mail, FTP, or other server type is also included with Fedora and RHEL systems. Someone starting out with Linux, however, can use applications for using the Internet as they would from any Windows or other desktop system.

The following Internet applications available in Fedora are covered in this chapter:

• Web browsers - Most Web browsers available for Linux today follow from the legacy of Netscape Navigator. The open source Mozilla project, which was originally spawned from Netscape source code, is responsible for the recent award-winning Firefox Web browser. Another browser that comes with Fedora is the Konqueror browser/file manager. (The Mozilla suite is no longer packaged with Fedora Core.)

  Relatively new ways for gathering content from the Web include RSS news feed readers, such as the liferea RSS/RDF feed reader (available from Fedora Extras). There are also several browsers, such as lynx and w3c, that can run from the command line (with no graphical interface required).

• E-mail clients - The Evolution e-mail client has evolved into a full-fledged groupware suite, combining an e-mail reader with features for managing contacts, calendars, and tasks , as well as connecting to Microsoft Exchange servers. Thunderbird is an up-and-coming e-mail client from the Mozilla project (Mozilla mail is also available from the same organization). For those who prefer old-school e-mail readers, mutt, pine, and mail commands let you read mail from the command line, often with limited abilities to handle attachments, HTML or other modern e-mail features.

• FTP clients - If you use the FTP protocol to download files from FTP servers, or to upload Web pages to your server, graphical tools for doing those tasks include the gFTP and kGet applications. There are also many shell commands available for accessing FTP servers to look for files, download files, or upload files. Those commands include ftp, ncftp , and tftp .

• BitTorrent clients/servers - BitTorrent is the popular open source software project for sharing files among many computers at the same time. With BitTorrent, as you download a file you can simultaneously safely upload that same file to others. BitTorrent is particularly useful for publishing large software distributions (such as Fedora Core) the minute they becomes available without overstressing the original servers releasing the software.

• Instant messaging and chats - Typing live messages to friends , family, and associates has become a popular activity in recent years. Gaim is an instant messaging client that lets you connect to AIM, IRC, MSN, Google, and ICQ servers. X-Chat is a popular Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client (a popular protocol among Linux enthusiasts for online chats). Kopete is an instant messaging client that integrates with a KDE desktop.

• Remote commands (login, file copy, and so on) - As you spend more time working with Linux, you will find that it is often quicker and more convenient to run commands than it is to run graphical applications. Some very powerful command-line tools exist in Linux for doing such things as remote login and remote execution ( ssh ) and remote file copy ( wget, scp , and rsync ).

Note 

Besides the applications mentioned here, there are many more Internet-enabled applications described in other parts of the book. For example, music players and video players described in Chapter 8 can grab audio and video files or streaming media from the Internet. Likewise, software installation tools such as yum are made to get software from software repositories on the Internet.

Because the Internet client applications featured in Fedora and RHEL are designed to be intuitive, if you are used to using the Internet from Windows or Macintosh the transition to Linux shouldn't be that difficult. While I describe many of the basic features that come in these Internet applications, there are a few tricks you should learn to get the most out of them:

• Tuning your browser - While Firefox has made great strides in supporting different kinds of Web content, getting some multimedia, image, and document formats to play in Firefox can require some extra steps. I describe some plug-ins and other software that you will want to add to Firefox (or another Web browser) to get it to play many popular types of content that it can't handle by default.

• Managing e-mail - With e-mail volume increasing every day, tools for managing your e-mail are becoming more important. In the e-mail section, I explain how to use filter rules to sort your e-mail and how to identify junk mail. I also discuss ways to manage and use mailing lists effectively.

• Useful command options - Besides identifying some useful commands for remote login, file copying, and command execution, I identify options that are particularly helpful to use with them.

To get started with Internet applications in Linux, you need to set up a connection to the Internet from your Linux system (as described in Chapter 16). Most graphical Internet applications in Fedora and RHEL are available from menus on the GNOME or KDE desktops. Click Applications Internet to see a list of Internet applications you can choose from. Icons to launch the Firefox browser and Evolution e-mail client are directly on the panel on the top of the display.