Open Source Thread

Creeping Death

Creeping Death

Waiting for the night
Staff member
TEAM LGK
I've been wanting to do this for a while. There are some great open source products out there that I use on a daily basis, and wanted to make sure people knew existed. There are a bunch of us on here that have a nice collection of free and open source software. I'd like to sticky a list at the top of this forum, so we'll have a reference for people to find good open source projects.

Lets stick to desktop software for now, and we'll do another thread for Open Source server software.

Here are a few off the top of my head. I'll add more later, and list a comparable software if I can think of one. Maybe I'll even be nice and add some links at some point. You have google, use it.

OpenOffice - Office
GIMP - Photoshop/Illustrator
Audacity - Audio/Sound
Pidgin - Instant Messenging
Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) - Audio/Video Player
uTorrent - BitTorrent client
ClamWin - Antivirus
 
OpenOffice is, in my opinion, every bit as good as Microsoft Office. I've run docs back and forth between the two (have Office on the desktop and OpenOffice on the laptop) and haven't had any issues.
 
This is going to be a great thread and I will contribute as much as I can to this to help people realize just how many programs there are out there that are free and just as good as the software we pay for.
 
Creeping Death said:
I've been wanting to do this for a while. There are some great open source products out there that I use on a daily basis, and wanted to make sure people knew existed. There are a bunch of us on here that have a nice collection of free and open source software. I'd like to sticky a list at the top of this forum, so we'll have a reference for people to find good open source projects.

Lets stick to desktop software for now, and we'll do another thread for Open Source server software.

Here are a few off the top of my head. I'll add more later, and list a comparable software if I can think of one. Maybe I'll even be nice and add some links at some point. You have google, use it.

OpenOffice - Office
GIMP - Photoshop/Illustrator
Audacity - Audio/Sound
Pidgin - Instant Messenging
Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) - Audio/Video Player
uTorrent - BitTorrent client
ClamWin - Antivirus
Click to expand...

FYI Audacity is not just for Audio Sound but for recording and editing music
Also another good program that can be installed in Windows is Amarok by installing the KDE runtime environment.

The KDE on Windows Project - Welcome to The KDE on Windows Project
 
Linux Ubuntu 9.10 Operating System!! New life in an old PC!!!

I have been having major issues with an old PC. Everything from registry issues, malware, spyware, ect. Basically accumulated junk from using a pc over 6 years. After many attempts to clean, fix, and upgrade, a complete system format was necessary. I installed a new XP operating system, and my old key wouldn't work! I could go on about why, and why windows genuine advantage sucks, and microsofts telephone support is lame, but every solution resulted in me spending money on tech support or a new key. Microsoft can f*off.

Linux Ubuntu is 100% free! Open source is excellent!

This is my first experience with linux. I must say, the GUI is great! Just as good as any windows OpSys or even OSX (linux based kernal?) The software suite INCLUDES MOST of the programs mentioned above and an installer for many many more. The biggest drawback so far is setting up hardware (like Logitech) items that only offer Windows support and network configuring with windows based machines. Most issues can be resolved by reverting back to a command prompt outside of the GUI and placing some pretty tricky codes in appropriate places. THere is PLENTY of online support for this though. All in all I'm a happy guy!

Posting this running Ubuntu with Firefox.

Anybody familiar with Linux? Issues, drawbacks, positives?

GoKingsGo
 
Last edited by a moderator:
KingThomas said:
Linux Ubuntu 9.10 Operating System!! New life in an old PC!!!

I have been having major issues with an old PC. Everything from registry issues, malware, spyware, ect. Basically accumulated junk from using a pc over 6 years. After many attempts to clean, fix, and upgrade, a complete system format was necessary. I installed a new XP operating system, and my old key wouldn't work! I could go on about why, and why windows genuine advantage sucks, and microsofts telephone support is lame, but every solution resulted in me spending money on tech support or a new key. Microsoft can f*off.

Linux Ubuntu is 100% free! Open source is excellent!

This is my first experience with linux. I must say, the GUI is great! Just as good as any windows OpSys or even OSX (linux based kernal?) The software suite INCLUDES MOST of the programs mentioned above and an installer for many many more. The biggest drawback so far is setting up hardware (like Logitech) items that only offer Windows support and network configuring with windows based machines. Most issues can be resolved by reverting back to a command prompt outside of the GUI and placing some pretty tricky codes in appropriate places. THere is PLENTY of online support for this though. All in all I'm a happy guy!

Posting this running Ubuntu with Firefox.

Anybody familiar with Linux? Issues, drawbacks, positives?

GoKingsGo
Click to expand...

I have been running Ubuntu on all my home machines for the past 2 years. There are a lot of great things about the OS and a few issues but most of the issues will never show up in the system if you are using it for daily use.
Hardware support is getting better and thanks to Google Hardware drivers will be getting better for Linux.
The only issue I have ran into was the new EXT4 file system and working with Large files 512MB+ in size where the system hangs and you have to reboot it. but if you are not manipulating large files then all is well.
Now if you are using the EXT3 file system you can do anything without problems.

Linux is a lot faster on boot and shutdown than both Mac and Win. Data transfers are on par with Mac OS and above Win. Linux will run Windows Programs and with the correct emulator Mac programs can be run although it is still very early to get this part running solid. but it is going to happen.

