Tech Source

Free and Open Source 2D Animation Software for Linux

2011-10-09T01:12:00.001-07:00

After featuring some of the best Free and Open Source 3D animation software, it's time to take a look at some 2D computer graphics program for Linux users who are into creating two-dimensional models. These free 2D animation software is as capable as those that are commercially available so do take time to try them first before emptying your wallet.

Here are a few Free and Open Source 2D animation software for Linux that you may like:

Synfig
Synfig is a 2D vector graphics and timeline-based computer animation program that was originally the custom animation platform for the now discontinued Voria Studios. The main goal of the project is to create a program that is capable of producing "feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources." The program offers an alternative to manual tweening so that the animator doesn't have to draw each and every frame. Synfig is capable of simulating soft-shading using curved gradients within an area so that the animator doesn't have to draw shading into every single frame.

Learn more about Synfig HERE

KToon
KToon is a 2D Animation Toolkit designed by Toonka Films animators for aspiring animators. It is designed to function in a similar way to popular proprietary animation packages, like Macromedia Flash. It currently lacks a scripting language like Macromedia's ActionScript, but it can export movies as AVI files and Flash animations. KToon uses OpenGL and Qt toolkit as programming resources.

Learn more about KToon HERE

Pencil
Pencil is a drawing and 2D animation software that is written in C++ and is based on QT. It uses a unique bitmap/vector drawing interface to produce simple 2D graphics as well as animation. Pencil is also available for Windows, Mac, and BSD.

Learn more about Pencil HERE

If you know of other free and open source 2D animation software that I failed to include here, please share them with us via comment.

10 Essential UNIX/Linux Command Cheat Sheets

2011-10-09T01:09:00.001-07:00

Linux has become so idiot proof nowadays that there is less and less need to use the command line. However, the commands and shell scripts have remained powerful for advanced users to utilize to help them do complicated tasks quickly and efficiently.

To those of you who are aspiring to become a UNIX/Linux guru, you have to know loads of commands and learn how to effectively use them. But there is really no need to memorize everything since there are plenty of cheat sheets available on the web and on books. To spare you from the hassles of searching, I have here a collection of 10 essential UNIX/Linux cheat sheets that can greatly help you on your quest for mastery:

UNIX Tutorial for Beginners
This is a quick and easy UNIX/Linux tutorial page that is aimed at beginners. It gives a subtle introduction to some of the most important UNIX/Linux commands.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Learning the Shell
Aside from showing you how to apply the most basic UNIX/Linux commands, “Learning the Shell’ will teach you the utmost importance of using the command line.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Learn UNIX in 10 Minutes
From the page: This is something that I had given out to students (CAD user training) in years past. The purpose was to have on one page the basics commands for getting started using the UNIX shell (so that they didn't call me asking what to do the first time someone gave them a tape).

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

FOSSwire Unix/Linux Command Cheat Sheet
A one page UNIX/Linux command reference that you can download in PDF format. You can easily print it, and then paste it on your wall.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

UNIX Toolbox
From the page: This document is a collection of Unix/Linux/BSD commands and tasks which are useful for IT work or for advanced users. This is a practical guide with concise explanations; however the reader is supposed to know what s/he is doing.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Practical Linux Command Line Reference
This is another handy one-page cheat sheet for common command line operations. All of the commands have been tested on Fedora and Ubuntu.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

How to Look Like a UNIX Guru
From the page: This lecture takes you through the basic commands and then shows you how to combine them in simple patterns or idioms to provide sophisticated functionality like histogramming. This lecture assumes you know what a shell is and that you have some basic familiarity with UNIX.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

A Directory of Linux Commands (in alphabetical order)
From the O'reilly book “Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition”, it features an alphabetical list of 687 commands and a short description on each one of them.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Linux Security Quick Reference Guide
This quick reference guide (in PDF) will serve as your aid on improving the security of your Linux system. It provides some pointers to more in-depth security information that could help you become a good UNIX/Linux system administrator.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Bash Programming Cheat Sheet
From the page: A quick cheat sheet for programmers who want to do shell scripting. This is not intended to teach programming, etc. but it is intended for someone who knows one programming language to begin learning about bash scripting.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Through comments, feel free to share some links to other essential UNIX/Linux cheat sheets that I failed to include here.

How Much Memory/RAM Do You Really Need?

2011-10-09T01:02:00.001-07:00

We will kick-off the year with some computer hardware tips and info. I have already given you some guidelines on installing, upgrading or increasing RAM. This time, I will tackle another key information regarding memory.

Today, RAM has become cheaper and cheaper while software programs have turned into resource hungry beasts. That left some of us thinking and asking, ‘how much memory do we really need?’

Different computer users have diverse RAM requirements. People who are more into office applications and internet browsing will not need a huge amount of memory. Recommended RAM for them would be 512MB, although 256MB will do just fine. For gaming, photo editing, and multimedia applications, 1GB of RAM is ideal. Heavy graphic design apps like 3D CAD and video editing software will definitely need a much greater RAM, a minimum of 2GB to be exact.

Operating system should also be considered when estimating memory needs. An insane OS like Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard will demand bigger RAM even if you will only use it for lighter tasks. Their minimum requirement is 1GB, while the most widely used Windows XP will only need around 256MB to function well. Linux is probably the most memory efficient operating system that I have ever used. Using lightweight distros, 128MB is typically good enough when doing basic chores and even when multitasking.

It is common sense that the more RAM/memory you have the better your computer will perform. The maximum recommended RAM for 32-bit computer is 4GB. 64-bit machine needs 4GB or more in order for it to be fully utilized. That wraps-up today’s hardware tech guide; I hope you have learned something.

20 Coolest Linux Distro-themed Wallpapers

2011-10-09T00:59:00.001-07:00

Since my list of 25 Coolest Linux Wallpapers unexpectedly became a huge hit, I’m going to share to you some more to keep the Linux pride alive. This time, I have collected some of the coolest, high quality distro-themed wallpapers. I know that you are excited already, so let’s cut to the chase and just present to you the "20 Coolest Linux Distro-themed Wallpapers" in no particular order.

1. Fedora

2. Debian

3. Kubuntu

4. CentOS

5. FreeBSD

6. Gentoo

7. Mint

8. Mandriva

9. Mepis

10. PCLinuxOS

11. OpenBSD

12. Ubuntu

13. RedHat

14. Slax

15. Sabayon

16. Suse

17. Slackware

18. Zenwalk

19. Xubuntu

20. Ubuntu, Suse, Debian, Fedora

25 Coolest and Funniest Tux Wallpapers

2011-10-09T00:58:00.001-07:00

People just can't get enough of Tux, the world-renowned penguin mascot of Linux. I'm saying this because my collection of "30 Coolest and Funniest Tux Icons" has already received a mind-blowing number of hits in just a short period of time. Because of that, I decided to give Tux lovers another treat by handing out my list of twenty-five coolest, funniest, and maybe cutest Tux wallpapers. So without any more delay, here they are:

Note: click on the images to see full size

1. Tux Pirate

2. Black Tux

3. Stone Age Tux

4. Tiny Tux

5. Star Wars Tux

6. Rocket Tux

7. Prisoner Tux

8. Homer Tux

9. Evil Tux

10. Grammatically Incorrect Tux Pirate

11. iPhone Tux

12. Tux Art

13. Gambler Tux

14. Techie Tux

15. Apple-eating Tux

16. Tux of Zorro

17. Sky Tux-apple

18. Tux Guevara

19. South Park Tux

20. Tux Graffiti

21. Glowing Tux

22. Silver Tux

23. Killer Tux

24. Tux World

25. Giant Tux

8 of the Best Online Backup Services for Linux

2011-10-09T00:54:00.001-07:00

A remote or online backup service has become quite an important tool for those of us who travel a lot and require some of our files on the cloud for easy access anytime and any place with Internet connection. It can also be useful for users who need to sync some of their data across two or more computer machines most of the time.

An online backup system is usually built around client software that runs on a schedule, but some can work continuously, backing up files as they are changed. It collects, compresses, encrypts, and transfers the files to the remote backup service provider's servers.

I have here a list of some of the best online or remote backup services for Linux. Most of these tools/services can backup and synchronize files across different operating system platforms, which should be really handy if you are using more than one OS.

Dropbox
At the moment, Dropbox is my favorite online backup service for its simplicity and ease of use. It is cross-platform and has desktop clients for Linux, Mac, and Windows, but it can also be used through its web-based client. Dropbox also has native applications for popular handheld devices such as Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, and a few others. With Dropbox, you can just drop or copy any file into a designated folder that is then synced to the cloud and to any other of the user's computers and devices with the Dropbox app. You may also upload files manually through a web browser. Dropbox provides 2 GB of free online storage but a paid option is available for bigger storage size and for other premium services.

ZumoDrive
ZumoDrive is a file synchronization and storage service that enables users to store and sync files online and between computers using their HybridCloud storage solution. Like Dropbox, it has cross-platform clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, and Android, and also has a web browser interface. Files in the ZumoDrive virtual disk can be shared with other ZumoDrive users. The ZumoDrive service is unique when compared to other file sync and storage services in the sense that it appears local to the filesystem and can be streamed from the cloud on demand. Users can have 2 GB of free storage space and may upgrade to paid plans ranging from 10 GB to 500 GB for a monthly subscription fee.

ADrive
ADrive is an online backup, file sharing, and data storage service that provides an amazing 50 GB of free storage (largest amount of free storage and backup on the Internet) for its Basic Account holders. Paid subscribers can have additional storage and services like multiple connections, FTP with timestamp support, WebDAV, and file history recovery. ADrive has an easy-to-use browser-based file manage that is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Ubuntu One
Ubuntu One is Ubuntu's very own storage application and service with a client application available only for Ubuntu 9.04 and newer. The client side is written in Python and uses Twisted for its low-level networking and Protocol Buffers for protocol description. What makes Ubuntu One different from other similar service providers are additional features like its integration with other applications such as Evolution and Tomboy. Ubuntu One offers 2 GB of free storage but users may upgrade to 50 GB for $10 per month.

