If you’re planning to study your family history, you’d better be ready to manage large amounts of data. Why not use your Linux box for the hard work?

To manage the mountains of paper that cross our desks every day, we need to file, retrieve, copy, stamp, investigate, and classify documents. A special tool can help users keep on top of their electronic paperwork: pdftk – the PDF toolkit.

The legacy cal and date tools help users keep track of the time and date. You can even change the system time with a single shell command.

Desktop icons are not the only way to launch programs; in fact, a kicker that is not hidden by a muddle of windows is often preferable. Tablaunch is a flexible and attractive program launcher for the Linux desktop.

Composing text messages on a mobile phone isn’t easy. A handy application called KmobileTools helps you manage your SMS messages and calls.

Linux is a multiuser system: many users can work at the same machine at the same time on separate accounts. In this month’s column, we take a close look at how to create and manage Linux user accounts from the command line.

JWM is a window manager for Linux users who demand an efficient GUI and are not afraid to fire up an editor to get it. If this sounds like the kind of tool you are looking for, read on to discover more about JWM.

When it comes to drawing with the computer, professionals often opt for vector graphics. Inkscape brings the power of vector graphics to Linux users. Our workshop demonstrates how to use the program.