Open Source Resource Thread

[Decolonize The Left]

General open source info:
SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/)
Open Source Initiative (http://www.opensource.org/)

Operating System:
Ubuntu (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.ubuntu.com/) / Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/)

Word Processing:
OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/)

Web Browsing:
Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/)

PDF Viewing:
Sumatra PDF (http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/index.html)

Chat:
Pidgin (http://pidgin.im/)

Email:
Mozilla Thunderbird (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/)

Post below, share and discuss.

- August

[Q]

Operating System:
Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) / Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/)

[Decolonize The Left]

I'll update as it moves along.

- August

[The Idler]

Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software - GNU Project ... (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)

[Nicolai]

I'm suprised how little dedicated this thread is; not a reply since 2010?

OS:
GNU/Linux Flavor (All the awesome people have this)
Advanced:
- Arch Linux: Easiest of the three, but specialized for the i686/x86-64 architecture. No compiling, and has a help-base useful for all of these distros.
- Funtoo/Gentoo: Most advanced, as you configure everything from scratch, part from programming. If you want absolute controll over every aspect of your computer, use these distros. Also, installing this will make you learn more, then you would in a day, then using other distros in months.
Moderate:
- Debian: Great for servers, and for newbies who wants to learn Linux by heart, but you'll need a book to guide you through the way.
- Utotu: Based on Gentoo, but ready set-up and FSF-approved
Easy-mode:
- Lubuntu: Very lightweight alternative to Ubuntu.
- gNewSense: Debian/Ubuntu based, FSF-approved
- Blag: The anarcho-distro! Altough have had none majpr updates in a while (so you'll have to upgrade the software manually, but it's easy)

Windows:
ReactOS - Easy, very compatible with Windows, twice as awesome, not evil and an open-source alternative for you who still just want a stable and ready configured Windows port.

Software:

Word Processing:
- LibreOffice: Based on OpenOffice, but is not run by the Oracle Company.

Browsing:
- Midori: Lightweight, based on WebKit.

Chat:
- Jitsi: VoIP, Video-chat and IM, Use this instead of Skype, Google Talk, MSN/Yahoo! and so on. Also instead of pidgin, as the never version has a security hole with spewing DNS info ( might get fixed later on )

Games:
- Sauerbraten (Cube 2): FPS, Astonishing graphics. Has a in-game level editior where you can make maps WHILE playing.

- AssaultCube: FPS, Based on the Cube engine. If you like CS, then this is the open-source alternative for you.

- FreeCiv: Strategy: A clone of the Civilization games (up to III), time consuming, but a most epic game, and can be considered even better then the original games.

- Frets of Fire: Guitar Halo clone. Nice, has loads of songs online, and copies the game feeling completly, just with a keyboard.

- Amnesia: Dark Decent: Horror, IMO is the best thing ever made since Doom III. Has really good grapics, though not free as in free beer, but made by indies (The staff consist from 5 people connected just through the net)

- All ID games (open-source that is): FPS, Doom.series, Quake-series all get released open-source (enigens at least). One of the few mainstream companies that give out their source, and one of the first.

( Yes, I know it's a lot of games, but it's was all I could think of in the moment. )

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I prefer Claws Mail over Thunderbird. Aesthetically, it's somewhat bland, but it uses far fewer resources than Thunderbird.

claws-mail.org

As far as games ... Warmux/Hedgewars are pretty fun. Clones of the "Worms" turn-based games.

So is Secret Maryo Chronicles (yes, with a 'y') if you want a classic Super Mario Bros style platformer
secretmaryo.org

[Delenda Carthago]

Open source ecology: http://opensourceecology.org/

Reprap 3D printer project: http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

[Human Lefts]

There's a documentary on this movement called Revolution OS. It's available for streaming through Netflix.

[Q]

There's a documentary on this movement called Revolution OS. It's available for streaming through Netflix.

It's also quite old (2001).

Anyway, totally forgot about this thread.

Since Nicolai's (incomplete) post last year, there have been some developments:
- Browsing:
Chromium: The open source project that Google uses as a testing bed for its Chrome. It has all the functionality but without the Google tracking crap.

- Window Managers and Desktop Environments:
KDE: My favorite for now. A highly customizable DE that has everything you expect from a basic desktop (http://kde.org/applications/). Based on the Qt toolkit.

Gnome: The other "big one" of the DE's. Their design philosophy is to keep it simple. If that means less options, then tough luck. Based on the GTK+ toolkit.

Cinnamon: With Gnome's 3.0 release, a huge shock went through the community. Many thought the new "gnome shell" was utter crap. So Cinnamon was born. They use a more traditional approach to things, but don't compromise for a modern look.

MATE: Another Gnome offspring following the 3.0 debacle. Less known though.

Xfce: Yet another GTK+ desktop. This time much more lightweight and although less heavy in dedicated applications, it can of course rely on a vast array of GTK+ apps that exist.

Unity: The default desktop on Ubuntu (and so far the only distro to carry it). Although it is supposed to be open source, Canonical thinks the world is not quite ready to handle it.

- Players:
Clementine: A fork that continues the old Amarok 1.4 saga and improves on it. Lightweight and awesome KDE player.

Amarok: Another nice player. Lost much of its userbase after they introduced the 2.0 interface, which to be frank is clunky and non-practical. But each to his own.