SpiderOak
SpiderOak is a cross-platform online backup and sharing tool that provides users with off-site server for data management. It differentiates itself from competition in administration of encryption and in automatic de-duplication of data. While some services can only backup a specified folder like in DropBox, SpiderOak allows you to backup any given folder from your computer. It also features a Fault-Tolerant Design, hence no file is ever removed from a user account before he manually does it through the client. SpiderOak offers a free 2 GB account, as well as a paid subscription for premium services.

Wuala
Wuala is a social distributed file-system-like online storage service that allows users to have as much online storage as they give to other Wuala users. Its interface is comparable to a file manager but afar from the common file operations, it allows the user to easily share files with friends, in groups or with the rest of the world. Every user starts with 1GB of online storage but can get more space either by trading local disk space, by buying additional storage, by referring it to their friends or by using the promotion codes.

Jungle Disk
Jungle Disk is an online backup service that was highlighted by Amazon as one of the earliest S3 clients. It has the capability to periodically back up selected files or folders, and provides a local webdav server and a local web interface that synchronize to the user's S3 account, alternatively encrypting backed up data on the client side. The basic Jungle Disk software is sold as a monthly subscription model. It provides a hosted web interface and more advanced backup functionality for a monthly fee.

CrashPlan
CrashPlan is a a cross-platform backup software that allows users to back up their data to an offsite data center, desktop computers belonging to friends and family, as well as to shared folders. For personal use, a free version is available that offers basic functionality. For enterprise, CrashPlan Pro is available with a bunch of powerful features. Data are encrypted using 128-bit encryption for the personal CrashPlan, while 448-bit Blowfish encryption is used for CrashPlan Pro.

There are probably other good online backup services for Linux, so it's up to you our dear readers to share them with us via comment.

You may also check out our list of backup software for Linux, and our other collection of Linux backup software.

How to Improve/Enhance HTML Rendering in Firefox

2011-10-09T00:48:00.001-07:00

I have to admit this. I have become a font fetish. I am obsessed on making my desktop's font perfect. I also make sure that my web browser rendered fonts and images on webpages correctly. I don't really care about these things before, but I don't know what happened to me now.

Anyway, I already wrote about improving the font in Xubuntu's desktop. This time, let me show you how to enhance HTML rendering in Firefox on Xubuntu. The hack is actually very simple and easy to do. No need to install additional packages, edit configuration file, or resort to using the command line. Before I'll go on with the steps, you might want to look at how the image and font were rendered before the tweak.

Image (before):
Notice the "top right" (white) portion of the search box. If you look closely, you can see that it is a little bit uneven. You may say that it is not really that noticeable, but in other websites, the image rendering could be worse.

Font (before):
This is an example of the default font.

Now, try this tweak and notice the difference:

1. Open Firefox.
2. From the top Menu, click 'Edit', and then 'Preferences'.
3. Inside 'Firefox Preferences', change the Default font to: Verdana, and the Size to: 14.
4. Click the Advanced button.
5. Inside ‘Fonts’, uncheck "Allow pages to choose their own fonts..."
6. Click on OK, and then close ‘Firefox Preferences’. You are done.

The after effect:

Image (after):
The "top right" portion is now even.

Font (after):

The Verdana font (below) is definitely a lot clearer to read compared to the default font shown above.

This simple trick may not work for all, but there’s really no harm in trying.

Zen-walking with Zenwalk 4.8

2011-10-09T00:47:00.001-07:00

Zen-walking with Zenwalk 4.8: Zenwalk, formerly known as Minislack, is a Linux Distribution based on the solid foundation of Slackware. The dolphin (known as fast and intelligent) that is used as its logo, epitomizes its aim to create a lightweight Linux operating system through the integration of the most up-to-date software packages available for a stable release, optimization for specific processor architecture to increase execution speed, and introduces a comprehensive package management system with dependency resolution.

I have been Zen-walking before on my backup computer, until I decided to replace it with Absolute Linux. I’m still happily testing Absolute right now, but I’m already eager to try out the latest Zenwalk release version which is 4.8. So I downloaded the 420MB ‘full version’, and then tested it on VMWare as I don’t want to touch the Absolute partition for the moment. My other reasons for testing an OS using virtualization software can be found in one of my articles HERE.

Test Machine Specs:
Board: Intel Corporation D102GGC2
Processor: 3.40 GHz Intel Pentium D
Hard Drive: Samsung 80GB ATA with 8GB allocated to VM disk
Memory: 2GB DDR2 RAM with 512MB allocated to VM memory
Display: ATI RADEON X1050[Display adapter]

Intro:
Zenwalk Linux was founded in France by Jean-Philippe Guillemin. It was first released on May 21, 2004 as Minislack 0.1. Zenwalk can now be considered as the most popular 'complete' lightweight desktop because of its high ranking in Distrowatch; as of the time being, it is listed at number 13.

Installation:
The ISO image for Zenwalk 4.8 ‘full version’ can be directly downloaded from here. I loaded the ISO as guest OS on the Workstation. Then, when the familiar Zenwalk prompt for adding boot options parameter appeared, I typed ‘scsi’ as the virtual disk is SCSI by default. Next, I was taken to the text-based Zenwalk setup screen. I then opted for ‘Autoinstall’ option, and from there it was smooth sailing. All of the packages were completely installed in less than 15 minutes and the Virtual hardware were properly detected.

Look and Feel:
One of the things I like most about Zenwalk is the fast boot/startup and shutdown speed. My screen resolution was set to 1024x768. Its default XFce desktop is so responsive and very simple-looking, not too sleek but not too rough. I find the desktop very user-friendly because the icons and panels are well-arranged for quick and easy access to essential applications. Plus, some good-looking themes and Zen wallpapers are available if you want to customize the look.

Package Management:
The package management tool used by Zenwalk is called ‘netpkg’. A little overview, netpkg is developed in-house, and it provides the main functionalities of the apt-get variety of package managers. It uses Slackware's .tgz package format, but adds dependency resolution capabilities. A GUI can be used to easily maintain packages in Zenwalk and there plenty of pre-installed free and open-source applications to choose from. This includes IceWeasel web browser, IceDove, Gnumeric spreadsheet, AbiWord, Mplayer, Python, Perl, Samba and a lot more.

Stability:
Zenwalk’s stability can’t be denied since I have used and tested the version 3.0 long enough, and it never failed to deliver the goods. I can say that this new version is also very stable indeed based on the initial tests I made. I opened several applications and tested several programs simultaneously without a single hitch, a proof that it can be efficiently used for a much longer period of time.

Conclusion:
Zenwalk has done it again. I am honestly pretty pleased with this new version. The fast installation and the very responsive desktop is what I love most about it. Its server side capability is also a plus. I would not recommend Zenwalk to Linux first-timers because of its text-based installer, but to those who are persistent enough, using it and setting it up is fairly straightforward. Zenwalk, as the name implies, gives an enlightening experience to its users because it is a joy to use and its reliability is outstanding.

7 (More) Best Free/Open-source Backup Software for Linux

2011-10-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

Before, we have featured here some of the best Free and Open Soure backup software for Linux. As I've already explained, a backup software is essential for recovering important files when disaster happens. Since there are still several excellent free and open source backup software that I failed to mention the last time, I decided to once again gather another list of some of the best backup software that are available for Linux.

BackupPC
BackupPC is a Disk-to-disk backup software suite that is considered as one of the most popular free and open-source backup software. It has a web-based frontend with no need for client as the server is itself a client for several protocols, which are handled by other services native to the client OS. BackupPC is using a combination of hard links to reduce the total disk space utilized for files. During the first full backup, each and every file is transferred to the backend, optionally compressed, and then compared. All similar files are hard linked and use only one additional directory entry.

Areca Backup
Areca Backup is a personal file backup software written in Java. It includes a backup engine, along with a graphical user interface and a command-line interface. It has been designed to be as simple as possible to set up with no complex configuration files to edit. It is also flexible since it can use advanced backup modes (like "delta backup") or simply produce a "basic" copy of your source files as a standard directory or zip archive (readable by WinZip or other archivers). Areca Backup will also allow you to interact with your archives and the files they contain. You can track different versions of a specific file, browse your archives, recover or view specific files, and merge a set of archives.

DirSync Pro
DirSync Pro (Directory Synchronize Pro) as described from its project website is a small, but powerful utility for file and folder synchronization. It can be used to synchronize the content of one or many folders recursively. DirSync Pro offers a graphical user interface from which the user can manage and run multiple synchronization tasks, and you can also use it via the command line that makes it very flexible for running in batches. It supports local folder to folder synchronization, but does not allow synchronization via FTP. DirSync Pro is self-contained within its own directory, and is therefore fully portable.

luckyBackup

luckyBackup is a fast and reliable free backup application that has a graphical user interface (GUI) based on the cross platform Qt libraries and is not fundamentally console based or web based as many of the clients from the list of backup software are. Its GUI is already translated in many languages and is notable for its availability directly from the repositories of all major Linux distributions including Debian, Ubuntu, openSuse, Fedora, Mandriva, Arch, Slackware, and Gentoo. luckyBackup shares the data differencing and copying tool, rsync, with BackupPC, rdiff-backup, and several others.

Partimage
Partimage is a free and open-source disk backup software. It can save partitions in many formats to a disk image. Using Partimage, partitions can be saved across the network using the Partimage network support, or using Samba / NFS (Network File Systems). This provides the capability to perform a hard disk partition recovery after a disk crash. Aside from running as part of your normal system, Partimage can be loaded as a stand-alone from the live SystemRescueCd, which is helpful when the operating system cannot be started. SystemRescueCd is packed with data recovery software for Linux that you may need.