Mac is good for what it does
Windows is good for what it does.
Linux is good at doing both what Mac and Windows does and more.

btw Mac OS is a BSD UNIX base similar to Linux but not Linux. BSD is a rock solid OS hence why Apple choose to use this OS to build OSX on top of. The only problem with OSX is Apple closed off BSD so you can't make changes to the OS like you can with BSD/Linux.
 
Knoppix 5.1 is also great I use it as a live CD, it has helped me find viruses on a Windows machine as well as virus infected USB's and I've also been able to recover files from a corrupted Windows hard drive, great tool to use
 
Dawdler said:
Knoppix 5.1 is also great I use it as a live CD, it has helped me find viruses on a Windows machine as well as virus infected USB's and I've also been able to recover files from a corrupted Windows hard drive, great tool to use
Click to expand...
Knoppix is an amazing tool for recovering systems and data. I have used it a number of times to recover data myself and have never had a problem I couldn't resolve when using it.
 
Yea, another thumbs up for Knoppix from me too. On the subject of bootable and live CDs, I have been using Hiren's Boot CD for a few months now, and its a pretty invaluable tool as well.
 
Creeping Death said:
Yea, another thumbs up for Knoppix from me too. On the subject of bootable and live CDs, I have been using Hiren's Boot CD for a few months now, and its a pretty invaluable tool as well.
Click to expand...

I have Hirren's in my collection but I haven't used it yet, I've been to lazy to see all it has to offer, any chance of a quick rundown?

and I had no idea that Utorrent is now available for Linux and I'm going to give ClamWin a try.

VirtualBox is also a good alternative to VMWare
 
SuperCalo2000 said:
Eek ! Ubuntu won't load on the old Dell Celeron 800. What should I do ? Throw the sucker away ?
Click to expand...

are you getting an error message?
I got my cousin to load Ubuntu on his PII 250 with 64MB of RAM. Or is the issue the GUI won't load if that is the case the Video card is probably not supported.
 
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Dawdler said:
I have Hirren's in my collection but I haven't used it yet, I've been to lazy to see all it has to offer, any chance of a quick rundown?

and I had no idea that Utorrent is now available for Linux and I'm going to give ClamWin a try.

VirtualBox is also a good alternative to VMWare
Click to expand...

Ubuntu has a number of Bit torrent clients. I use Transmission. utorrent runs under Wine a windows emulator and it runs just fine. if wine is not installed you can install it from the Software center or you can open a terminal and type "sudo apt-get install wine" and it will ask for your password and it will download and install wine.you will get a single question asking if you want to install this program type "y" and it will continue when the screen gets back to a prompt close the terminal and run wine from the program menu.
 
Creeping Death said:
Yea, another thumbs up for Knoppix from me too. On the subject of bootable and live CDs, I have been using Hiren's Boot CD for a few months now, and its a pretty invaluable tool as well.
Click to expand...

Hirens is awesome too. A couple other good ones are Ultimate Boot CD and Backtrack.

For those of you who are still hesitant to use Linux you can create an Ultimate boot CD with Windows which will create a live windows CD with tons of tools to help you recover data and fix system problems.

But if you are hesitant to use Linux, give it a try you may like it. Download any distribution and boot from the CD just about every distribution has a Live CD and you can boot to the live CD and give the OS a try. Also remember that if you decide to install it on your system it will be faster than it is while running from a CD.

My old laptop boots in 16 seconds 1.5Ghz Pentium M and shuts down in 14 seconds.
 
RoyalPain said:
Ubuntu has a number of Bit torrent clients. I use Transmission. utorrent runs under Wine a windows emulator and it runs just fine. if wine is not installed you can install it from the Software center or you can open a terminal and type "sudo apt-get install wine" and it will ask for your password and it will download and install wine.you will get a single question asking if you want to install this program type "y" and it will continue when the screen gets back to a prompt close the terminal and run wine from the program menu.
Click to expand...

thanks for the info, I've never used wine, I usually just use VMWare Server which is also open source, I think I'll give wine a shot.

I've been using Linux Mint but just installed Ubuntu 9.1 to test it out.

I've tried Transmission but prefer Deluge for the time being for my torrents
 
UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD) is also a great product.

Hiren's is a collection of utilities such as...

Partition Magic
Ghost and Acronis
GetDataBack
Winternals
Memtest86
Just about every disk diag tool
Offline Password Changer
7zip
Ghost
Bunch of DOS apps (attrib, fdsik, pkunzip)
ccleaner
Superantispyware
Malwarebytes Antimalware
Hijackthis

Pretty much a collection of every useful software tool I've ever used while repairing a PC. Except l0phtcrack.

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
 
Creeping Death said:
UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD) is also a great product.

Hiren's is a collection of utilities such as...

Partition Magic
Ghost and Acronis
GetDataBack
Winternals
Memtest86
Just about every disk diag tool
Offline Password Changer
7zip
Ghost
Bunch of DOS apps (attrib, fdsik, pkunzip)
ccleaner
Superantispyware
Malwarebytes Antimalware
Hijackthis

Pretty much a collection of every useful software tool I've ever used while repairing a PC. Except l0phtcrack.

Hiren's BootCD 10.1 - www.hiren.info
Click to expand...

I might know a place where L0phtcrack can be found. To bad Symantec bought it and killed it. But it is out there with Keygens ;) Another good thing about the UBCD is you can add programs and utilities to it that you might need.
 
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