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Free Software, Free Society - the Free Software Thread
October 14, 2009 - 3:21pm
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The Free Software Foundation defines "free software" in the following way:
Free Software Definition
The following are some programmes that you might like to try out that meet (or almost
meet) the free software definition. All are licensed under either the GNU General Public
License (GPL), the Lesser GNU General Public License (LGPL) or the Mozilla Public License
(MPL).
Most of these programmes are "cross platform", with versions available for Windows, MacOSX,
GNU/Linux and sometimes versions of Unix and other operating systems.
Web Browsers:
Firefox
Flock
K-Meleon (Windows only)
Sea Monkey
E-Mail and Calendaring
Thunderbird
Web Page Creation
Kompozer
(Composer feature in Sea Monkey)
Office Suite (Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Databases)
OpenOffice
Word Processing
Abiword
Spreadsheets
Gnumeric (primarily for GNU/Linux, the Windows version is a bit unstable)
Desktop Publishing
Scribus
Vector Graphics
Inkscape
Photo/Image Editing
The Gimp
FTP
Filezilla
Podcast Receiver
Juice
Media Players
VLC Media Player
Miro
Real Alternative (Windows only)
Quicktime Alternative (Windows only)
"Stand Alone" RSS Feed Agregator
RSS Owl
Instant Messaging
Pidgin
Audio Editing
Audacity
Video Editing (simple)
Avidemux
3D Modelling and Animation
Blender
CD/DVD Burning
Infrarecorder (Windows only)
Streaming Audio Capture
Streamripper
Hopefully this is enough to get you started, so that you can begin to free your computer from the shackles of proprietary software.
Experiment and have fun trying out some new stuff!
Well done, rr. Fight the Power.
Any free (and fun!) games that don't take a long time to download? I'm stuck in a hospital residence until next Monday, with lousy internet access.
Frozen Bubble is possibly THE most addictive game ever.
If you want to try it online first, click here.
Here's where you download it if you're using Windows.
Thanks Michelle, I'll have a look!
You might add photography:
Digikam
f-Spot
My favorite music player:
Amarok
If you are going to go with free software, why not go the whole way and download an open source operating system. There are hundreds of various Linux distributions out there for the downloading. Most are highly configurable and in spite of some of the stories of past problems configuring, most are a piece of cake to install. I am not a big fan of the KDE desktop so have settled on Ubuntu with the Gnome interface. For my purposes, its quicker, safer and a breath of fresh air after a career using Windows. Virus control at this point is something other people worry about. Paying for software that doesn't live up to expectations is not an issue and software piracy is something Linux users don't need to do to cut costs.
Amerok is nice and I have used it but my preference is Banshee, works well with an iPod. I installed "Sound Converter" with Synaptic to take care of some of the more obscure audio file formats.
deleted double post.
Google Picassa for Linux is handy for cataloguing digital pictures and nice for uploading to the net.
For free games:
The Battle for WesnothThe Battle for Wesnoth is a free, turn-based tactical strategy game with a high fantasy theme, featuring both single-player, and online/hotseat multiplayer combat. Fight a desperate battle to reclaim the throne of Wesnoth, or take hand in any number of other adventures... more »
The Battle for Wesnoth team is proud to release version 1.6 of The Battle for Wesnoth. We really hope you enjoy Wesnoth 1.6 as much as we enjoyed creating it. You can learn more and read the in-depth, translated release notes » -->Download Wesnoth 1.6.5 (stable):
Download Wesnoth 1.7.6 (development):
Play Grand Strategy
Just installed Linux Mint 7 ( http://www.linuxmint.com/ ). A beautiful desktop.
ETA: With ext4. Blazingly fast.
I quite agree...but if users "get used" to running free software applications on their proprietary operating systems then it's very easy to make the switch over to a GNU/Linux operating system.
I kind of like the KDE desktop...but I'm running a Gnome desktop version of Linux Mint 7 on this notebook. I run Ubuntu Studio edition on my main desktop right now...and have been running versions of Linux with the "lighter weight" XFCE desktop on some older machines...of PII and PIII vintage.
I see that there is a bit of work being done on porting some of the KDE desktop applications over to Windows...so that Windows users can eventually get a taste of what we GNU/Linux users have been enjoying for years....but the KDE for Windows stuff is a little on the experimental side right now.
