Symphony: XML/XSL Flexible CMS. Symphony is a web publishing system made for web developers. It gives you all the power and flexibility you'll need, while keeping out of your way.
BricaBox: The New Publishing Platform. BricaBox lets you make a website about the stuff you know, make, organize, and collaborate on with the people you know.
Drupal: Believed to be the best, most powerful CMS available.
Frog CMS: simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management.
Gelato is a tumblelog CMS built on AJAX, PHP, and MySQL
Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities.
Pagety is somewhere between a CMS and a hosting platform.Actually, it's both a CMS and a hosting platform, because there's no need to separate the two.
Pligg: Open source CMS. Like Digg.
Shopify: Your very own e-commerce store.
With Triggit you can seamlessly add pictures, videos, advertisements, and much more to your page in seconds.
Tuplix: Casual website authoring for any site anywhere
Wordpress: Believed to be the best blogging platform in the world. Open source and free. Hosted and non-hosted versions available, non-hosted recommended.
Blogger: Hosted blogging platform.
clickbooq is an easy-to-use website creation, management, and hosting solution developed exclusively for professional photographers like you.
ClickCMS: imagine being able to update and change your website content when YOU want to…not having to wait for your web developer to do it for you.
Doodlekit is an online FREE website builder that helps you build a personal or business website.
Ekklesia 360 is the next generation Content Management System. Learn how we can deliver more than a website, we help ministries and churches do ministry online.
Ellington is an online publishing system designed from the ground up for media sites.
Flying Cart: Create an Online Store
GOGOFROG™ TAKES YOU INTO THE ULTIMATE 3D WORLD… NO DOWNLOADS JUST THE INTERNET IN 3D. CREATE YOUR OWN UNLIMITED ONLINE SPACE, IT'S FAST, EASY AND FREE.
GoodBarry: Website management and customer database. Email marketing and eCommerce. Web analytics and customer profiling. It's one, central console with everything you need to run your online business.
Inserit: Create amazing dynamic pages with programming.
With Jimdo everyone can show his or her interests and passion on the Internet - on his own website! In fact, it's for free and no previous knowledge is required!
Joomla! Believed to be the most powerful, diverse open source cms in the world.
Leafletter is the "revolutionary" way for anyone to create a portable, interactive "little web site" ("Leaflet") using nothing but a web browser.
Magento: Next generation eCommerce. Open source, freely available, and seriously kicks ass.
Mephisto is a kick ass web publishing system. It’s a blog engine with some simple CMS-ish concepts (sections, pages), a very flexible templating system, and an aggressive caching scheme that takes advantage of your web server’s best traits.
ModX: The AJAX CMS for today. And tomorrow. MODx is an open source PHP Application Framework that helps you take control of your online content. It empowers developers and advanced users to give as much control as desired to whomever they desire for day-to-day website content maintenance chores.
PrestaShop is professional-grade e-Commerce shopping cart software that you can download, install, and use for free!
MoveableType: Open source publishing and blogging platform.
Radiant: CMS built on Ruby.
Introducing Reflect — a hosted website solution that allows web designers and their clients to easily create and manage websites. Through a seamless content management system, Reflect bridges the gap between the high costs of a custom solution and the low customization of an off-the-shelf system.
Roxer: Now anyone can create stunning websites online in just minutes.
SchoolRack: Create a free teacher website to keep students and parents informed outside of the classroom.
Shopit: Get your free social commerce storefront
Silverstripe: Content Management the way it was meant to be. Powerful enough for any website or intranet design and simple enough for anyone to use
SiteMighty: We build the site. You're in business.
LightCMS: The friendly CMS for web designers. LightCMS is a content management system for web designers. Design sites, upload them to our content management system, and deploy world-class websites your clients can manage themselves.
SpotMerchant: Generate business with our professional and easy to use premium web2.0 stores
TeamSnap: Manage your sports team, online.
Texty: Simple Content Management and Comments for Any Webpage
TypePad is the premier blogging service, hosting the world’s leading blogs and small business websites.
TypeRoom Lite is a website editing tool that allows you to edit a website in seconds.
uShops is the online channel for individuals and businesses who want to increase their profits, reach new customers and speed business growth.
Webnode brings you a brand new innovative way of creating and editing advanced websites by just using a web browser. Free.
Weebly: Create your website. Fast. Easy. Now.
Wirenode: Build your own mobile web in 5 minutes
Zinadoo: promoting and enhancing mobile communications
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Speed Up Windows Vista
The flash and polish of Windows Vista seduced you, but so far the glamorous interface is just sucking the life out of your PC. Fear not, this guide has everything you need to turn Vista into the beautiful *and* speedy OS you were dreaming of.
Keep in mind though, that, while these tips can help you speed up Windows and recover hard drive space, you aren't going to see the sort of speed boost you'd get from upgrading your hardware. If you're unhappy, for instance, with the speed of Vista on a machine where Windows XP used to scream, these tips will help. But you might want to consider a new graphics card, more RAM and perhaps even a faster processor.
Windows Vista's Aero interface -- pretty to look at, but one of the many things slowing it down
Clean House
Part of what slows Vista down is the number of secondary applications running in the background and hogging RAM. An essential step to speeding up Vista is getting rid of the things you don't need.