Mondo Rescue
Mondo Rescue is a reliable free disaster recovery solution. It backs up your Linux server or workstation to tape, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R(W), DVD+R(W), NFS or hard disk partition. Mondo Rescue supports several filesystems including LVM 1/2, RAID, ext2, ext3, ext4, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, VFAT, and can support additional filesystems easily. It also offers support for software raid as well as most hardware raid controllers. Mondo runs on all major Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, RedHat, SuSE, Mandriva, Debian, and Gentoo. However, you can use it to backup non-Linux partitions like NTFS if needed.

tar
tar is a file archiver that is designed to store and extract files from an archive file known as a tarfile. A tarfile may be made on a tape drive; however, it is also common to write a tarfile to a normal file. Originally created to be written directly to sequential I/O devices for tape backup purposes, it is now primarily used to collect many files into one larger file for distribution or archiving, while preserving file system information such as user and group permissions, dates, and directory structures.

NimbleX: The Diet Slackware

2011-10-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

NimbleX: The Diet Slackware - The word “nimble” is an adjective that means quick and light in motion. It is also a quality that the young NimbleX Linux distribution is boasting. Based on Slackware, the grand daddy of all distros, its main goal is to provide the latest and greatest open source applications to those who have lower-end computers.

Recently, I contemplated on replacing Xubuntu from our old Prestigio laptop. Cassandra Mint was a good candidate to replace it but I was looking for an even lighter distro. I tried the very lightweight DSL about a week ago but I find it not suitable for beginners and it still lacks what a complete desktop has. Then yesterday, I ended up reading Tuxmachines’ review of NimbleX which was very positive. So I immediately downloaded the newly released sub 100 version of NimbleX. It took an hour to complete the download and then I was ready to roll. I tested it first on VMWare to know if it really is capable enough to be installed on the old machine. Here is what I found out about NimbleX:

Test Machine Specs:
Board: Intel Corporation D102GGC2
Processor: 3.40 GHz Intel Pentium D
Hard Drive: Samsung 80GB ATA with 8GB allocated to VM disk
Memory: 2GB DDR2 RAM with 512MB allocated to VM memory
Display: RADEON X300/X550 Series [Display adapter]

Intro:
NimbleX is developed in Romania by Bogdan Rădulescu, and is available in either English or Romanian language interface. Being based in Slackware, it uses linux-live scripts with the advantage of having thousands of available free software packages. NimbleX is not yet ranked among the top 100 in Distrowatch.

Installation:
The NimbleX sub 100 version Live CD is only about 100MB in size, thus the name. You can download it directly from here. It doesn’t come with a complete hard disk installer but it is possible to install it manually by following these instructions. A USB installer can be found inside the home directory. They said that it can also be used as a hard drive installer but I tried it without having any success. I didn’t have the luxury of time to install NimbleX manually, but anyway it really is unnecessary as I’m still testing it yet.

Look and Feel:
I was impressed at how NimbleX managed to pack a good looking KDE desktop inside its diminutive size, and made it so responsive that I feel like I’m using XFCE. I tried switching from one screen resolution to another without having some problems. The default theme and wallpaper is fine coupled with few extras. Other eye candies like boot splash and start-up splash screen images are quite pleasing so I would say it was a praiseworthy job by the artwork team.

Package Management:
There are good amount of software installed by default including Xine multimedia player, Guarddog firewall, Kate IDE, Konqueror web browser, a CD and DVD burner, Gimp image editor and plenty more. I was surprised though that it didn’t have Firefox, but I did successfully added it using Kweb2mod as you can see from the screenshot. Kweb2mod is an experimental program that will mount application modules live and direct from the the NimbleX repository. While not plenty, the repo contained essential software like Java Runtime Environment and OpenOffice.

Stability:
NimbleX is fairly stable in my VMWare testing environment and it really is fast for a KDE desktop. The only understandable slow time I had was when mounting program modules from the web. But once mounted, the opened application will run fast enough for functionality. I must admit that I still have to test it for a much longer period of time to really judge its stability; maybe later on the old laptop. I will just keep an update on that.

Conclusion:
The NimbleX distribution has a prospect and is on the right track to be popular. It gives hope to those who maybe are still using Windows 98 today due to their ultra low-end computers; and for goodness sake please burn that rubbish OS. All things considered, I find NimbleX really easy to use but I will recommend it only to novice users for the lack of automated installer. NimbleX is true to its name and is definitely worth a try. It is without doubt one of the fastest Linux distributions available today.

#UPDATE: I have already tested NimbleX on the old Prestigio 109 laptop with 1GHz VIA Nehemia processor and 256MB of RAM; sad to say, it failed miserably. When I chose the normal boot option which is to KDE, the system freezes and I have to hard reset the laptop. Command Line Interface (CLI) mode is the only thing that worked and when I try to login to KDE via CLI there was an X server error. I tried every boot parameter options but without any success. I didn’t want to dig in anymore to find out what’s causing the problem. It’s the job for the developers to figure this out and somehow improve their hardware support; but I don’t want to assume yet that it is poor in this department. I still want to hear those who have also tried NimbleX.

Top 50 Linux Quotes of All Time

2011-10-09T00:43:00.001-07:00

I have collected 50 of my favorite "Linux quotes" of all time. They are without doubt some of the most entertaining quotes that I've ever read. Although you may have already heard some of the Linux quotes that I'm about to share with you since they are a bit old, I do hope that you will still have fun.

So without any more delay, here are my top 50 Linux quotes of all time:

50. I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS.
Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117.
-- Lawrence Foard, entropy@world.std.com

49. Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux.
-- unknown source

48. I've run DOOM more in the last few days than I have the last few
months. I just love debugging ;-)
(Linus Torvalds)

47. By golly, I'm beginning to think Linux really *is* the best thing since
sliced bread.
-- Vance Petree, Virginia Power

46. Linux poses a real challenge for those with a taste for late-night
hacking (and/or conversations with God).
-- Matt Welsh

45. Linux is obsolete.
-- Andrew Tanenbaum

44. Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix. (Linus Torvalds to Andrew Tanenbaum)

43. I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-) (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds)

42. We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.
- Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amterdam Linux Symposium

41. People disagree with me. I just ignore them.
(Linus Torvalds, regarding the use of C++ for the Linux kernel.)

40. Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.
-- Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0

39. Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why should use Linux over BSD?

38. “How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it." (Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting)

37. "Problem solving under linux has never been the circus that it is under AIX." (By Pete Ehlke in comp.unix.aix)

36. "Besides, I think Slackware sounds better than 'Microsoft,' don't you?" (By Patrick Volkerding)

35. "And the next time you consider complaining that running Lucid Emacs 19.05 via NFS from a remote Linux machine in Paraguay doesn't seem to get the background colors right, you'll know who to thank." (By Matt Welsh)

34. "...Deep Hack Mode--that mysterious and frightening state of consciousness where Mortal Users fear to tread." (By Matt Welsh)

33. Sigh. I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice. (Craig E. Groeschel)

32. Microsoft Corp., concerned by the growing popularity of the free 32-bit operating system for Intel systems, Linux, has employed a number of top programmers from the underground world of virus development. Bill Gates stated yesterday: "World domination, fast -- it's either us or Linus". Mr. Torvalds was unavailable for comment ... (rjm@swift.eng.ox.ac.uk (Robert Manners), in comp.os.linux.setup)

31. Who wants to remember that escape-x-alt-control-left shift-b puts you into super-edit-debug-compile mode? (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs.)

30. It's a bird.. It's a plane.. No, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue. Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat.. (Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27)

29. Those who don't understand Linux are doomed to reinvent it, poorly. (Unidentified source.)

28. "How do you power off this machine?" (Linus, when upgrading linux.cs.helsinki.fi, and after using the machine for several months.)

27. I've discovered that using VMS is a lot like driving a nail with your head: sure, you eventually get something practical done, but it usually results in a headache and some blood loss.
(submitted by Sean A. Simpson)

26. "... being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house inhabited by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every morning when you wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe there is a new turret, or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone has temporarily removed the floor under your bed." - Unix for Dummies, 2nd Edition (Found in the .sig of Rob Riggs)

25. If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah. (Unknown source)

24. LILO, you've got me on my knees!
(from David Black, dblack@pilot.njin.net, with apologies to Derek and the
Dominos, and Werner Almsberger)

23. Anyone can build a fast processor. The trick is to build a fast system. (Seymour Cray)

22. We can use symlinks of course... syslogd would be a symlink to syslogp and ftpd and ircd would be linked to ftpp and ircp... and of course the point-to-point protocal paenguin. (Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo.)

21. A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack. (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds)

20. I did this 'cause Linux gives me a woody. It doesn't generate revenue. (Dave '-ddt->` Taylor, announcing DOOM for Linux)

19. This message was brought to you by Linux, the free unix. Windows without the X is like making love without a partner. Sex, Drugs & Linux Rules win-nt from the people who invented edlin apples have meant trouble since eden Linux, the way to get rid of boot viruses. (By mwikholm@at8.abo.fi, MaDsen Wikholm)

18. Be warned that typing killall name may not have the desired effect on non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged user.
-- From the killall manual page

17. Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it. "
--- Linus Torvalds

16. Linux is not user-friendly. It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
---Source unknown

15. `When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".' (By Linus Torvalds)

14. "If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system." (By Linus Torvalds)

13. "Are Linux users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software?" (By Matt Welsh)

12. "Linux: the operating system with a CLUE... Command Line User Environment". (seen in a posting in comp.software.testing)

11. “See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.” (By Linus Torvalds)

10. "What happens when you read some doc and either it doesn't answer your question or is demonstrably wrong? In Linux, you say "Linux sucks" and go read the code. In Windows/Oracle/etc you say "Windows sucks" and start banging your head against the wall."
--- Denis Vlasenko on lkml

9. "...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead sit in front of your linux computer playing with the all-new-and-improved linux kernel version." (By Linus Torvalds)

8. Linux hackers are funny people: They count the time in patchlevels. (Seen in the .sig of Gerd Knorr.)

7. Linux: the choice of a GNU generation
-- ksh@cis.ufl.edu put this on Tshirts in '93\

6. "Not me, guys. I read the Bash man page each day like a Jehovah's Witness reads the Bible. No wait, the Bash man page IS the bible. Excuse me..."
(More on confusing aliases, taken from comp.os.linux.misc)

5. What's this script do?
unzip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; gasp ; yes ; umount ; sleep
Hint for the answer: not everything is computer-oriented. Sometimes you're
in a sleeping bag, camping out with your girlfriend.
(Contributed by Frans van der Zande.)

