Open Source
Introduction
What is open source and what's so great about it? The main concept and reason why people use open source software is because it's absolutely, no questions asked, 150% FREE. Who doesn't love FREE things? Open source gets its name from the idea that users are able to view the source/code of the software and change it if they want. Open source software contains an open-source software license that allows all users to use/edit/copy/do everything to the code of the software. Now I know your probably asking if this stuff really works well, since a lot of "free" things in today's world are either a scam or just completely bad. However, Open source software comes in all shapes and sizes. There are many open source applications that work extremely well and in some cases better than their competing paid products from other companies, but you can not always be sure that every open source application available to download off the Internet is to your advantage. There will always be spamers, hackers, and other evil people trying to get you to download their free product. That is why you must be careful when downloading an application off the Internet especially when its free. There are many companies, such as Mozilla, that you can trust to provide with you good open source software.
Operating Systems
One of the most important and difficult pieces to a PC is the operating system or "OS". Operating systems can be fairly expensive. Windows XP costs $200 and Mac OS X costs $130. Some of the major open source operating systems are Linux based. They include Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, and many more. Open source operating systems have grown to be capable of doing MANY of the same tasks that other operating systems do. The open source operating systems are very simplistic.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu is a very good open source OS. Ubuntu is maintained and operated by a very large of both volunteer and paid professional programmers and developers. This community is built on the ideas of the Ubuntu Philosophy, which are that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. Ubuntu's free and open community makes updating very fast and easy.
One of the great things about Ubuntu is the terminal. The terminal in Ubuntu is NOT like that Windows DOS thing. The commands are easy and getting around your computer is simple. The Ubuntu command can be used for practically anything. Many of the programmers/developers love to use the command line because its more trusted and not as complex as a GUI interface program.
A great aspect of Ubuntu are the workstations. It lets you have up to 4 workstations(basically separate desktops) where you can move/keep specific windows, programs, or files. This makes it very easy to organize if you have a ton of windows and programs running at the same time. Ubuntu comes in many different shapes and sizes. They have created a group of -ubuntus that all share the same practices that Ubuntu does, but have different software, capabilities and necessities. Some examples of the different -ubuntus are: Ubuntu(normal), Edubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu. For more information on Ubuntu visit Ubuntu.com.
For the most part, you do not need to search the Internet to download Ubuntu programs. Instead, Ubuntu has a specific program where you can pick and choose which programs to have installed on your computer and when Ubuntu updates it will search for new programs to add. Ubuntu uses a variety of programs from GNOME, KDE, and other environments. These environments provide a variety of different areas to collect programs from. Think of it as though you are looking for a specific electronic device. You can look at Best Buy, but you can also look at Circuit City and other electronic retailers making it more ensured that somewhere they will have what you're looking for.
How To Download/Install Ubuntu
SUSE
SUSE is a very easy-to-use OS. It has just about everything you can want from an operating system(all of the programs and capabilities). You can browse the Internet, send E-mails, instant message your friends, organize digital photos, play movies and songs, and create documents, spreadsheets, and graphs. It can also be used to host websites or blogs, setup networks, and develop software. Basically, everything. SUSE, along with all other Linux OS's, is very safe and secure. SUSE uses an incredibly wide variety of open source programs from popular ones like Firefox and OpenOffice.org to newer less popular ones such as, Beagle and Xen. Here is a bigger list of the wide variety of applications and capabilities SUSE 10.1 has according to their web page(these are not the only applications and tools, just a select few):
Applications:
- AppArmor 2.0
- Firefox 1.5
- OpenOffice.org 2.0
- Beagle
- VoIP
- GIMP 2.2
- Xen 3 virtualization (preview)
- Mono
- Bluetooth
- Apache, CUPS, MySQL and PostgreSQL
- Commercial Software
- Xgl 3D desktop acceleration
Tools:
- Photo tools
- Easy wireless networking
- Security tools
SUSE shares both GNOME applications and KDE applications which offer a wider variety of choices when looking for a program to do what you want. The desktop layout is very simple and blends a variety of qualities among Windows, Apple, and other Linux OS's. This OS is highly recommended for beginners to Linux.
Applications
Open source applications are nearly endless. Some are better than others. There are open source applications for nearly everything.
Web Browsers
Firefox
The best open source web browser is by far Firefox. Firefox is from the Mozilla corporation which also produces Thunderbird(a very good open source email client). Firefox is so great for many reasons: 1)Tabbed browsing - allows you to have multiple web pages to flip through all on the same window 2)Gives you just the buttons you want - this includes choosing which toolbars to show 3)The different plugins, extensions, and extras you can add-on to Firefox to enhance its performance - check out the Firefox Add-ons to see what exactly you can add to Firefox.
Firefox Installation Instructions
KHTML
There are a few open source web browsers out there today that use KHTML. KHTML is a HTML layout engine developed by the KDE project. It is less error tolerant than its competitor Gecko layout engine which is used in Mozilla Firefox. It also includes some Internet Explorer quirks that allow more pages to be visible on it even though those quirks are not originally off of HTML. It is built on the new KPart framework and is written in C++. Applications that use KHTML include:
KHTML supports:
- HTML 4.01
- CSS 1
- CSS 2.1(exception of paged media)
- CSS 3 selectors and partially other selected features
- PNG, MNG, JPEG, GIF graphic formats
- DOM 1, 2 and partially 3
- ECMA-262/JavaScript 1.5
- Partial Scalable Vector Graphics support
IM Clients
GAIM
GAIM is one of the best open source IM clients available. It let's you sign in to multiple accounts and different types of accounts. Including: AIM, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Gadu-Gadu, GroupWise, IRC, Jabber, Napster, and Yahoo. This makes it much easier than having say your AIM program running along with ur Yahoo Messenger program and any others you have. Here, you can have all of your buddy lists in the same window of ONE program. GAIM also offers mail notifications which will let you know when your email account corresponding to your screen name gets mail. GAIM also includes chat rooms and file transfers.