Turn Off Unnecessary Services
Services are background processes that run silently without you ever knowing about them. Because Vista takes the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to what it loads on boot, there are likely some unnecessary services running in the background.
To get rid of them go to Start > Run, type services.msc and hit Return. Double-click on the service you want to get rid of and change the startup type to Disable.
Some examples of services you may not need: Secondary Logon, Remote Registry, Computer Browser, KtmRm for Distributed Transaction Coordinator, Windows Error Reporting, Tablet PC Input Service and Distributed Link Tracking Client. There are dozens more. Sift through them and run a few web searches to see if you need all of them.
Unclutter Your Hard Drive
Like most people, you probably have a number of third-party programs eating up hard drive space. When it comes to files it's your call, but for getting rid of programs we recommend the free application CCleaner which is faster and much more thorough than Vista's default Add/Remove application.
Improve Startup Times
Whenever Windows starts it automatically loads a number of programs, many of which you may not need. The System Configuration Utility and Windows Defender can both be used to control what programs auto-start in Vista.
To disabling auto-start applications with the System Configuration Utility
Open up msconfig (use the Vista Start Menu's Instant Search feature: just press the Windows key and type 'System' and the hit return).
Select the Startup tab.
Uncheck any items that you do not want to auto-load and click OK.
To disabling auto-start applications with Windows Defender
Open Windows Defender
Click on the Tools in the top menu bar.
Click on Software Explorer.
Hit Show for All Users.
Select an application and then click either Remove or Disable.
Keep Your Memory Clear
Use the free application Instant Memory Cleaner to force your machine's physical memory to clear out unecessary pages. It also helps you keep the amount of memory being used by your active processes to an absolute minimum. The tiny app from Vasilios Software is a simple graphical interface for one of Vista's built-in command line tools, FreeMem.
Defragment Your Hard Drive
Fragmentation happens when the computer writes files to disk without keeping everything together in one spot. Thus if you just saved a large image you've been working on in Photoshop, part of it might be near the middle of the disk and part of it might be at the end, which means it takes longer for the disk to find it. Bringing those disparate parts together is what's known as defragmenting.
Defragmentation was once the go-to solution for all speed problems in Windows. But Vista actually defragments your drive automatically in the background. In fact, the system is configured to defrag your hard drive once a week by default.
The problem with Vista's defragmentation routine is that unless you frequently install and uninstall programs and constantly move files around, once a week is probably overkill, and when Vista is defragmenting you'll see a performance hit. We suggest turning off the scheduler and doing it by hand.
To manually defragment your boot drive, open My Computer and right-click the disk you want to defragment. Select Properties and then click the Tools tab where you'll see the Defragment Now option. Just click Defragment and wait for the process to finish.
You'll may notice that Vista did away with many of the nicer features in XP's defragmenting program. If you'd like more advanced feedback try out the free Disk Defrag from Auslogics, which gives you a nice drive map and other advanced features.
Use ReadyBoost
ReadyBoost is one of the more appealing features in Vista. Put simply, it uses a solid state memory disk as an extra disk memory cache.
To take advantage of ReadyBoost, find the fastest USB flash drive you can find and plug it in. AutoPlay will pop up a dialog offering to use it for ReadyBoost. Just enable it and you're done.
Microsoft suggests that you use a USB drive roughly the same size as the amount of RAM you have.
ReadyBoost data is encrypted, so if someone snatches your flash drive, they won't be able to read your data.
Don't expect miracles from ReadyBoost, and keep in mind that it isn't an alternative to a memory upgrade. Rather, it caches disk reads on the fly and can often speed up data access. It won't help at all if you're short of Vista's minimum RAM requirements.
Use vLite
To take a radical approach to make Vista faster, you can use the free application vLite. The software, which was created by a developer named Dino Nuhagic, claims to reduce Vista's footprint by as much as one half. vLite strips out many of Vista's default system components like Windows Media Player, Windows Mail, Windows Photo Viewer, MSN components, Wallpapers and SlideShow.
Using vLite will save gigabytes of disk space, but the changes it makes to your machine are permanent, so use it with caution. You can also take solace in the fact that many of the applications vLite removes can be replaced with free downloads or web apps.
Speed Up Vista on Older Machines
Vista's snazzy UI design is easy on the eye but hard on the processor. Consequently, older machines may lag. But there's no need to rush out and buy new hardware. Give these tips a try first and see if they improve your Vista experience.
Get rid of Aero -- The Aero interface is pretty nice, but it has demanding graphics requirements. Vista will disable it by default if your graphics card isn't up to snuff, but even if it is, you might find the speed tradeoff unacceptable. Head to the Window Color and Appearance panel (right click the desktop and choose personalize) and click the link to "Open classic appearance properties for more color options." Select an option other than Aero and you're done.
For a less radical option just turn off the "glass transparency" setting which seems to be the source of much of Aero's memory usage.
Another less-drastic solution is to turn off the animations and other visual effects.
Disable the Sidebar -- Widgets are memory hogs and getting rid of them will help speed up Vista.