4. I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-)
(Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)

3. One OS to rule them all,
One OS to find them.
One OS to call them all,
And in salvation bind them.
In the bright land of Linux,
Where the hackers play.
(J. Scott Thayer, with apologies to J.R.R.T.)

2. ...the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself". That's it. (by Linus)

1. We are using Linux daily to UP our productivity - so UP yours!
-- Adapted from Pat Paulsen by Joe Sloan

-END-

If you have some Linux quotes that I failed to include here, feel free to add them via comment. You may also want to check out our list of great quotes from Torvalds and Stallman about Free and Open Source Software.

7 Best Free and Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS)

2011-10-09T00:42:00.001-07:00

A content management system (CMS) is a software used to simplify the management and publication of HTML content such as documents and images. It provides authoring and other tools designed to allow users with little technical knowledge of programming languages or markup languages to create and manage content with relative ease. Most web CMS use a database to store content, metadata, or artifacts that might be needed by the system. Content is commonly stored as XML, to facilitate, reuse, and enable flexible presentation options.

For those of you who are interested, I have here a list of some of the most well-known and perhaps the best free and open source content management systems (CMS) available:

WordPress
WordPress is widely considered as the most popular blog publishing application, and is used by over 2% of the 10,000 biggest websites. It is powered by PHP and MySQL and offers many features including a plugin architecture and a templating system. The templating system includes widgets that can be rearranged without editing PHP or HTML code, as well as themes that can be installed and switched between. WordPress features integrated link management; a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; and support for tagging of posts and articles. Automatic filters that provide for proper formatting and styling of text in articles are also included. WordPress has a rich plugin architecture that allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.

Drupal
Drupal is a free and open source content management system (CMS) written in PHP. It is utilized as a back-end system for at least 1% of all websites worldwide, which ranges from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites that includes whitehouse.gov and data.gov.uk. Although Drupal offers a sophisticated programming interface for developers, no programming skills are required for basic website installation and administration. Its standard release, known as Drupal core, contains basic features common to most CMSs. These include the ability to register and maintain individual user accounts within a role-based permission/privilege system, create and manage menus, RSS-feeds, customize page layout, perform logging, and administer the system. Drupal was also designed to allow new features and custom behavior to be added to extend Drupal's core capabilities via installation of plug-in modules.

Joomla!
Joomla! is an open source content management system (CMS) platform for publishing content on the internet along with a Model–view–controller (MVC) Web application framework. It is written in PHP, stores data in MySQL, and contains features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, search, and support for language internationalization. Inside its first year of release, Joomla was downloaded 2.5 million times. As of today, over 4,000 free and commercial plug-ins are available for Joomla.

Movable Type
Movable Type is a weblog publishing system written in Perl. It supports storage of the weblog's content and associated data within MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Movable Type optionally supports LDAP for user and group management and automatic blog provisioning. Features: Multiple weblogs; Standalone content pages; Asset and File Manager; User and user role management; Customizable templates; Tags; Categories, sub-categories and multiple categories for articles; TrackBack; Bookmarklets.

Plone
Plone is a content management system built on top of the Zope application server. Plone can be used for in principle any kind of website, including blogs, webshops, and internal websites. It is also well positioned to be used as a document publishing system and groupware collaboration tool. The strengths of Plone are its flexible and adaptable workflow, very good security, extensibility, high usability and flexibility. It excels when compared to other content-management systems in standards conformance, access control, internationalization, aggregation, user-generated content, micro-applications, active user groups and value. All of Plone's features are customizable, and free add-ons are available from the Plone website.

PHP-Fusion
PHP-Fusion is a light-weight open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP. It uses a MySQL database to store a web site's content and comes with a simple but comprehensive administration system. PHP-Fusion includes features common in many other CMS packages such as easy integration of articles, forums, photogallery, web links, downloads, polls, shoutbox, search, and themes. It also offers users the opportunity to expand the standard packages with so-called "infusions". These infusions can be easily uploaded, installed, and managed.

XOOPS
XOOPS (eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System) is a CMS written in PHP that uses a modular architecture allowing users to customize, update and theme their websites. It aims to serve as a web framework for use by small, medium and large sites, through the installation of modules. For example, a small XOOPS installation can be used as a personal weblog or journal, but this can be expanded upon and customized, for example users might add the appropriate modules to store content in news, forums, downloads, and more.

If you have other favorite web content management systems that I failed to mention above, you can share them with us via comment.

12 of the Best Media Players for Linux

2011-10-09T00:41:00.001-07:00

One of the many perks of being a Linux user is that you have plenty of excellent software to choose from. This is especially true if you are in search for an essential application like a media player because there are definitely loads of options. However, this could sometimes be a disadvantage particularly to new-to-Linux users for the reason that they could get overwhelmed with the many choices they have.

To somehow guide those who are still looking for a media player that will suit their needs, I have put together a list that I hope will help. Take your pick from 12 of the best and certified quality media players for Linux.

Banshee
Banshee is a free audio player for GNU/Linux operating systems that is built upon Mono and Gtk#. It uses the GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding, and decoding various music formats, including Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and FLAC. Banshee can play, import and burn audio CDs, but it can not synchronize music with any portable media players, including Apple's iPod and Creative Zen players, in the current version. Music stored on the iPod can be played without synchronization, and album art stored in the Banshee library is transferred to the iPod. Support for MTP and PlaysForSure devices, as well as the Rio Karma player is planned for the near future.

Rhythmbox
Rhythmbox is an audio player that plays and helps organize digital music. Originally inspired by Apple's iTunes, it is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop using the GStreamer media framework. It is currently under active development.

Playback from a variety of digital music sources is supported, excluding MIDI. The most common playback is music stored locally as files on the computer (the 'Library'). Rhythmbox supports playing streamed Internet radio and podcasts as well. The Replay Gain standard is supported.

Totem
Totem is a free software media player (audio and video) for the GNOME computer desktop environment that runs on Linux, Solaris, BSD and other Unix and Unix-like systems. It is officially included in GNOME starting from version 2.10 (released in March 2005), but de facto it was already included in most GNOME environments. The default backend is GStreamer framework but Totem can also use xine libraries. Totem is included as the default media player in many desktop Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Mandriva Linux and others.

Thanks to a large number of plugins developed for GStreamer, Totem is able to play all mainstream media formats, both open and proprietary ones. It also understands numerous playlist formats, including SHOUTcast, M3U, XML Shareable Playlist Format (XSPF), SMIL, Windows Media Player playlists and RealAudio playlists. Playlists are easily manageable using drag-and-drop features.

Amarok
Amarok is a free software music player for Linux or other varieties of Unix. It makes use of core components from the K Desktop Environment, but is released independently of the central KDE release cycle.

Amarok serves many functions rather than just playing music files. For example, Amarok can be used to organize a library of music into folders according to genre, artist, and album, can edit tags attached to most music formats, associate album art, attach lyrics, and automatically "score" music as it is played.

Here are the primary functions or uses for Amarok:
* Playing media files in various formats including but not limited to (depending on the setup) FLAC, Ogg, MP3, AAC, WAV, Windows Media Audio, Apple Lossless, WavPack, TTA and Musepack. Amarok does not play digital music files embedded with DRM.
* Tagging digital music files (currently FLAC, Ogg, WMA, AAC, MP3, and RealMedia).
* Associating cover art with a particular album, and retrieving the cover art from Amazon
* Creating and editing playlists, including smart and dynamic playlists. The dynamic playlists can use such information as the "score" given to a song by an Amarok script, and the playcount which is stored with the song.
* Synchronizing, retrieving, playing, or uploading music to the following digital music players: iPod, iriver iFP, Creative NOMAD, Creative ZEN, MTP, Rio Karma and USB devices with VFAT (generic MP3 players) support.
* Displaying artist information from Wikipedia and retrieving song lyrics.
* Last.fm support, including submitting played tracks (including those played on some digital music players) to Last.fm, retrieving similar artists, and playing Last.fm streams.
* Podcast

xine
xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library (xine-lib) that supports different frontend player applications. Another important feature of xine is the ability to manually correct the synchronization of audio and video streams. xine uses libraries from other projects such as liba52, libmpeg2, FFmpeg, libmad, FAAD2, and Ogle. xine can also use binary Windows codecs through a wrapper, bundled as the w32codecs, for playback of some media formats that are not handled natively.

Exaile
Exaile is a music player aiming to be similar to KDE's Amarok, but for GTK+ and written in Python. It incorporates many of the cool things from Amarok (and other media players) like automatic fetching of album art, handling of large libraries, lyrics fetching, artist/album information via Wikipedia, Last.fm submission support, and optional iPod support via a plugin.

In addition, Exaile also includes a built-in SHOUTcast directory browser, tabbed playlists (so you can have more than one playlist open at a time), blacklisting of tracks (so they don't get scanned into your library), downloading of guitar tablature from fretplay.com, and submitting played tracks on your iPod to Last.fm.

