In the world of computers, an avatar is a graphical representation of a user. Avatars come in different sizes, colors, dimensions and shapes. I like avatars so much that I use one as my profile image in my Facebook page. There are many tools to create a personalized avatar, but in the world of Linux the one that I like best is MeMaker.

MeMaker is a Free Software that allows users to create customized avatars and use them in social networking sites, forums, chat rooms and other virtual places. And yes, of course, you can use the avatars offline. While the application itself is tiny (only 4628 kB), it can do the work of giants. MeMaker provides seven styles to choose from: freestyle, artistic, plastidudes, glyphface, plazmoid, cocohead and animal-crackers. The avatar in the screenshot above is of the artistic type.

You can also choose the pigment and style of your hair as well as the color and shape of your face, eyes, mouth, ears, nose and eyebrows. You can even add eyeglasses, hats, beards and other accessories to your avatars.

The current stable version of MeMaker is 1.5. The easiest way to install it in Ubuntu 9.10 is to launch Ubuntu Software Center and find the free application under the “Graphics” category. If you are using another Linux distro, you can download the package here.

There is currently no Windows version of MeMaker.