Keep in mind though, that, while these tips can help you speed up Windows and recover hard drive space, you aren't going to see the sort of speed boost you'd get from upgrading your hardware. If you're unhappy, for instance, with the speed of Vista on a machine where Windows XP used to scream, these tips will help. But you might want to consider a new graphics card, more RAM and perhaps even a faster processor.
Windows Vista's Aero interface -- pretty to look at, but one of the many things slowing it down
Clean House
Part of what slows Vista down is the number of secondary applications running in the background and hogging RAM. An essential step to speeding up Vista is getting rid of the things you don't need.
Turn Off Unnecessary Services
Services are background processes that run silently without you ever knowing about them. Because Vista takes the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to what it loads on boot, there are likely some unnecessary services running in the background.
To get rid of them go to Start > Run, type services.msc and hit Return. Double-click on the service you want to get rid of and change the startup type to Disable.
Some examples of services you may not need: Secondary Logon, Remote Registry, Computer Browser, KtmRm for Distributed Transaction Coordinator, Windows Error Reporting, Tablet PC Input Service and Distributed Link Tracking Client. There are dozens more. Sift through them and run a few web searches to see if you need all of them.
Unclutter Your Hard Drive
Like most people, you probably have a number of third-party programs eating up hard drive space. When it comes to files it's your call, but for getting rid of programs we recommend the free application CCleaner which is faster and much more thorough than Vista's default Add/Remove application.
Improve Startup Times
Whenever Windows starts it automatically loads a number of programs, many of which you may not need. The System Configuration Utility and Windows Defender can both be used to control what programs auto-start in Vista.
To disabling auto-start applications with the System Configuration Utility
Open up msconfig (use the Vista Start Menu's Instant Search feature: just press the Windows key and type 'System' and the hit return).
Select the Startup tab.
Uncheck any items that you do not want to auto-load and click OK.
To disabling auto-start applications with Windows Defender
Open Windows Defender
Click on the Tools in the top menu bar.
Click on Software Explorer.
Hit Show for All Users.
Select an application and then click either Remove or Disable.
Keep Your Memory Clear
Use the free application Instant Memory Cleaner to force your machine's physical memory to clear out unecessary pages. It also helps you keep the amount of memory being used by your active processes to an absolute minimum. The tiny app from Vasilios Software is a simple graphical interface for one of Vista's built-in command line tools, FreeMem.
Defragment Your Hard Drive
Fragmentation happens when the computer writes files to disk without keeping everything together in one spot. Thus if you just saved a large image you've been working on in Photoshop, part of it might be near the middle of the disk and part of it might be at the end, which means it takes longer for the disk to find it. Bringing those disparate parts together is what's known as defragmenting.
Defragmentation was once the go-to solution for all speed problems in Windows. But Vista actually defragments your drive automatically in the background. In fact, the system is configured to defrag your hard drive once a week by default.
The problem with Vista's defragmentation routine is that unless you frequently install and uninstall programs and constantly move files around, once a week is probably overkill, and when Vista is defragmenting you'll see a performance hit. We suggest turning off the scheduler and doing it by hand.
To manually defragment your boot drive, open My Computer and right-click the disk you want to defragment. Select Properties and then click the Tools tab where you'll see the Defragment Now option. Just click Defragment and wait for the process to finish.
You'll may notice that Vista did away with many of the nicer features in XP's defragmenting program. If you'd like more advanced feedback try out the free Disk Defrag from Auslogics, which gives you a nice drive map and other advanced features.
Use ReadyBoost
ReadyBoost is one of the more appealing features in Vista. Put simply, it uses a solid state memory disk as an extra disk memory cache.
To take advantage of ReadyBoost, find the fastest USB flash drive you can find and plug it in. AutoPlay will pop up a dialog offering to use it for ReadyBoost. Just enable it and you're done.
Microsoft suggests that you use a USB drive roughly the same size as the amount of RAM you have.
ReadyBoost data is encrypted, so if someone snatches your flash drive, they won't be able to read your data.
Don't expect miracles from ReadyBoost, and keep in mind that it isn't an alternative to a memory upgrade. Rather, it caches disk reads on the fly and can often speed up data access. It won't help at all if you're short of Vista's minimum RAM requirements.
Use vLite
To take a radical approach to make Vista faster, you can use the free application vLite. The software, which was created by a developer named Dino Nuhagic, claims to reduce Vista's footprint by as much as one half. vLite strips out many of Vista's default system components like Windows Media Player, Windows Mail, Windows Photo Viewer, MSN components, Wallpapers and SlideShow.
Using vLite will save gigabytes of disk space, but the changes it makes to your machine are permanent, so use it with caution. You can also take solace in the fact that many of the applications vLite removes can be replaced with free downloads or web apps.
Speed Up Vista on Older Machines
Vista's snazzy UI design is easy on the eye but hard on the processor. Consequently, older machines may lag. But there's no need to rush out and buy new hardware. Give these tips a try first and see if they improve your Vista experience.
