Using Linux makes a statement about you. It could mean just one thing, like "I hate how expensive Macs are", or "I'm tired of all these viruses", or maybe just "I'm an adventurous person, dammit!", but in all likelihood, it says many things, one of which is "I like free apps that work". For web developer's, there can never be enough free apps. Whether you're in the beginning stages of development, looking into different frameworks and servers, or you're nearing the end of your project and need free ways to monitor web traffic, block IP's, etc, one of the fifteen free Linux apps below will meet your needs.

1. Firefox Web Developer 1.1.8 Addon

Because Google Chrome is proving itself to be quite a tour de force in the Internet browser realm, many, many users still have their trust in Mozilla Firefox. Because of this, we're going to assume you have it also, and give honor of first placement in this article to the Web Developer addon. This addon puts a small toolbar on the browser with various things that will appeal to web developers, including the ability to view a websites CSS.

2. AWstats

The best kind of logs are the graphical ones, as an individual need only glance at them to ingest the data needed. AWstats compiles server, website, email, or other data into a nice graphic log for your analyzing pleasure.

3. Roya 4.0.8

Sure, you could hire a personal gnome to sit by a computer all day and answer peoples menial questions about whatever it is your website does/shares/offers. But why? Roya is a free IM robot that offers auto responses to questions people ask it.

4. XAMPP

Apache, as loved and popular as it is, isn't the easiest thing in the world to get up and running. Throw in a nice mix of Perl, or MySQL, or some other God-forsaken variable in the Apache server's backside, and things get really hairy, real quick.... That's where XAMPP comes in. Things become as simple as download, extract, and install.

5. IPtable

If you're not comfortable with the command line, then turn a blind eye to this particularly useful series of code and step away slowly. Still around? Good. IPtables is a user space application that can be used, amongst other things, to block malicious (or simply unwanted) users and programs from a network.

6. OpenSSH

If you do any work in the web developer's sphere, then you've likely already heard of OpenSSH. In case you haven't, this is a nifty open source tool that encrypts all the data sent between sources of communication, like FTP. Disappointing to eavesdroppers, essential for everyone else.

7. Untangle

This app with the awesome name Untangle is an open source program from a private company, and is aimed at small businesses. It's a network gateway with support for multiple gateway apps including anti-spyware/phishing/virus/spam, firewall, intrusion prevention, attack blocker, and more.

8. uPortal

Being built upon technologies such as Java and XML uPortal enables anything from campus applications, easy integration with authentication and security infrastructures, single sign-on secure access and end user customization. uPortal is one of the highest regarded open source enterprise portal frameworks and it has been adopted by a large eResearch community as well as by hundreds of institutions all over the world.

9. Zope

While I'm usually against letting programs speak for themselves, in this case, Zope best describes what Zope is, so I'm going to do a little pasting-love from its official website: "Zope is an open source application server for building content management systems, intranets, portals, and custom applications. The Zope community consists of hundreds of companies and thousands of developers all over the world, working on building the platform and Zope applications. Zope is written in Python, a highly-productive, object-oriented scripting language."

10. Squid Cache

This app with the interesting name Squid Cache is a web cache proxy HTTP/S, FTP, gopher, and others, and processes requests in single, I/O driven, non-blocking processes over Ipv4/v6. It offers a bunch of support, including SSL, can perform authentication, and other goodies.

11. OpenVPN

As its name indicates, OpenVPN is an open source virtual private network application that can be used to create either computer-to-computer connections, or to setup a server with multiple user access, all with encrypted tunnels in-between.

12. JBoss AS

The JBoss website boasts itself as being the number 1 Java application server, with hundreds of developers and a massive community. This program can be used to 'deploy enterprise Java applications', as well as web apps, and portals. Supports clustering, caching, and persistence.

13. A-Prompt

The best website is one which is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. To make sure your website will be accessible to everyone, A-Prompt will analyze any HTML pages you have and check them against standards set by the Web Accessibility Initiative . When it finds a 'barrier', as the website calls them, the program will make suggestions on how to fix said issue.

14. Xenu's Link Sleuth

It's like WebAnalyzer, only uglier and free, which, after crunching the numbers ($0+$0=$0), we've determined that Xenu's Link Sleuth is just as good and quite possibly better than the aforementioned program. This program will check all your links, whether they're pages, photos, FTP links, or more, and show you any that are buggered up.

15. Adsen Favicon

A toolbar of bookmarks just isn't the same if a website doesn't have a favicon (you know, the little icon next to the web address on the browser). This program makes it simple to convert an existing graphic into a tiny little graphic for said use.

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