KPlayer
KPlayer is a multimedia player for the KDE desktop environment. KPlayer uses MPlayer as the backend for playing multimedia files and provides a variety of additional features.

Features include:
* video, audio and subtitle playback from file, URL, DVD, Video CD, Audio CD, TV, DVB, and KIO Slaves;
* volume, contrast, brightness, hue and saturation controls;
* zooming, full screen and fixed aspect options;
* status and progress display and seeking;
* multimedia library to organize your media files and streams;
* configuration dialog;
* file properties for setting file specific options.

Kaffeine
Kaffeine is a media player for Unix-like operating systems running KDE.

By default it uses xine-lib media framework but also supports GStreamer. It also supports the use of MPlayer project's binary codecs for proprietary formats. Kaffeine developers have also produced a Mozilla plugin to start the player for streaming content over the web.

Features include streaming, DVB, DVD, Video CD and CD audio.

Audacious
Audacious is a GUI-based free software media player for POSIX systems, such as Linux.

It is a fork of Beep Media Player 0.9.7.1, which is itself a fork of XMMS. William "nenolod" Pitcock decided to fork Beep Media Player after the original development team announced that they were stopping development, in order to create a next-gen version, BMPx.

The reasons for the fork were purely technical. There were some quirks in Beep Media Player that had annoyed users, such as the ID3v2 tag handling, which had been reported as buggy by some users. The developers also had their own ideas about how a player should be designed, which they wanted to try in a production environment. Besides, Beep Media Player allegedly lacked functionalities that were considered useful for people who did streaming, such as support for an XMMS-like "songchange plugin".

XMMS2
XMMS2 (X-platform Music Multiplexing System 2) is a new generation of the XMMS audio player. It is a new design, written from scratch, separate from the XMMS codebase. While Peter Alm, one of the original authors of XMMS, was responsible for the initial design and coding of XMMS2 (late 2002 to early 2003), he has since passed on the responsibility of furthering the project to Tobias Rundström and Anders Gustafsson.

MPlayer
MPlayer is a free and open source media player distributed under the GNU General Public License. The program is available for all major operating systems, including Linux and other Unix-like systems; Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions for OS/2, AmigaOS and MorphOS are also available. The Windows versions work with some minor problems, and also in DOS using HX DOS Extender. A port for DOS using DJGPP is also available.

MPlayer supports a wide variety of media formats. In addition to its wide range of supported formats MPlayer can also save all streamed content to a file.

MPlayer is a command line application that has different optional GUIs for each of its supported operating systems. Commonly used GUIs are gmplayer (the default GUI for GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems, and Microsoft Windows), MPlayer OS X (for Mac OS X), MPUI (for Windows) and WinMPLauncher (also for Windows). Several other GUI frontends are also available for each platform.

VLC
VLC media player is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various different formats. VLC used to stand for VideoLAN Client, but that meaning is now deprecated.

VLC uses a large number of free decoding and encoding libraries. Many of its codecs are provided by the libavcodec codec library from the FFmpeg project, but it uses mainly its own muxer and demuxers. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library.

Version 0.8.6, which adds support for WMV version 9 and enhances support for H.264, was released on 10 December 2006.

Free and Open Source 3D Graphics Software for Linux

2011-10-09T00:40:00.000-07:00

Free and Open Source 3D Graphics Software: 3D computer graphics software refers to programs used to create 3D computer-generated imagery.

There are usually many stages in the "pipeline" that studios use to create 3D objects for film and games, and this article only covers some of the software used. Note that most of the 3D packages have a very plugin-oriented architecture, and high-end plugins costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are typically used by studios. Larger studios commonly create vast amounts of proprietary software to run alongside these programs. But thankfully, there are always Free and Open Source software alternatives that can help produce highly commendable 3D animations like they did in the short film entitled “Elephants Dream”.

Here are some of the 3D graphics software applications that will allow those with artistic touch create beauty out of freedom:

*Blender is a free software 3D animation program. It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulating, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications. Blender is available for several operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, IRIX, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD with unofficial ports for SkyOS, MorphOS and Pocket PC. Blender has a robust feature set similar in scope and depth to other high-end 3D software such as Softimage|XSI, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max and Maya. These features include advanced simulation tools such as rigid body, fluid, and softbody dynamics, modifier based modeling tools, powerful character animation tools, and a node based material and compositing system and Python for embedded scripting.

Blender rendering

*Aqsis is a high quality, photorealistic, 3D rendering solution. It complies with the RenderMan® interface standard defined by Pixar.

The RenderMan® standard has been used in film and television visual effects since its introduction in 1989. Pixar has used their own implementation for their entire award winning CG features, and provided their implementation for use in the visual effects of most major blockbuster films over the last 2 decades. The Aqsis project offers a way for individuals and organistaions alike to gain experience with the RenderMan® interface without the cost of commercial software licenses.

Aqsis comprises a command line rendering tool, a tool for compiling shaders in the RSL language, a tool for preparing textures for optimal use, and various developer libraries to enable integration with third party tools.

image made using Aqsis

*Art of Illusion is a software package used for 3D modeling, texturing, ray tracing, and otherwise rendering computer generated imagery stills or animations (movies).

The goal of Art of Illusion is to provide powerful 3D modeling tools with a user interface that improves on those found in other 3D software packages. Though its interface is simple, Art of Illusion contains many features found in high-end commercial graphics software. Some of its features, like the use of online repositories and a built-in downloading tool for installing extensions, are not found in similar commercial software.

The primary creator and maintainer of the software is Peter Eastman. Peter can be contacted via the project web site.

Art of Illusion is written in the Java programming language. Distributed under the GNU General Public License, it is free software.

Art of Illusion application window

*GtkRadiant is a level design program developed by id Software and Loki Software. It is used to create maps for a number of computer games. It is maintained by id Software together with a number of volunteers.

GtkRadiant's roots lie in id Software's in-house tools. Some of the early UI design decisions influencing it could be seen in QuakeEd, the original Quake mapping tool for NextStep. Code-wise, GtkRadiant is a descendant of Q3Radiant, the Quake III Arena level design tool, which in turn is a descendant of QERadiant. QERadiant was developed by Robert Duffy using the source code for QE4, the in house Quake II level editor id Software used to build Quake II levels and is available with the Quake 2 SDK. All three are Windows-only applications. Two major things are different in GtkRadiant: it is based on the GTK+ toolkit, so it also works in Linux and Mac OS X, and it's also game engine-independent, with functionality for new games added as game packs.

GtkRadiant application window

*MeshLab, started in late 2005, is an open-source general-purpose mesh processing software program; the system is aimed to help the processing of the typical not-so-small unstructured models that arise in the pipeline of processing of the data coming form 3D scanning. MeshLab is oriented to the management and processing of single large meshes and provides a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering and converting this kind of meshes.
The automatic mesh cleaning filters includes removal of duplicated, unreferenced vertices, non manifold edges and null faces. Remeshing tools support high quality simplification based on quadric error measure, various kind of subdivision surfaces and a surface reconstruction algorithm from point clouds based on the ball pivoting technique. For the removal of noise, usually present in acquired surfaces, MeshLab supports various kind of smoothing filters and tools for curvature analysis and visualization.
MeshLab support also an interactive direct paint-on-mesh system that allows to interactively change color of a mesh, to define selections and to directly smooth out noise and small features.
MeshLab is available for most platforms, including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The system support input/output in the following formats: PLY, STL, OFF, OBJ, 3DS and COLLADA.

MeshLab application window

*OpenFX is an Open-Source, free modeling and animation studio, distributed under the GNU General Public License, created by Dr. Stuart Ferguson. He made the decision to release the source code to the public in the middle of 1999 and released a stable version a year and a half later. The product, formerly named SoftF/X, was renamed to OpenFX.
The OpenFX featureset includes a full renderer and raytracing engine, NURBS support, kinematics-based animation, morphing, and an extensive plugin API. Plugin capabilities include image post processor effects such as lens flare, fog and depth of field. Animation effects such as explosions, waves and dissolves add to the flexibility of the program. Version 2.0 also features support for modern graphics cards with hardware GPU acceleration.
OpenFX supports the Win32 platform, including Windows 95, NT, 98, ME, 2000 and XP. It can run under UNIX-based platforms by using the Wine compatibility layer.

OpenFX application window

*OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D rendering engine (as opposed to a game engine) written in C++ designed to make it easier and intuitive for developers to produce applications utilising hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. The class library abstracts the details of using the underlying system libraries like Direct3D and OpenGL and provides an interface based on world objects and other high level classes.
The engine is free software, licensed under the LGPL and has a very active community. It has been used in some commercial games. It was Sourceforge's project of the month in March 2005.

3D image made with OGRE

*Pixie is a free, photorealistic raytracing renderer for generating photorealistic images, developed by Okan Arikan in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas At Austin. It is RenderMan-compliant (meaning it reads conformant RIB, and supports full SL shading language shaders) and is based on the Reyes rendering architecture, but also support raytracing for hidden surface determination.
Like the proprietary BMRT, Pixie is popular with students learning the RenderMan Interface, and is a suitable replacement for it. Contributions to Pixie are facilitated by SourceForge and the internet where it can also be downloaded free of charge as source code or precompiled. It compiles for Windows (using Visual Studio 2005), Linux and on Mac OS X (using Xcode or Unix-style configure script).

image made with Pixie

Let me know if there are other great Free and Open Source 3D Graphics software applications that I failed to include in the list.

For those of you who are into creating two-dimensional models, you can check out our list of 2D animation software for Linux.

8 Best Linux Terminal Emulators You May Have Never Heard Of

2011-10-09T00:38:00.001-07:00

8 Best Linux Terminal Emulators You May Have Never Heard Of: For some Linux users, the terminal or command line shell is a useful and powerful tool that can help accomplish tasks (from simple to complex) in a more efficient and often quicker way. Although it is not a necessity anymore, I think it would still be handy to have some basic command line skills. To those of you who are afraid to use the Linux terminal, perhaps you should get or download some Linux/UNIX command cheat sheets.