Get rid of Aero -- The Aero interface is pretty nice, but it has demanding graphics requirements. Vista will disable it by default if your graphics card isn't up to snuff, but even if it is, you might find the speed tradeoff unacceptable. Head to the Window Color and Appearance panel (right click the desktop and choose personalize) and click the link to "Open classic appearance properties for more color options." Select an option other than Aero and you're done.
For a less radical option just turn off the "glass transparency" setting which seems to be the source of much of Aero's memory usage.
Another less-drastic solution is to turn off the animations and other visual effects.
Disable the Sidebar -- Widgets are memory hogs and getting rid of them will help speed up Vista.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Free Applications
7-Zip
7-Zip is a free file archive manager that supports many different formats, including ZIP and RAR.
Audacity
Audacity is a free sound editing and recording application.
AVG Anti-Virus
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is an anti-virus application that rivals commercial version such as Norton.
Firefox
Firefox is an excellent free browser that provides a much more secure and friendly browsing experience that Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Foxit Reader
Foxit Reader is a lightweight alternative to Adobe's Acrobat PDF reader.
GIMP
GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free image editor similar to Photoshop. It can be used for things like photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
Google Pack
A one-stop software package that helps you discover, install, and maintain a wide range of essential PC programs.
Handbrake
Handbrake is a DVD ripping application, allowing you to convert a DVD to a video file.
Inkscape
Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw.
OpenOffice
OpenOffice is a free and full featured alternative to Microsoft's office suite.
Paint.NET
A fully featured but easy to use image editing application.
Pidgin
Pidgin, formerly known as Gaim, is a multi-protocol instant messenger client, working with Yahoo IM, AIM, Google talk, MSN and others.
SciTE
A feature packed text editor with many advances features for programmers.
Scribus
Scribus is a Desktop Publishing (DTP) application which can be used to create professional quality documents.
Skype
Skype allows you to make phone calls from your computer - to other skype users for free, and very cheaply to phones and mobiles.
Thunderbird
Simple and lightweight email and news application.
VLC media player
VLC is a media player that supports many different audio and video file formats.
Credits : http://www.freeapps.co.uk/windows/
7-Zip is a free file archive manager that supports many different formats, including ZIP and RAR.
Audacity
Audacity is a free sound editing and recording application.
AVG Anti-Virus
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is an anti-virus application that rivals commercial version such as Norton.
Firefox
Firefox is an excellent free browser that provides a much more secure and friendly browsing experience that Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Foxit Reader
Foxit Reader is a lightweight alternative to Adobe's Acrobat PDF reader.
GIMP
GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free image editor similar to Photoshop. It can be used for things like photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
Google Pack
A one-stop software package that helps you discover, install, and maintain a wide range of essential PC programs.
Handbrake
Handbrake is a DVD ripping application, allowing you to convert a DVD to a video file.
Inkscape
Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw.
OpenOffice
OpenOffice is a free and full featured alternative to Microsoft's office suite.
Paint.NET
A fully featured but easy to use image editing application.
Pidgin
Pidgin, formerly known as Gaim, is a multi-protocol instant messenger client, working with Yahoo IM, AIM, Google talk, MSN and others.
SciTE
A feature packed text editor with many advances features for programmers.
Scribus
Scribus is a Desktop Publishing (DTP) application which can be used to create professional quality documents.
Skype
Skype allows you to make phone calls from your computer - to other skype users for free, and very cheaply to phones and mobiles.
Thunderbird
Simple and lightweight email and news application.
VLC media player
VLC is a media player that supports many different audio and video file formats.
Credits : http://www.freeapps.co.uk/windows/
Spamihilator - AntiSpam Filter
What is Spamihilator?
Spamihilator works between your E-Mail client and the Internet and examines every incoming E-Mail. Useless spam mails (Junk) will be filtered out. This process runs completely in the background.
The new Learning Filter (Bayesian Filter) uses the rules of Thomas Bayes (English mathematician, 18th century) and calculates a certain Spam-Probability for every E-Mail. You can train this filter! So it will know your messages even better than you. Hence the recognition rate will continuously increase.
In addition Spamihilator uses a Word-Filter, that searches messages for known keywords.
Of course, Spamihilator supports Plugins. These useful additional filters protect your system against annoying spam mails.
The program works with almost every E-Mail client, such as Outlook 2000/XP/2003/Express, Eudora, Mozilla, Netscape, IncrediMail, Pegasus Mail, Phoenix Mail, Opera, etc…
Visit thier Website : http://www.spamihilator.com/
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
USB 3.0 Will Offer a 10X Speed Boost Over USB 2.0
Intel and a group of companies including HP, Microsoft, NEC, and Texas Instruments have begun developing the successor to USB 2.0. The third generation of USB will transfer data at speeds of up to 4.8 gigabits per second, ten times faster than USB 2.0’s 480-megabits-per-second transfer rate. The new standard will be backward-compatible with existing USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 devices.
According to Intel, the USB 3.0 specification will be designed for low power consumption and improved efficiency. USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed with both copper and optical cable capabilities, so even higher speeds will be possible in the future.
Updates are also planned for the Wireless USB (WUSB) transfer format, which currently operates at the same 480-mbps speed as USB 2.0. A new WUSB 1.1 interconnect format will operate at speeds of up to 1 gbps.