How To Download/Install/Setup GAIM
Exodus
Exodus is a Jabber-based open source IM client. Unlike GAIM, you do not have the freedom of running multiple screen names at the same time. In fact, the only service available to run is Jabber. You can create a free Jabber account the first time you run the program just by entering a desired screen name for it. Exodus is no different in interface than other common IM clients. There is a buddy list window and the capabilities of adding buddies or groups to it.
How To Download/Install/Configure Exodus
Thunderbird
The Mozilla corporation has created another incredible open source application. Thunderbird is a fully-featured E-mail application. Thunderbird supports IMAP and POP mail protocols, as well as HTML mail formatting. You can easily import any existing E-mail accounts and E-mails. Thunderbird contains a "leading-edge" junk filter that every incoming message passes through helping rid spam and fake E-mails. The junk filter grows in knowledge of bad E-mails as you continue to mark messages as spam. Thunderbird also features anti-phishing protection which keeps scamming E-mails out of your inbox. Fake E-mails have grown to become a big problem now that people need so much security when they do online transactions. It also contains a number of advanced security features including:
- S/MIME
- Digital signing
- Message encryption
- Support for certificates and security devices
- Attachments open only with permission
Thunderbird also contains a software update feature which makes it easy to get the latest versions or fixes for Thunderbird. Some extra features include:
- Built-in RSS capabilities
- Powerful quick search
- Spell-checking
- Global inbox
- Deleting attachments
- Advanced message filtering
How To Download/Install/Configure Thunderbird
Word Processing
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice is a complete suite of word processing applications. Similar to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice includes a word processing application called Writer(similar to Word), a spreadsheet application called Calc(similar to Excel), a slideshow presenter/creator called Impress(similar to PowerPoint). There is also a database application called Base, a drawing application called Draw, and a math application called Math. Compared to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice has just as many capabilities if not more. It can run Microsoft Office files(such as .doc files). After you look and test out OpenOffice, you probably won't ever think of buying Microsoft Office or any other office suite again.
How To Download/Install OpenOffice.org
AbiWord
AbiWord is a word processing application that gets a lot done. Unlike OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office, AbiWord is only a word processing application not a suite. However, that doesn't mean the word processing application has any lesser value. AbiWord is compatible with all types of word processing files(such as OpenOffice.org documents, Microsoft Office documents, WordPerfect documents, and many more). AbiWord gives you many different layout styles and functions just like OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office. There are many plug-ins you can install for AbiWord that will make it do even more.
How To Download/Install AbiWord
Graphics
The GIMP
The GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a very good graphics/image editing application. The GIMP lets you do just about ANYTHING. It can handle jobs as simple as a paint job to image rendering and high quality photo retouching. The GIMP like many other open source programs has a number of plug-ins available and being created to expand the program. The GIMP uses an advanced scripting interface with a lot of buttongs similar to the toolbox in Paint on Windows. However, the buttons on the GIMP have a lot more capabilities than those on Paint. The following is a list of GIMP features on their web page(this is not a complete list of all the features the GIMP offers):
Painting
- Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone, etc.
- Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
- Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool
- Supports custom brushes and patterns
System
- Tile based memory management so image size is limited only by available disk space
- Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time
Advanced Manipulation
- Full alpha channel support
- Layers and channels
- Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
- Editable text layers
- Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
- Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy and intelligent
- Advanced path tool doing bezier and polygonal selections.
- Transformable paths, transformable selections.
- Quickmask to paint a selection.
Extensible
- A Procedural Database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs as in Script-fu
- Advanced scripting capabilities (Scheme, Python, Perl)
- Plug-ins which allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters
- Over 100 plug-ins already available
Animation
- Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format
- MNG support
- Frame Navigator (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
- Onion Skin (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
- Bluebox (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
File Handling
- File formats supported include bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm, and many others
- Load, display, convert, save to many file formats
- SVG path import/export
How To Download/Install The GIMP
Paint.net
Paint.net is a simple program with a lot of capabilities. The interface is extremely similar to Paint on Microsoft Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. Paint.net lets users use simplistic tools such as those found Microsoft's Paint, as well as more complex tools like those on The GIMP. Some of the powerful tools include the Magic Wand for selecting regions of similar color, and the Clone Stamp for copying or erasing portions of an image. A very handy feature to Paint.net is the unlimited undo history which lets you trace back to the very first change you made to a file. Paint.net is known as a very good introductory to complex graphics applications.
How To Download/Install Paint.net
Inkscape
Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor which uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics(SVG) file format. It uses a variety of SVG supported features including shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape is more of a non-beginner entry to vector graphics editing. It is capable of just about everything you could expect a graphics design program to do, as well as capabilities you would have never guessed about. Inkscape is mainly known as a web page design graphics program where designers create their high quality images and then export them to their web pages. However, that does not mean non-web page engineers cannot use it.