Since majority of popular Linux distributions utilizes either KDE or GNOME desktop environment, you may have only used terminal emulators such as Konsole, GNOME Terminal, and xterm. But did you know that there are capable and unique terminal emulators for Linux other than those I've mentioned?

Here is a list of some of the best Linux terminal emulators you may have never heard of (in no particular order):

Terminator
Terminator is currently my favorite Linux terminal emulator. It allows me to easily organize multiple command line sessions into resizable split panes within the same window. This way, I can do some command-line multitasking in a more efficient manner, minus the desktop clutter. Terminator is written in Python, and it will work on any modern POSIX system with Java 5 or later, which means it can also run on other operating system platforms aside from Linux such as Windows and Mac OS X.

Guake
Guake is a top-down terminal emulator for GNOME Desktop Environment that has a design inspired by consoles in computer games such as Quake and Doom. It can quickly slide down from the top of the screen using a single keystroke, and can be hidden by pressing the same key. The advantage of using Guake when compared to the standard terminal is that it is faster to open since the program is already loaded into the computer memory.

Yakuake
Yakuake (Yet Another Kuake) is a drop-down KDE terminal emulator with features almost similar to that of Guake. Its design was also inspired by consoles in computer games. Like Kate, Konqueror, and other KDE applications, Yakuake depends on Konsole for its terminal functionality.

rxvt
rxvt is a simple and lightweight terminal emulator that is aimed to be a slimmed-down replacement for the already slim xterm, removing several of its little-used features, like Tektronix 4014 emulation and toolkit-style configurability. Apart from features like those controlled by resource files, the terminal emulation of rxvt differs from xterm in a few important ways.

Tilda
Tilda is a slide-down GTK+ terminal emulator similar to that of Guake and Yakuake. The program also runs invisibly in the background allowing it to quickly slide up and down once a hotkey is pressed.

mrxvt
mrxvt is a multi-tabbed terminal emulator based on rxvt that provides DEC VT102 compatible terminals. Like rxvt, it is fast, lightweight, and flexible without depending on desktop environments such as GNOME or KDE. The main features of mrxvt include multiple tabs, dynamically changeable tab titles, customizable command for each tab, input broadcasting, fast pseudo-transparency with tinting, user supplied background images, multi-language support, Freetype font, logging, and more.

Wterm
Wterm is a fork rxvt that is also very fast and lightweight. Its look was designed for NeXTSTEP style window managers like Window Maker. It has terminal support for Latin, Chinese, and Greek characters and features customizable background images, background color tinting, and zero overhead pseudo-transparent background.

aterm
aterm is the AfterStep terminal emulator for the X Window System that is based (again) on rxvt. As described from its project webpage, aterm is designed to provide pleasing visual effects, while performing such a mundane function as terminal emulation under X.

If you know of other capable terminal emulators for Linux that I fail to include on the above list, please share them with us via comment.

Open Source Email Archiving Software

2011-10-09T00:36:00.001-07:00

Email archiving is an application that accumulates, index and provide quick, searchable access to email messages independent of the users of the system using a couple of different technical methods of implementation. The primary function of email archiving software is to capture and maintain all email traffic flowing into and out of the email server so it can be accessed immediately at a later date from a centrally managed location. If you are looking for an open source email archiving software, then read on.

There are several email archiving applications that support most major email messaging systems, and they can be installed locally or they can be outsourced to a hosted service.

Aside from email and attachments, some email archiving applications can also archive additional aspects of a mailbox including public folders, offline PST files, calendars, contacts, notes, and associated metadata and context.

At the moment, I only know one open source email archiving software that is quite popular and competitive. Its name is MailArchiva.

From its project website, MailArchiva is described as...

"a state-of-the-art email archiving system for companies of all sizes. It works in conjunction with popular mail systems to archive all incoming, outgoing and internal emails."

"Companies, educational institutions, NGO's and government agencies around the world rely on MailArchiva to archive millions of their emails for long term storage."

MailArchiva actually comes in two editions: the Open Source Edition (OSE) and Enterprise Edition (EE). See HERE to compare their features.

If you want to download MailArchiva, you will have to sign-up HERE first.

If you know of other open source email archiving software, you may share them with us via comment.

8 More Linux Distributions for Web Server

2011-10-09T00:35:00.001-07:00

8 More Linux Distributions for Web Server: I've already shared with you a list of some of the best and most well-known Linux distributions used on web servers. However, there are still plenty of excellent server-oriented Linux distros that I failed to mention there. So I think it is important to make a follow up post and bring you another round of Linux distributions for web server.

ClearOS
Based on CentOS, ClearOS is a network and gateway server especially made for small businesses and distributed environments. It offers a comprehensive list of integrated services that are easy to configure through its intuitive and user-friendly web-based interface. ClearOS also features several essential tools and modules that include antispam, antivirus, content filtering, VPN, bandwidth manager, SSL certification, web log analyzer, etc. The distribution is available as a free download including free security updates for 18 months.

EnGarde Secure Linux
EnGarde Secure Linux is a server-oriented distribution that offers services like web, DNS, and the ability to email simply and securely without the need for laborious 'hardening' done by the user. It also provides integrated intrusion detection, advanced kernel and network security features, and graphical auditing and reporting, which can all be controlled through its simplified browser-based management system called Guardian Digital WebTool.

Openwall GNU/*/Linux
Openwall GNU/*/Linux, 'Owl' for short, is a security-enhanced operating system with Linux and GNU software as its core and is intended for use as server platform. Its patches and security extensions have been included into many major Linux distributions. Openwall GNU/*/Linux pulls source code and design concepts from several sources including parts of the GNU userland and OpenBSD for its OpenSSH suite and the inspiration behind its own blowfish-based crypt for password hashing.

SME Server
SME Server is a simple, powerful, and secure Linux server that is based on CentOS, which utilizes publicly available open source Red Hat Enterprise Linux sources. Joseph and Kim Morrison created it in January 1999. The company introduced the first version of its flagship software product, the e-smith server and gateway, in April 1999. It has since been used by thousands of individuals, companies and organizations all over the world.

StartCom Linux
Based on the Red Hat AS source code, StartCom Enterprise Linux is the optimum solution for middle-size servers to large data centers. Its latest version supports the largest commodity-architecture servers with up to 16 CPUs and 64GB (on x86 systems) of main memory, Global File System - for highly scalable, high performance data sharing in multi-system configurations. StartCom Linux offers a comprehensive collection of open source server applications like mail, file (SMB/NFS), DNS, web, FTP, and a complete desktop environment.

Turbolinux
Turbolinux is made from the ground-up to cater to enterprise computing needs. Turbolinux 7 Server was the first-ever to conform to Internationalization standards to help simplify development of applications that need multiple language support. It also supports the Large File Support (LFS) standard for working with applications that control or manage up to four terabytes of data - a standard prerequisite for infrastructures serving Fortune 500 and larger companies. Such industrial-strength environments produce the fundamental point upon which PowerCockpit and other Turbolinux innovations were created.

Zeroshell
Zeroshell is a small Linux distribution for servers and embedded devices. It has a main objective of providing network services in a simple and efficient way. You can get it in the form of live CD or compact Flash image, and it can be configured through a web browser. Some of the main features of Zeroshell include: load balancing and failover of multiple Internet connections, UMTS/HSDPA connections by using 3G modems, RADIUS server for providing secure authentication and automatic management of encryption keys to wireless networks, captive portal to support web login, and many more.

Superb Mini Server
Superb Mini Server (SMS) is a Slackware-based server distribution that can be managed through its web interface. Even though considered as a mini server, it has all the features of a powerful web server and contains packages such as apache2, sendmail, postfix, spamassassin, clamav, squid, iptables, MailScanner, mysql, cups and a whole lot more. SMS also has a full-featured php based bit torrent client that can be managed and accessed from anywhere.

How to Install Adobe Photoshop on Ubuntu Linux

2011-10-09T00:34:00.000-07:00

I'm sure some of you would love to install and use Photoshop on your Linux box. So while I prefer using GIMP, I will still show you how to install Adobe Photoshop inside Linux with the help of Wine (not the alcoholic drink) just in case your photo shop classes or jobs require you to setup and use it. On this tutorial, I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" and Photoshop CS4.

Now let's get started and install Adobe Photoshop on Ubuntu Linux:

* Downloading and Installing Wine

The first thing that you should do is to install Wine. Using the Linux terminal, add the WineHQ APT repository with this command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

To download and install Wine on Ubuntu, just click HERE.

A pop-up will appear, just click "OK".

After installing Wine, you will have to download and install a few more packages. One of which is winetricks.

winetricks is a simple script to download and install various redistributable runtime libraries sometimes needed to run programs in Wine.

To get winetricks and the other needed packages, just copy and paste this command:

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

Now install them:

sh winetricks msxml6 gdiplus gecko vcrun2005

You should also install Microsoft TTF fonts:

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

Before we will install Photoshop CS4, we will have to download a .dll file. Get atmlib.dll from HERE.

Extract the zip file and copy atmlib.dll to c:/windows/system32. To do this, go to Applications menu -->Wine -->Browse C:\ Drive, then navigate to windows -->system32 and paste atmlib.dll there. After that go to Applications menu --> Wine --> Configure Wine. Inside the Libraries tab, add atmlib.dll and click on "Apply."

* Installing Photoshop CS4 on Ubuntu

You can now run the Photoshop CS4 installer via Wine with this command:

LANG=C wine Setup.exe

Note: you may need to add the path to your installer

Just install Photoshop the way you do it on Windows and you are done.