Jeff Ravencraft , Intel’s technology strategist, cites increasing interest in digital music and high-definition video as the main reason for updating the USB standard. Th e group hopes to have a final specification ready by the middle of next year.
Credits: http://harddrives.cari.sg/2007/11/16/usb-30-will-offer-a-10x-speed-boost-over-usb-20/
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/58765
http://www.usb.org/usb30
According to Intel, the USB 3.0 specification will be designed for low power consumption and improved efficiency. USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed with both copper and optical cable capabilities, so even higher speeds will be possible in the future.
Updates are also planned for the Wireless USB (WUSB) transfer format, which currently operates at the same 480-mbps speed as USB 2.0. A new WUSB 1.1 interconnect format will operate at speeds of up to 1 gbps.
Jeff Ravencraft , Intel’s technology strategist, cites increasing interest in digital music and high-definition video as the main reason for updating the USB standard. Th e group hopes to have a final specification ready by the middle of next year.
Credits: http://harddrives.cari.sg/2007/11/16/usb-30-will-offer-a-10x-speed-boost-over-usb-20/
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/58765
http://www.usb.org/usb30
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
ZipItFree
Similar to Winzip, except 100% free.
100% Fully Functional
ZipItFree supports over 15 compression formats, Including (ACE, ARC, BH, BZip, CAB, GZIP, JAR, LHA, RAR, TAR, UUE, XXE, ZIP,Zoo, And Archive Stream). With ZipItFree easy to use modern interface it making works with archives is fun and easy. The ZipItFree windows integration gives you One Click capability for most of compression functions like Extract Here, Zip & Email.
Extra Tools
Hot Features
* Full Windows Vista & XP Support
* Easy, Modern User Interface
* Higher Compression Ratios
* ZIP2.0 High Secure ZIP Encryption
* Comment Archives & Files
* Multiple Compression Formats
* Extract from .RAR Files
* Verify Integrity of Multiple Archive
* Flexible User Interface
* Tight Integration with Windows
* Large Zip File Support
* One Click Zip & E-mail
* Split Zip File Capability
ZipItFree Comes With Useful Tools..
* Retrieve "Forgotten" Password
* Click here to Download ZipItFree now.
100% Fully Functional
ZipItFree supports over 15 compression formats, Including (ACE, ARC, BH, BZip, CAB, GZIP, JAR, LHA, RAR, TAR, UUE, XXE, ZIP,Zoo, And Archive Stream). With ZipItFree easy to use modern interface it making works with archives is fun and easy. The ZipItFree windows integration gives you One Click capability for most of compression functions like Extract Here, Zip & Email.
Extra Tools
Hot Features
* Full Windows Vista & XP Support
* Easy, Modern User Interface
* Higher Compression Ratios
* ZIP2.0 High Secure ZIP Encryption
* Comment Archives & Files
* Multiple Compression Formats
* Extract from .RAR Files
* Verify Integrity of Multiple Archive
* Flexible User Interface
* Tight Integration with Windows
* Large Zip File Support
* One Click Zip & E-mail
* Split Zip File Capability
ZipItFree Comes With Useful Tools..
* Retrieve "Forgotten" Password
* Click here to Download ZipItFree now.
IP Addresses Explained
IP Address (Internet Protocol Address): This number is an exclusive number all information technology devices (printers, routers, modems, et al) use which identifies and allows them the ability to communicate with each other on a computer network. There is a standard of communication which is called an Internet Protocol standard (IP). In laymans terms it is the same as your home address. In order for you to receive snail mail at home the sending party must have your correct mailing address (IP address) in your town (network) or you do not receive bills, pizza coupons or your tax refund. The same is true for all equipment on the internet. Without this specific address, information cannot be received. IP addresses may either be assigned permanently for an Email server/Business server or a permanent home resident or temporarily, from a pool of available addresses (first come first serve) from your Internet Service Provider. A permanent number may not be available in all areas and may cost extra so be sure to ask your ISP.
Domain Name Server (DNS): This allows the IP address to be translated to words. It is much easier for us to remember a word than a series of numbers. The same is true for email addresses.
For example, it is much easier for you to remember a web address name such as whatismyip.com than it is to remember 192.168.1.1 or in the case of email it is much easier to remember anonymous@whatismyip.com than anonymous@192.168.1.1
Dynamic IP Address: An IP address that is not static and could change at any time. This IP address is issued to you from a pool of IP addresses allocated by your ISP or DHCP Server. This is for a large number of customers that do not require the same IP Address all the time for a variety of reasons. Your computer will automatically get this number as it logs on to the network and saves you the trouble of having to know details regarding the specific network configurations. This number can be assigned to anyone using a dial-up connection, Wireless and High Speed Internet connections. If you need to run your own email server or web server, it would be best to have a static IP.
Static IP Address: An IP address that is fixed and never changes. This is in contrast to a dynamic IP address which may change at any time. Most ISP's a single static IP or a block of static IP's for a few extra bucks a month.
