As a continuation of my Some Linux Programs Have Windows Versions series, I would like to introduce everyone to a program that I have recently become familiar with and have found to be at least somewhat useful. This program of which I speak is Dia. Dia is a GTK+ based diagram creation program that helps the user create flowcharts and diagrams. It is similar to a Microsoft product that I have never used called Visio.

I have recently used this program to create a diagram of a network consisting of a router, switch, and several computers. I also used this program to create a diagram of an area ham radio repeater system consisting of several 2 meter repeaters that are interconnected with 440 links and included the frequency information for each part of the system.

From what I have seen, this program works very well and can be quite useful in a variety of situations where you may need to create a diagram.

One thing I would suggest though is that if you want to have a diagram suitable for distributing, to save/export the diagram from Dia as a jpeg and then use Open Office and import the jpeg you just created. From there you can resize the image to the size you want and export the document from Open Office as a pdf.