* Running Photoshop CS4 on Ubuntu

You can now start using Photoshop by going to Applications -->Wine -->Programs, and then selecting Photoshop CS4. Have fun, but don't forget to try GIMP :-)

How to Rescue Windows Files Using Linux and Python

2011-10-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

How to Rescue Windows Files Using Linux and Python - The Problem: Windows Operating System is broken, must be a virus or something; need to rescue important files immediately.

The Solution: A Linux Live CD with Python pre-installed; an external storage device; this Python script:

#!/usr/bin/python
# Filename: backup.py
import os, time

source = ['DIRECTORY OF WINDOWS FILES TO BE BACKED-UP!’]
target_dir = 'LOCATION OF EXTERNAL STORAGE DEVICE!'
today = target_dir + time.strftime('%Y%m%d')
now = time.strftime('%H%M%S')
comment = raw_input('Enter a comment --> ')
if len(comment) == 0:
target = today + os.sep + now + '.zip'
else:
target = today + os.sep + now + '_' + \
comment.replace(' ', '_') + '.zip'
if not os.path.exists(today):
os.mkdir(today) # make directory
print 'Successfully created directory', today
zip_command = "zip -qr '%s' %s" % (target, ' '.join(source))

if os.system(zip_command) == 0:
print 'Successful backup to', target
else:
print 'Backup FAILED'

Firefox to Internet Explorer: Bring it on!

2011-10-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the Beta 1 version of Internet Explorer 8 was released for download. According to Microsoft, IE 8 is loaded with tons of exciting new features such as:

*Activities
Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.

*WebSlices
WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.

*Favorites Bar
In Internet Explorer 7, the Links bar provided users with one-click access to their favorite sites.

*Automatic Crash Recovery

*Improved Phishing Filter

Meanwhile, Mozilla Firefox Beta 3 was released last February with great new features of its own. Here are some of the important changes and features in Firefox 3:

*Cairo used as a graphics backend.

*Cocoa Widgets included in OS X builds.

*API's implemented from WHATWG specs.

*Changes to how DOM events are dispatched, how HTML object elements are loaded, and how web pages are painted.

*New SVG elements and filters, and improved SVG specification compliance.

*Acid2 test compliant.

*New UI improvements, including default themes for different operating systems and new download manager.

*Addons.mozilla.org integration in the Add-ons window.

And the browser wars continue...

According to a recent report by Net Applications, Firefox is still slowly but surely eating precious usage share of Internet Explorer (see graph below):

Browser Version Market Share for February, 2008

Here are some addititional graphs to see the whole picture:

Usage share of Internet Explorer, 1994–2008

Usage share of Mozilla Firefox, 2004-2008

O' Oh, I smell a sense of urgency from Microsoft. But, let's not get too excited about this yet. IE could still bounce back if the new version can make wonders and can deliver some really killer features. However, I can only say that Firefox's response to IE 8 is clear, and that's to “Bring it on!”

Free and Open Source Text Editors with GUI

2011-10-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

A text editor is simply an application used for editing plain text files. Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be utilized to change configuration files and programming language source code.

Typical features of text editors include search and replace, copy, cut and paste, text formatting, undo and redo, importing, and filtering. Some editors have special features and extra functions such as source code syntax highlighting and automatic completion. They are mostly used by software developers.

There are commercially available text editors with added functionality. However, thanks to some good citizens of the world, there are free excellent alternatives. Here is a list of valuable Free and Open Source text editors with graphical user interface (GUI).

jEdit
*jEdit is a text editor for programmers, available under the GNU General Public License. jEdit is written in Java and runs on Mac OS X, OS/2, Unix, VMS, and Windows. jEdit development was started in 1998. The founding author was Slava Pestov, who has since left the project, handing development to the open source community. jEdit includes Syntax highlighting that provides native support for over 130 file formats. Support for additional formats can be added manually using XML files. It supports UTF-8 and many other encodings. The application is highly customizable and can be extended with macros written in BeanShell, Jython, JavaScript and some other scripting languages.

ACE
*ACE is a platform-independent, collaborative text editor. It is a real-time cooperative editing system that allows multiple geographically dispersed users to view and edit a shared text document at the same time.

Bluefish
*Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, and it focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites.

Gedit
*Gedit is a free software, UTF-8 compatible text editor for the GNOME desktop environment. It is designed to have a clean, simple interface inspired by the ideals of the GNOME project. Gedit includes syntax highlighting and tabs for editing multiple files. It can edit remote files thanks to the GNOME VFS libraries. It supports a full undo and redo system as well as search and replace. Some advanced features of gedit include multilanguage spellchecking and a flexible plugin system allowing to dynamically add new features, for example snippets and integration with external applications. Minor features of gedit include line numbering, bracket matching, text wrapping, current line highlighting and automatic file backup.

Elvis
*Elvis is a powerful vi/ex clone, i.e. it resembles the Unix text editor "vi" very much but adds quite a few commands and features. Elvis is written by Steve Kirkendall and is distributed under the Clarified Artistic License which is used by Perl. Elvis is the version of vi that comes with Slackware and KateOS.

Geany
*Geany is a text editor using the GTK2 toolkit with basic features of an integrated development environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages. It supports many filetypes and has some nice features.

Kate
*Kate is a text editor for KDE. The acronym "Kate" stands for "KDE advanced text editor". Kate has been part of the kdebase package since KDE release 2.2 (August 15, 2002). Because of the KParts technology which is part of KDE, it is possible to embed Kate as an editing component in any other KDE application. The integrated development environment KDevelop and the web development environment Quanta Plus are two of the major KDE applications that make use of Kate as an editing component.

Features of Kate include:
* Syntax highlighting engine, extensible via XML files
* Search and replace text using regular expressions
* Code folding capabilities for Java, C++, C, PHP, Python and others.
* Integrated shell
* Keep multiple documents open in one window
* Named session support (known as "projects" before KDE version 2.5)
* Plugins support
* Basic word completion
* Drag and drop text editing
* Interpuncts are used to denote space characters

Leo
*Leo (Literate Editor with Outlines) is a text editor that features outlines with clones as its central tool of organization and navigation. Leo is written in Python and uses the Tk GUI toolkit. It is fully scriptable using Python and can be extended with plugins. Leo supports formats used in literate programming, and uses some ideas of the concept. The main idea is the concurrent development of code and documentation by keeping the two close together, while maintaining independence from the code sequence by using named outline elements called chunks.

SciTE
*SciTE or SCIntilla based Text Editor is a cross-platform text editor written by Neil Hodgson using the Scintilla editing component. It is licensed under a minimal version of the Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer. The current version is 1.75, released on November 21, 2007. Lightweight and built for speed, it is designed mainly for source editing, and performs syntax highlighting and inline function reference for many different languages. There is a standalone .exe available also, ideal for USB flash drives including U3-compatible models. SciTE shares some features with other editors that are also based on the Scintilla editing component.

Scribes
*Scribes is a text editor for GNOME that is simple, slim and sleek, yet powerful. Scribes focuses on streamlining your workflow. It does so by ensuring common and repetitive operations are intelligently automated. And also by eliminating factors that prevent you from focusing on your tasks. The result is a text editor that provides a fluid user experience. An editor that is easy and fun to use. And an editor that ensures the safety of your documents at all times.

TinyMCE
*TinyMCE, also known as the Tiny Moxiecode Content Editor, is a platform-independent web-based JavaScript/HTML WYSIWYG editor control, released as open source software under the LGPL by Moxiecode Systems AB. It has the ability to convert HTML textarea fields or other HTML elements to editor instances. TinyMCE is designed to easily integrate with content management systems. TinyMCE integrates with many different open source systems, such as Mambo, Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress.

Will Real Python Hackers Please Stand Up

2011-10-08T05:43:00.000-07:00

Will Real Python Hackers Please Stand Up: Filipino Python hackers and enthusiasts, may I have your attention please. Several months ago, I emailed Guido van Rossum , Python’s author and BDFL( Benevolent Dictator For Life), asking him for some advice on organizing a PUG( Python User Group) here in the Philippines. To my surprise, I got a quick reply from him with some instructions on how to get it started. But time did not allow me to take some actions immediately until now.

I realize that this blog could help spread my desire in starting a PUG with the help of course from those who are interested and passionate of the Python Programming Language. The benefits of having a user group is plenty just like the importance of having Linux User Groups as most of you might know or even involved with. We can gain more knowledge from each other as none of us is as smart as all of us. We can also provide some technical help to those who are just beginning to learn the language as a great way of helping the open source community.

To those who are interested, you can leave a comment here and we can keep in touch later.

I will end this post with a quote from a bestselling author named Stephen Covey. He said,

“Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.”

Think about it.

UPDATE 1: Pinoy PUG is now up and running!

Free/Open-source Optical Disk Authoring Software

2011-10-08T05:42:00.000-07:00

Optical disc authoring software, most commonly known as CD/DVD burning application is computer software for authoring optical discs such as CD-ROMs and DVDs. An optical disc recorder is necessary to use such software.

Creating an optical disc typically involves first making an optical disc image with a full file system designed for the optical disc, and then actually burning the image to the disc. Many programs create the disk image and burn in one bundled application, such that end-users do not even know the distinction.

Though most Linux distributions have cdrtools (standard open source optical disc authoring software) installed, there are other excellent and easy-to-use CD/DVD burning programs that are available for Linux.

Here are some of the finest free/open-source optical disk authoring software:

Brasero
Brasero is a free disc-burning program for Unix-like systems, which serves as a graphical front-end (using GTK+) to cdrtools, growisofs, and (optionally) libburn. One of the lead developers, Luis Medinas, is a contributor for other projects such as Muine (audio player) and Beagle (search tool), both written in C# using Mono. He is a Gentoo Developer involved in the Gentoo Gnome Team, and maintains miscellaneous applications for the GNOME project.[1] The software itself has been reviewed in a few places.

AcetoneISO
AcetoneISO is a disk image manipulator for GNU/Linux.