IP version 4: Currently used by most network devices. However, with more and more computers accessing the internet, IPv4 addresses are running out quickly. Just like in a city, addresses have to be created for new neighborhoods but, if your neighborhood gets too large, you will have to come up with an entire new pool of addresses. IPv4 is limited to 4,294,967,296 addresses.
IP version 5: This is an experimental protocol for UNIX based systems. In keeping with standard UNIX (a computer Operating System) release conventions, all odd-numbered versions are considered experimental. It was never intended to be used by the general public.
IP version 6: The replacement for the aging IPv4. The estimated number of unique addresses for IPv6 is 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 or 2^128.
The old and current standard of addresses was this: 192.168.100.100 the new way can be written different ways but means the same and are all valid:
* 1080:0000:0000:0000:0000:0034:0000:417A
* 1080:0:0:0:0:34:0:417A
* 1080::34:0:417A
Command Lines
DOS/Windows Command Lines
Display Connection Configuration: ipconfig /all
Display DNS Cache Info Configuration: ipconfig /displaydns
Clear DNS Cache: ipconfig /flushdns
Release All IP Address Connections: ipconfig /release
Renew All IP Address Connections: ipconfig /renew
Re-Register the DNS connections: ipconfig /registerdns
Change/Modify DHCP Class ID: ipconfig /setclassid
Network Connections: control netconnections
Network Setup Wizard: netsetup.cpl
Test Connectivity: ping www.whatismyip.com
Trace IP address Route: tracert
Displays the TCP/IP protocol sessions: netstat
Display Local Route: route
Display Resolved MAC Addresses: arp
Display Name of Computer Currently on: hostname
Display DHCP Class Information: ipconfig /showclassid
UNIX IP Command Lines
UNIX - General Command Lines
Note: You MUST be at the ROOT user to make/save any changes. You will need to save your changes in the /etc/rc.conf file. Network cards are referred to as dc0, dc1, dc2, etc based on their position on the PCI bus.
Display Current Config for all NIC's: ifconfig
Display Current Config for dc0: ifconfig dc0
Assign IP/Subnet: ifconfig dc0 inet 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0
Assign Gateway: route delete default && route add default 192.168.1.1
Assign multiple IP's: ifconfig dc0:0 192.168.1.2
Assign second IP: ifconfig dc0:1 192.168.1.3
Disable network card: ifconfig dc0 down
Enable network card: ifconfig dc0 up
*Special thanks to Romanov Sergey Vladimirovich from Moscow for the UNIX commands!
Linux IP Command Lines
Linux - General Command Lines
Note: You MUST be at the ROOT user to make/save any changes. Linux users, your distribution will determine the location of your network config file which will need to be updated and saved in order for the changes to remain in effect after rebooting. Network cards are referred to as eth0, eth1, eth2, etc based on their position on the PCI bus.
Display Current Config for all NIC's: ifconfig
Display Current Config for eth0: ifconfig eth0
Assign IP: ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2
Assign IP/Subnet: ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0
Assign Default Gateway: route add default gw 192.168.1.1
Assign multiple IP's: ifconfig eth0:0 192.168.1.2
Assign second IP: ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.1.3
Disable network card: ifconfig eth0 down
Enable network card: ifconfig eth0 up
View current routing table: route "or" route -n
View arp cache: arp "or" arp -n
Ping: ping -c 3 192.168.1.1
Trace Route: traceroute www.whatismyip.com
Trace Path: tracepath www.whatismyip.com
DNS Test: host www.whatismyip.com
Advanced DNS Test: dig www.whatismyip.com
Reverse Lookup: host 66.11.119.69
Advanced Reverse Lookup: dig -x 66.11.119.69
*Special thanks to Gergely for the Linux commands!
Domain Name Server (DNS): This allows the IP address to be translated to words. It is much easier for us to remember a word than a series of numbers. The same is true for email addresses.
For example, it is much easier for you to remember a web address name such as whatismyip.com than it is to remember 192.168.1.1 or in the case of email it is much easier to remember anonymous@whatismyip.com than anonymous@192.168.1.1
Dynamic IP Address: An IP address that is not static and could change at any time. This IP address is issued to you from a pool of IP addresses allocated by your ISP or DHCP Server. This is for a large number of customers that do not require the same IP Address all the time for a variety of reasons. Your computer will automatically get this number as it logs on to the network and saves you the trouble of having to know details regarding the specific network configurations. This number can be assigned to anyone using a dial-up connection, Wireless and High Speed Internet connections. If you need to run your own email server or web server, it would be best to have a static IP.
Static IP Address: An IP address that is fixed and never changes. This is in contrast to a dynamic IP address which may change at any time. Most ISP's a single static IP or a block of static IP's for a few extra bucks a month.
IP version 4: Currently used by most network devices. However, with more and more computers accessing the internet, IPv4 addresses are running out quickly. Just like in a city, addresses have to be created for new neighborhoods but, if your neighborhood gets too large, you will have to come up with an entire new pool of addresses. IPv4 is limited to 4,294,967,296 addresses.
IP version 5: This is an experimental protocol for UNIX based systems. In keeping with standard UNIX (a computer Operating System) release conventions, all odd-numbered versions are considered experimental. It was never intended to be used by the general public.