Rhythmbox: A Gnome-world player, originally modeled after iTunes.

Banshee: Another Gnome-world player, makes extensive use of mono (the open source implementation of C#) and has a bit more emphasis on internet generated media.

- IRC clients: We have better ways to chat on #che-lives!
Konversation: All-round KDE-world irc client. Top of its class.

Quassel: KDE-world irc client that can uses as sort-of server-client model where a central core can have several attached clients. Useful for remotely chatting on your work via your home computer's irc node.

Xchat: Popular GTK+ client.

Irssi: If you like chatting in terminals.

What about the web?

- CMS:
Joomla: Popular platform, very userfriendly and yet versatile.

Wordpress: Originally a blog, but can be made into a CMS. Very easy to use.

Drupal: Extremely flexible, yet a high learning curve. Also, I'm told that Drupal 6 has serious security issues. Stick to Drupal 7.

Ok, I'll leave it at that for now.

I currently use Gentoo and Kubuntu on my laptops and professionally work with OS X, which is also quite a nice system in that everything is so well damn integrated. The open source world can learn a lot from it.

[RedCloud]

I think Ubuntu is a terrible operating system.

Okay maybe "terrible" is over exaggerating, considering the fact that I'm using it now... But it's certainly not as many good as other Linux distros.
Also, Google helps develop Ubuntu, they use it on their company computers. Normally I'm not one to just hate on Google because they're successful but it'd be nice to not have a big company in all of my system software.

Why not just include Linux + a list of distros as an open source resource?
http://distrowatch.com/
^ That site is easily the best for finding new distros (be warned, distro hopping is no-good and is counterproductive... It's a bad habit) and getting news/information about them.

P.S.
Pretty much any flavor of Linux is an "Anarcho-distro" or is socialist... No need to look for one that specifically promotes one or the other. ;)

[PC LOAD LETTER]

It's also quite old (2001).

Anyway, totally forgot about this thread.

Since Nicolai's (incomplete) post last year, there have been some developments:
- Browsing:
Chromium: The open source project that Google uses as a testing bed for its Chrome. It has all the functionality but without the Google tracking crap.

- Window Managers and Desktop Environments:
KDE: My favorite for now. A highly customizable DE that has everything you expect from a basic desktop (http://kde.org/applications/). Based on the Qt toolkit.

Gnome: The other "big one" of the DE's. Their design philosophy is to keep it simple. If that means less options, then tough luck. Based on the GTK+ toolkit.

Cinnamon: With Gnome's 3.0 release, a huge shock went through the community. Many thought the new "gnome shell" was utter crap. So Cinnamon was born. They use a more traditional approach to things, but don't compromise for a modern look.

MATE: Another Gnome offspring following the 3.0 debacle. Less known though.

Xfce: Yet another GTK+ desktop. This time much more lightweight and although less heavy in dedicated applications, it can of course rely on a vast array of GTK+ apps that exist.

Unity: The default desktop on Ubuntu (and so far the only distro to carry it). Although it is supposed to be open source, Canonical thinks the world is not quite ready to handle it.
...

I'm going to be a dirty hipster and add awesome (http://awesome.naquadah.org/) and dwm (http://dwm.suckless.org/) to this list. Dwm is nice, but annoying because you need to recompile to update the config (and be well-versed in C to do any meaningful customization). Awesome is a fork of dwm that uses an external config file written in Lua.


I use awesome on both my main PC and my netbook. It's especially useful on the small netbook screen because I don't need to stop and resize/move windows anywhere near as often as with a solely floating WM (they're both tiling/floating hybrids).



If I'm, say, testing my wireless network's security, I can just hit winkey+enter as many times as I need terminals to pop up, and they automatically organize themselves based on the layout I picked with winkey+space or winkey+shift+space (forward/back). Move focus between windows with winkey+j and winkey+k. Move between desktops ('tags') with winkey+left or winkey+right or winkey+number. Move focused window to a new tag with winkey+shift+number. You damn near don't need a mouse (obviously you will in some cases, but it's nice to not use one as much).

[upgrayedd]

It's also quite old (2001).

Anyway, totally forgot about this thread.

Since Nicolai's (incomplete) post last year, there have been some developments:
- Browsing:
Chromium: The open source project that Google uses as a testing bed for its Chrome. It has all the functionality but without the Google tracking crap.

[removed by upgrayedd]

- CMS:
Joomla: Popular platform, very userfriendly and yet versatile.

Wordpress: Originally a blog, but can be made into a CMS. Very easy to use.

Drupal: Extremely flexible, yet a high learning curve. Also, I'm told that Drupal 6 has serious security issues. Stick to Drupal 7.
There's a security-focused ("hardened") fork of Chromium called Iridium out now. It's become apparent that even chromium can compromise security (to the extent that using a home computer exposes you, which is a lot, so this may be a moot point). The web site is (I'm under 25 posts, so no link)

iridiumbrowser.de

As far as CMSes go, if security is a concern, roll your own and parse a json or xml file for updates or something. No log ins, no commenting, all editing your site's files through ssh, or work on them locally and transmit via sftp (uses sshd, so if you have ssh access you have sftp access), etc. Wordpress, etc are swiss cheesed as far as vulns.