It is a feature-rich and complete software application to manage CD/DVD images. For example it can Mount typical proprietary images formats of the Windows world and do plenty of other things.

It uses common open source tools to achieve its goals such as FUSEISO.

Bashburn
Bashburn is no more than a Terminal User Interface (TUI) frontend based of the CD burning shell script called BashBurn for Linux; this originally does not have the best eye-candy CD-burning UI, nevertheless, MyBashBurn uses dialog boxes/functions which draws (using ncurses) windows onto the screen. MyBashBurn dialog boxes offer good functionality, and has very good capabilities of automatically finding dependencies and auto detecting devices CD/DVD RW. In short, do not reinvent the wheel - just let MyBashBurn do what you want it to do.

MyBashBurn can burn data Cd's, music Cd's, multisession Cd's. It can burn and create ISO files. It can burn bin/cue files, create mp3s, oggs and flac files. Supports burning DVD-images and data DVDs, and other funny options. Also makes use of advanced and extensive regular expressions for the control of the capabilities of backend applications to burn and create audio files. MyBashBurn depends on cdrecord and other backend applications, so basically if your writing device works with it, MyBashBurn will work flawlessly.

cdrdao
cdrdao records audio or data CD-Rs in Disk-At-Once mode based on a textual description of the CD contents. The cdrdao program runs from the command line and has no graphical user interface, except for third-party ones such as K3b (Linux) or XDuplicator (windows).

cdrdao is cross-platform software and is reported to work on FreeBSD, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, Microsoft Windows, OS/2, UnixWare, and Mac OS X.

Exact Audio Copy, an advanced CD-ripping software package, relies upon CDRDAO code in order to provide CD-burning functionality.

GnomeBaker
GnomeBaker is part of the GNOME desktop environment.

The GnomeBaker offers many features for authoring CDs that surpass the basic Nautilus CD/DVD burning capabilities. Among these are the possibility to create an audio cd from existing sound files and other useful things.

An overview of available functions is given here:
* Create data CDs.
* Blank RW disks.
* Burn DVDs.
* Copy data CDs.
* Copy audio CDs.
* Support multisession burning.
* Record to and burn from existing CD ISO images.
* Can burn via SCSI and ATAPI on Linux kernels 2.4 and 2.6. Basically if cdrecord works, then GnomeBaker will work.
* Drag and drop to create data CDs (including drag and drop to/from the Nautilus file manager).
* Create audio CDs from existing WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg files.
* Integrate with GConf for storage of application settings.

Graveman
Graveman is a free software CD burning tool for Linux. It is technically a GTK+ front-end for cdrecord, mkisofs, readcd, sox, flac, dvd+rw-format, dvd+rw-tools and cdrdao.

Currently, Graveman supports the following:
* creating audio CDs
* creating data CDs and DVDs
* recording to and from ISO images
* CD copying
* erasing rewritable CDs and DVDs
* burning multisession CDs

K3b
K3b (from KDE Burn Baby Burn) is a CD and DVD authoring application for the KDE desktop for Unix-like computer operating systems. It provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD/DVD, as well as more advanced tasks such as burning eMoviX CD/DVDs. It can also perform direct disc-to-disc copies. The program has many default settings which can be customized by more experienced users. The actual disc recording in K3b is done by the command line utilities cdrecord or wodim, cdrdao, and growisofs. As of version 1.0, K3b features a built-in DVD ripper.

K3b was voted LinuxQuestions.org's Multimedia Utility of the Year (2006) by the majority (70%) of voters.

As is the case with most KDE applications, K3b is written in the C++ programming language and uses the Qt GUI toolkit. Released under the GNU General Public License, k3b is free software.

Why GIMP is Better than Adobe Photoshop

2011-10-08T05:41:00.001-07:00

I’m no graphics professional, but like probably most of you, I do need to edit photos from time to time. I used Adobe Photoshop before since it is the most widely used image manipulating software. But when I started using Linux, things changed.

Since GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is included by default in most Linux distros, I had no other choice but to try it. I then became more and more comfortable using it that I completely forgot about Photoshop. I know that I can still install Photoshop in Linux through software virtualization, but no thanks.

Here are my reasons why I made the switch and why I think GIMP is better than Photoshop:

1. GIMP has a simple and easy to use Graphical User Interface compared to a more cluttered working environment in Photoshop.

2. GIMP has a way lighter footprint than Photoshop. You don’t need plenty of disk space to install GIMP. The size of Gimp’s installer is less than 20MB; Photoshop could be around 600MB.

3. GIMP is wicked fast. The minimum recommended RAM requirement to run GIMP is only 128MB. The latest version of Photoshop will probably need 512MB at minimum.

4. GIMP has the right amount of essential features that I need. I think Photoshop is way too bloated and some of its included features are unnecessary.

5. GIMP can read and write most Photoshop native PSD format files, but Photoshop does not support GIMP's native XCF file format.

6. GIMP has a more powerful automation than Photoshop.

7. GIMP's open development model means that it is much more readily available on more operating systems, plugin development is not limited by developers and as such has no need to compete with Photoshop; by comparison, access to Adobe Photoshop's SDK requires authorization.

8. GIMP is available at no cost compared to Photoshop’s hefty price tag.

How about you? Do you also feel that GIMP is better than Adobe Photoshop?

Free/Open-source Spreadsheet Programs

2011-10-08T05:40:00.001-07:00

A computer application that replaced paper worksheets is called a spreadsheet. It shows multiple cells that together make up a grid consisting of rows and columns, each cell containing either alphanumeric text or numeric values. A spreadsheet cell may otherwise hold a formula that classifies how the contents of that cell is to be calculated from the contents of any other cell (or combination of cells) each time any cell is updated. Spreadsheets are often used for financial information because of their capacity to re-calculate the entire sheet automatically after an alteration to a single cell.

If you think that the proprietary and expensive Microsoft Excel is the only available and capable spreadsheet software, then think again because you are wrong. There are quite a number of free/open-source spreadsheet programs that are almost as good or even at par with Excel.

Here are some of the most known free/open-source software spreadsheet applications:

Gnumeric
Gnumeric is part of the GNOME desktop and has Windows installers available. It is intended to be a free replacement for proprietary spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel, which it broadly and openly emulates.

Gnumeric has the ability to import and export data in several file formats, including CSV, Microsoft Excel, HTML, LaTeX, Lotus 1-2-3, OpenDocument and Quattro Pro; its native format is the Gnumeric file format (.gnm or .gnumeric), an XML file compressed with gzip. It includes all of the spreadsheet functions of the North American edition of Microsoft Excel and many functions unique to Gnumeric. Pivot tables and conditional formatting are not yet supported but are planned for future versions.

Gnumeric's accuracy has helped it to establish a niche among people using it for statistical analysis and other scientific tasks. For improving the accuracy of Gnumeric, the developers are cooperating with the R Project.

GNU Oleo
GNU Oleo is a lightweight free software spreadsheet software package. Oleo was originally designed as a text-based spreadsheet (using the curses library).

Oleo is much older than the GNU Gnumeric spreadsheet (a part of the GNOME desktop system) and has fewer capabilities. It is also not as active as a project, not having had a release since 2001.

KSpread
KSpread is part of KOffice, an integrated office suite for the KDE Desktop Environment.

Among KSpread features are multiple sheets per document, assorted formatting possibilities, support for more than 100 built-in functions, templates, chart, spell-check, hyperlinks, data sorting and scripting with Python, Ruby and Javascript.

KSpread native format is XML, compressed with ZIP. However, KSpread has the ability to import in several spreadsheet formats, including Microsoft Excel, Applix Spreadsheet, Quattro Pro, CSV and OpenOffice.org Calc.

OpenOffice.org Calc
OpenOffice.org Calc is a component of the OpenOffice.org software package.

Calc is similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc is capable of opening and saving spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format. It provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing based on the layout of the user's data. Calc is also capable of writing spreadsheets directly as PDF files.

The default file format for OpenOffice.org 2.0 Calc can be set to either Microsoft Excel or the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF). Calc also supports a wide range of other file formats, for both opening and saving files.

As with the entire OpenOffice.org suite, Calc can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, Calc is free software.

SIAG
SIAG (Scheme in a grid) is a spreadsheet using a SIOD engine or base. The grid, siag is fast and very configurable. Suitable for small unix distributions, it was selected by DSL to provide a spreadsheet inside their fifty megabyte system footprint. Consequently, siag can be used on older PCs with their limited memory and disk space.

Language modules for C, SIOD, Guile, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc. permit extensive control over input and output data. Any unix shell can further script siag grids to display cells in algorithmic form.

Simple Spreadsheet
Simple Spreadsheet is a web-based spreadsheet program written in JavaScript, HTML, CSS and PHP. It features formulas, charts, formats, cell/row merging, cell locking, keyboard navigation, etc. Simple Spreadsheet is released under the GNU General Public License, and is thus free software.

Custom macros can be written in Javascript. Javascript is also used as the default (human-readable) data format. Future versions will contain collaborative features to allow many people working simultaneously together on one sheet. The charts are generated on the server-side using a PHP library called JpGraph. On the client side they are referenced with a function inside a formula.

Simple Spreadsheet can be used with all common browsers like Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, and Internet Explorer. Safari may be used, but was not yet tested.

wikiCalc
wikiCalc is a web application, created by Dan Bricklin, that allows for the creation and editing of spreadsheets through a wiki-style user-editable interface. It is currently released as version 1.0 for use on Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix, and other platforms that can run the Perl language.

The product was envisioned in 2005 by Bricklin, who 27 years earlier created VisiCalc, the first commercial spreadsheet program for the personal computer. Version Alpha 0.1 was released for alpha testing in November 2005. Version 1.0 was released on January 25, 2007. wikiCalc is written in the Perl programming language.