IP version 6: The replacement for the aging IPv4. The estimated number of unique addresses for IPv6 is 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 or 2^128.
The old and current standard of addresses was this: 192.168.100.100 the new way can be written different ways but means the same and are all valid:
* 1080:0000:0000:0000:0000:0034:0000:417A
* 1080:0:0:0:0:34:0:417A
* 1080::34:0:417A
Command Lines
DOS/Windows Command Lines
Display Connection Configuration: ipconfig /all
Display DNS Cache Info Configuration: ipconfig /displaydns
Clear DNS Cache: ipconfig /flushdns
Release All IP Address Connections: ipconfig /release
Renew All IP Address Connections: ipconfig /renew
Re-Register the DNS connections: ipconfig /registerdns
Change/Modify DHCP Class ID: ipconfig /setclassid
Network Connections: control netconnections
Network Setup Wizard: netsetup.cpl
Test Connectivity: ping www.whatismyip.com
Trace IP address Route: tracert
Displays the TCP/IP protocol sessions: netstat
Display Local Route: route
Display Resolved MAC Addresses: arp
Display Name of Computer Currently on: hostname
Display DHCP Class Information: ipconfig /showclassid
UNIX IP Command Lines
UNIX - General Command Lines
Note: You MUST be at the ROOT user to make/save any changes. You will need to save your changes in the /etc/rc.conf file. Network cards are referred to as dc0, dc1, dc2, etc based on their position on the PCI bus.
Display Current Config for all NIC's: ifconfig
Display Current Config for dc0: ifconfig dc0
Assign IP/Subnet: ifconfig dc0 inet 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0
Assign Gateway: route delete default && route add default 192.168.1.1
Assign multiple IP's: ifconfig dc0:0 192.168.1.2
Assign second IP: ifconfig dc0:1 192.168.1.3
Disable network card: ifconfig dc0 down
Enable network card: ifconfig dc0 up
*Special thanks to Romanov Sergey Vladimirovich from Moscow for the UNIX commands!
Linux IP Command Lines
Linux - General Command Lines
Note: You MUST be at the ROOT user to make/save any changes. Linux users, your distribution will determine the location of your network config file which will need to be updated and saved in order for the changes to remain in effect after rebooting. Network cards are referred to as eth0, eth1, eth2, etc based on their position on the PCI bus.
Display Current Config for all NIC's: ifconfig
Display Current Config for eth0: ifconfig eth0
Assign IP: ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2
Assign IP/Subnet: ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0
Assign Default Gateway: route add default gw 192.168.1.1
Assign multiple IP's: ifconfig eth0:0 192.168.1.2
Assign second IP: ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.1.3
Disable network card: ifconfig eth0 down
Enable network card: ifconfig eth0 up
View current routing table: route "or" route -n
View arp cache: arp "or" arp -n
Ping: ping -c 3 192.168.1.1
Trace Route: traceroute www.whatismyip.com
Trace Path: tracepath www.whatismyip.com
DNS Test: host www.whatismyip.com
Advanced DNS Test: dig www.whatismyip.com
Reverse Lookup: host 66.11.119.69
Advanced Reverse Lookup: dig -x 66.11.119.69
*Special thanks to Gergely for the Linux commands!
Monday, February 18, 2008
The OS List
The OS List is a list of operating systems, both proprietary and open source (or free). The list is far from complete and probably never will be as there are tons and tons of small OS projects popping up all the time. I will try and post the more "interesting" ones.
Proprietary
AmigaOS - It is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000. It ran on the Motorola 68k series of 32-bit microprocessors, except for AmigaOS 4 which runs on PowerPC microprocessors.
Athene - Athene is a commercial operating system developed by Rocklyte Systems for use in the home and office. Athene combines years of Rocklyte's R&D with the latest Linux technology to create one of the fastest operating systems available today. With boot times as fast as five seconds and advanced graphics technology not available in standard Linux distributions, Athene is the best low-cost alternative to Windows for your computer desktop.
BeOS - BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. Unlike some other operating systems of the time, BeOS was written to take advantage of modern hardware.
eComStation : eCS is what has become of the once famous IBM OS/2 operating system. It is currently 100% OS/2 compatible. Version 2.0 is currently in RC3 stage (release canditate). There are plans on one more RC version before the final version is released.
MAC OS - Mac OS is the trademarked name for a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface. The original form of what Apple would later name the "Mac OS" was the integral and unnamed system software first introduced in 1984 with the original Macintosh, usually referred to simply as the System software.
Microsoft Windows : Need I say more?
OS/2 - OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as the preferred operating system for IBM's "Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of second-generation Personal Computers. OS/2 is no longer marketed by IBM, and IBM standard support for OS/2 was discontinued on December 31, 2006. Currently, Serenity Systems sells OS/2 under the brand name eComStation. Wikipedia Entry.
RISC OS - Is the superbly efficient operating system designed in the 1980's by Acorn Computers, and its latest incarnation is used by thousands of people around the world. Pre-dating both Windows and Mac OS to use a task bar or 'Dock', RISC OS includes many revolutionary features which are only just being copied by other systems. Its anti-aliased font technology is still the envy of the computer world and its drag 'n' drop, stackable windows GUI, flexibility and ease of use make it arguably the most productive computer system in the world today. More at http://www.riscos.org.
