Generate straight lines between river confluences @Aga did not mention if the River/Stream is dual line. The title says "River", which is usually dual line. Maybe "Collapse dual lines" isn't needed? A series of Unsplit lines and Smooth lines will remove most of the vertices, helping create straight lines between the junctions.
Find pseudo nodes in free GIS software I just installed the QGIS sextante plugin. I do not see the full functions either, many are missing. It should be easy to test the steps in gvSIG on a shapefile.