Linuxy decrypting

Anyone know how to decrypt Linuxy passwords?
such as..
$1$zPaRqWj1$bNnX6Wnu6waR7fm0/dt7M/
and etc..  John The Ripper ain't helping a whole lot.

They can *not* be reversed. That's the whole idea.
QFT

BUT!
You can use Brute-Force - just a bit modified.
The Brute-Forcer picks the next combination, you make the hash of that combination, and compare it to the one in the file. If they match, then you have found the password.

But this takes even longer than normal Brute-Force...