This is a review of current and easily obtainable email clients and web browsers. It is mostly a look at Debian Stable, Debian Testing, Dillo, Fedora and Mepis used for the most common computing activities, web browsing and email. Outside of Fedora, packages that did not work with default settings are not reviewed here. Jackson, my brother, does almost everything through GUIs and made a few fine screen shots of Fedora for me. Those packages may take some tweaking and research, the rest are default, automagic setups that require very little work on the user's part.

This review was inspired by my own review or Mepis, a brief jaunt into Microsoft land, a very good review of mail clients by Kristian Eide and my brother's use of Fedora. A job at a company that had a legacy DOS based database forced me back into the Windows world for four months. I used Windows 2000, Outlook Express, Internet Explorer 5.x, and quickly got Mozilla and Mozilla Mail. Migrating from Outlook to Mozilla mail was a snap. At the same time, SIG work with Mepis exposed me to newer and nicer software. Eide's excellent review and my little brother's Fedora play encouraged me to use KDE.

The world of free software has come a long way since I installed Red Hat 5.1 on a 150MHz Media GX. There was stability and utility, but not as much polish as the average user might want. The Microsoft world had a hardware, presentation and speed advantage. I was just happy to see my Netscape again. Today there is an embarrassment of riches in the free software world and the situation is almost totally reversed. Free software is easy, polished and powerful. I'm still happy with the Woody software I've been using for two years, but newer distributions offer much more and are worth the effort to set up unless you are constrained by hardware considerations.

Some newer software will run on my old 150MHz machine, but satisfactory performance starts at about 250MHz, 128MB RAM and 5GB of hard drive. Debian Stable with Dillo, Balsa and KDE runs just fine on my 75MHz P1. The owner of better hardware can have software that looks better, runs rings around most commercial software and has all the integration features promised since 1995.