Interesting Programs

Collected here are suggestions for some interesting programs that some of our members have found useful, so perhaps you will to.

For General Users

TENS

TENS (Trusted End Node Security) is primarily for additional security when using the Internet. It achieves this via:

• writing nothing to hard disk (does not have a driver for HDD/SSD)
• caching nothing
• running entirely in memory and eliminating all data when shut down

TENS was prepared by US Air Force and is available to the public, free of charge, from: https://spi.dod.mil

Instructions for putting it on bootable DVD or USB device are provided. An SD card, of Class 10 (30x) of faster, with USB card reader, is best. It loads rather slowly from DVD.

Basic operations such as browsing should not require instructions. A manual covering more complex functions is included as a PDF document.

The "deluxe" version includes LibreOffice and could be used to prepare documents, without leaving backup files on a PC - it will take a little longer to load to memory.

Either can print to a limited range of USB-attached or network printers and (theoretically) all printers that are controlled via a CUPS or Samba server (most NAS)

TENS should run on many older computers, because its Hardware Requirements are not demanding:

• single core CPU
  • (same DVD or USB will run on 32 bit or 64 bit CPU)
• 1 GB RAM
• PAE in CPU
  • TENS will quickly present an error message if PAE is not supported
  • only practical alternative is to try a different computer
• (optional) wired or WiFi network