I absolutely LOVE AmaRoK as an audio player. AmaRoK 1.4 is fantastic...for playing your audio files, streaming audio, subscribing to podcasts etc. AmaRoK 2.0 still needs some work though. I have 2.0 on my Linux Mint 7 machine and some of the features that I used to love on 1.4 aren't there yet...but I guess they will come.
For photography, I've always kind of liked "Gwenview" on GNU/Linux
Google Picasa is freeware but it is proprietary software. The license does not give you the "four freedoms" of free software as defined in the "free software definition".
I don't have an iPod. I have a portable music player made by Cowon and "out of the box" it plays patent-free audio formats like ogg vorbis and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). CD's ripped to FLAC format are compressed without any of the losses that you get with "lossy" audio formats like mp3. Of course the files are quite a bit larger.
The Cowon players are the only ones I know of that will play FLAC files.
In related news, Dell Computers has been obliged to
REFUND A PC USER FOR REJECTING WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEM.
Dell refunds user for rejecting Windows.
HOO RAH!!!!
Firefox now offers a lovely bell add-on -
"Plays a Tibetan bowl chime at random intervals to evoke mindfulness."
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4997
It's possible, with some difficulty to get a refund on the Windows license. I've seen a few stories on the net over the years where folks have gone to small claims court to get a refund.
On the bright side, Dell does offer a limited number of computers for sale with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed. You have to dig through their website to get one though...they don't actively promote them.
Another way to install Ubuntu Linux on your Windows machine is to use "Wubi" (Windows Ubuntu Installer).
There are a couple of ways to do it.
One way is to simply pop a Ubuntu disk into your Windows machine, and then the "Wubi" installer dialogue box pops up on your screen. You tell Windows how much hard drive space you want to allocate to Ubuntu, do a few simple mouse clicks and in a few minutes, it's installed.
When you boot up, you'll have the option of either going into Windows or going into Ubuntu Linux.
I did this on my office machine and to tell you the truth, even though Ubuntu Linux is running "inside" of Windows XP as a programme, it seems to run faster than Windows XP.
The other way to do a "Wubi install" is simply to download "Wubi" from here.
You just run the installer and it'll grab Ubuntu off the net and install it. Obviously you'll need a high speed internet connection to do this.
Another way to make use of a GNU/Linux operating system...even if you are using a Windows computer is when you're doing secure transactions like online banking or online purchasing...particularly if you're not using your own computer and might be worried about how secure that Windows system is.
Most GNU/Linux distros these days can be run in "live CD" or "live DVD" mode...or can be installed to a USB thumb drive.
So, you just boot the machine from the "live CD/DVD" or USB thumb drive, do whatever transactions you have to do, and then when you're finished your work, just remove the media and reboot the machine back into Windows.
There won't be any records of that transaction stored on that machine's hard drive.
The beauty of GNU/Linux is that there isn't just one distribution...there are dozens of them. So, if you happen to have an old first generation Pentium with limited RAM and hard drive space, you can find a GNU/Linux version that will make that system run. It might not be fast but it'll work!
One of the other common "tragedies" that I often hear about is when someone takes their Windows computer into a repair shop. Usually the machines are going to the shop due to virus or spyware infections or perhaps a corrupted Windows registry.
And these poorly trained techs "solution" is frequently to completely wipe the computer users hard drive and to then re-install Windows. The computer user ends up completely losing all of their personal data in the process. Often these poorly trained techs don't even tell the computer user that's whats going to happen.
GNU/Linux comes to the rescue here too. You can just boot your machine up using a "live" version of GNU/Linux, copy your personal data off the machine onto an external hard drive or USB thumb drive. Then once you're satisfied that you've saved everything you need to save you can do your Windows re-install (not that I'd want to do that ;) )
Knoppix is usually the best distro to use for "rescuing" Windows machines. I've used it plenty of times.
For DVD or Video CD authoring you might want to try:
DeVeDe
The Windows version is available here
Windows users might also want to try DVD Flick
Nice freeware - Thanks!
Done. So my new notebook is dual boot. Thanks for the reminder, rr.
I'm having a little trouble getting the Linux OS to connect to the wireless network in the house, however. Helpful advice cheerfully accepted. Heh.
