Picasa is free photo software from Google. This version is Linux compatible. Picasa won't delete your pictures or put them online without your permission. This is a preview of the upcoming release of Picasa 3 for Ubuntu.

Google's Picasa is all about photos -- it helps you instantly find, edit, and share all the pictures on your computer. Although it isn't released as open source it is free to download and use from Google's Web site. The new version 3, which is currently in beta, is available for Windows as well as Linux.

So you really like the new Face Movie feature in Picasa 3.8 and want it in Linux too? Well, it doesn't work for now, but you can use PhotoFilmStrip.

Services like Flickr and Picasa seems like an obvious way to share your photos with the world. But if you are the do-it-yourself type and prefer to share your photos from the convenience of your own server, give Pixelpost a try.

I have been using Thunderbird for quite a while now. It’s a great e-mail client and the fact that you can use it on multiple platforms made it a winner for me. I carry a USB-drive around with Portable Thunderbird on it. A simple edit of the profiles.ini file is enough to point other Thunderbird installs (for instance on my laptop) to the folders on the USB drive.

Google's Picasa software is a powerful tool for managing your photo collection. It provides a simple interface for organizing your pictures, as well as some easy-to-use, yet powerful image manipulation tools. However, until recently the Windows version of Picasa has had some features that put it above the Linux version; some of these features, like Picasa Web Album integration, are at the core of the program, without which Picasa isn't very useful. With its newest release, the Linux version is being brought up to par with its Windows counterpart.

Among desktop Mail clients, Mozilla Thunderbird is still a popular choice. Thunderbird unites many advantages, including the flexibility we all know from Firefox. One of the greatest joys for me is customizing Thunderbird’s look and feel.

Cyber Cynic: "But, then Mozilla put Thunderbird on the back burner to focus its attention on Firefox, and, frankly, Thunderbird slowly aged into a second-rate e-mail client. Now, at long last, a new, and vastly improved version of Thunderbird has just been released, and, let me tell you, it's back to being great."

In the age of digital photography, almost everyone performs at least a few edits on their photos. For simple thing, programs like F-Spot or Google's Picasa may be enough, but you may also need something more. That's where Gimp does an excellent job, offering more tools for editing your photos.