I have become a devotee of Mint Linux -- Through freedom came elegance. It is based on Ubuntu, artfully presented, and everything but DVD decryption right out of the box. No need for libraries and codes to play media. They're already there. And software ... a dream. Start typing what you're looking for and an option on the right is 'Install". It is a Gnome desktop but I can't live without some K apps such as Digikam. Luckily they co-exist quite nicely.
Is sea monkey just the old netscape suite updated? So it is a bit more than a web browser. (I only use it for composing webpages and it does it well enough for me. And I have always found the learning curve for blender to be like a thousand meter cliff. Its start page is horrific and has been since the dawn of time.
I use art of illusion which has an easy learning curve. Art of illusion is free but it has copywrite.
Perhaps you should include some screen capture programs too?
I now have a good linux screencapture program (with audio capture). Only problem is that it saves in ogg video format and my video editing program does not read ogg.
Brian
Sea Monkey is what used to be the "Mozilla Web Suite" which was Netscape before they released the software code to the community. Sea Monkey uses the "Gecko" rendering engine just as does Firefox, Flock, K-Meleon, Galeon, Epiphany and probably a few others I can't think of off the top of my head. Some of the Firefox extensions will also work with Sea Monkey.
I can't comment on Blender, not being someone into animation stuff. But there seems to be alot of online help with it including this Blender Wikibook.
I find it a bit strange that a free software video editing programme can't handle a file that's in the ogg theora video format. Wonder what you're using? My video editing experience is quite limited... but I've had difficulty from time to time with Quicktime .mov files using free software video editing tools. I have a video camera that shoots video in that format.
As for screencapture programmes I usually just use whatever is installed with the distro...Ksnapshot for KDE based distros and Gnome Screenshot for Gnome based distros.
I'm also a Linux Mint fan...current version is Linux Mint 7. They usually build around the Gnome desktop first...but also have an XFCE desktop version for older machines with a little less computer horsepower and a KDE version for KDE fans.
I'm not the biggest Gnome fan in the world...always kind of preferred KDE but I really like what the Linux Mint folks have done with their Gnome desktop.
Many GNU/Linux developers don't include proprietary audio and video codecs, add-ons etc. in some distributions for a combination of political and legal reasons.
They require you to install proprietary stuff yourself outside of the "default out of the box" installation. That way if for example you live in the U.S. where they have the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), you take whatever legal risks there are installing proprietary stuff instead of the developer.
In the case of Linux Mint, the main developer is based in Ireland and his attitude is "screw the U.S." and he includes this stuff in the "out of the box" install. But he also makes a version of Linux Mint available that doesn't include patented audio/video codecs for folks in the U.S.
In the case of Debian (the distro that Ubuntu and others are based on), they don't even include Firefox but instead distribute a modified version of Firefox called "Ice Weasel". The Debian developers play very close to the "free software definition" and consider certain "branding" rules on the distribution of Firefox by the Mozilla Foundation to be too restrictive.
So, they stripped out all Mozilla Foundation "branding" and distribute Ice Weasel instead.
Edited to add....
Hmmm...hard to keep up-to-date with this stuff. Apparently "Ice Weasel" is now called "GNU Ice Cat"
Is it a problem with the wifi card device driver or is it a connection problem? I know that wifi cards that are based on the "Broadcom" chipset can be a royal pain in the ass...as I understand Broadcom wouldn't release the specs of their cards to the community so that free software drivers could be developed.
Wifi cards built with the "Atheros" chipset should pretty much work right out of the box as they have free software drivers. So, if you have to install an "add-on" wifi card and either currently use or plan to use GNU/Linux look for cards based on this chipset...they're "free software-friendly".
Question - if you already have a bunch of programs installed on a Windows computer and then you decide to do a dual boot install of Linux, do you have to reinstall all the programs you've already installed in Windows?
Also, would you have to format your hard drive in order to install Linux with your Windows program?
I'd like to move to Linux entirely since pretty most of the programs I use now are free software, but there is one game that my son LOVES and that he plays with his friends that he can't live without - and wouldn't you know it, the people who make the game don't do one that's compatible with Linux.
So a dual boot is probably the best route for me. I just wonder how much of a pain in the ass it would be to do it, that's all.
The short answer is "No." The long answer is still "no" but leads to a whole bunch of questions like disk size? Available disk space? Desktop or Notebook? Reliable backup?