SkyOS - The Sky Operating System, or SkyOS, is an operating system written for x86-based personal computers. SkyOS was created in 1996 by Robert Szeleney as a small bootloader. In the past 8 years, SkyOS has evolved into a full-featured, modern operating system, with a goal to be the easiest to use desktop operating system available for the average computer user. The development staff has also increased to include business, software, and graphics developers. As of SkyOS 5.0, SkyOS will be a commercial operating system.
Unix - (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. Today's Unix systems are split into various branches, developed over time by AT&T as well as various commercial vendors and non-profit organizations.
Zeta : Zeta is an proprietary reincarnation of BeOS originally developed by YellowTAB and then by magnussoft . Due to legal problems it is now shut down and doesn't look like it will come back anytime soon.
Open Source and/or Free
AROS (Amiga Research Operating System) - The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 at the API level (like Wine, unlike UAE), while improving on it in many areas. The source code is available under an open source license, which allows anyone to freely improve upon it.
BlueIllusion OS - BlueIllusion is a micro kernel based operating system, which operates on the Intel X86 Architecture. It uses some features like paging to some excess to get work done. Other things like TSS-based Hardware task switching aren´t used. It will - in the future - have a graphical user environment, which I intend to be analogous to the MAC OS 9 GUI, with a Menu bar that appears when moving the mouse to the upper border of the screen - as well as support for a right-click-popup menu under the mouse at needs.
Cosmoe - Cosmoe is a new user interface that runs on top of the Linux operating system (and soon others). Cosmoe implements a powerful but easy-to-use high-level C++ API that is quite similar to BeOS. In fact, many BeOS programs can be recompiled to run on Cosmoe with little or no changes!
Cosmos - Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System) is an operating system project implemented completely in CIL compliant languages. The team is committed to using C#, however any .NET language is usable.
Cosmoe is not a polished, completed work yet. Most of the current work is going on "under the hood", so we don't have a lot of flashy graphics to lure you in. However, Cosmoe does have a very solid foundation, and we look forward to the involvement of the developer community in helping Cosmoe to mature.
FreeDOS - A free MS-DOS clone.
GeekOS - GeekOS is a tiny operating system kernel for x86 PCs. Its main purpose is to serve as a simple but realistic example of an OS kernel running on real hardware. (Actually, most of the development is done on the Bochs emulator.)
The goal of GeekOS is to be a tool for learning about operating system kernels. As of version 0.2.0, it comes with a set of projects suitable for use in an undergraduate operating systems course, or for self-directed learning. GeekOS has been used in courses at a number of colleges and universities.
Haiku : Haiku is an open source operating system currently in development designed from the ground up for desktop computing. Inspired by the Be Operating System, Haiku aims to provide users of all levels with a personal computing experience that is simple yet powerful, and void of any unnecessary complexities.
HelenOS - The HelenOS project is an effort to develop a complete and usable modern operating system, yet offering room for experimenting and research. HelenOS uses its own microkernel written from scratch and supports SMP, multitasking and multithreading on both 32-bit and 64-bit, little-endian and big-endian processor architectures, among wich are AMD64/EM64T (x86-64), ARM, IA-32, IA-64 (Itanium), 32-bit MIPS, 32-bit PowerPC, SPARC V9 and Xen 3.0. Thanks to the relatively high number of supported architectures and suitable design, HelenOS is extremely-well portable.
JNode - Java New Operating System Design Effort. JNode is a simple to use & install Java operating system for personal use. It runs on modern devices. Any java application will run on it, fast & secure!
KolibriOS - KolobriOS is an open source operating system with a monolithic preemptive kernel, video drivers, for 32-bit x86 architecture computers, developed and maintained by The KolibriOS Project Team. KolibriOS is a fork of MenuetOS , written entirely in FASM (assembly language).
Linux : Here is the definition from Wikipedia - "Linux (IPA pronunciation: /ˈlɪnʊks/) is a Unix-like computer operating system. Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free software and open source development; its underlying source code can be modified, used, and redistributed by anyone, freely."
MenuetOS - MenuetOS is an Operating System in development for the PC written entirely in 32/64 bit assembly language, and released under the License . It supports 32/64 bit x86 assembly programming for smaller, faster and less resource hungry applications.
MikeOS - MikeOS is a 16-bit operating system for x86 PCs, written in assembly language, which boots from a floppy disk or CD-ROM. It features a text-based dialog-driven user interface, a command-line, support for FAT12 (DOS) floppies and PC speaker sound. It can load external programs and has over 30 system calls. Basic DOS .COM program support is also included.
osFree - osFree is a open source free (non-commercial) software development project. Goals of the projects are to replace all (or most) of OS/2's subsystems with open-source analogues. The base compatibility system is OS/2 Warp 4 (Merlin), but that doesn't mean we won't be supporting features of newer versions of OS/2 like OS/2 WarpServer for e-business and eComStation by Serenity Systems.
Plan 9 from Bell Labs - Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system, primarily used as a research vehicle. It was developed as the research successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002. Plan 9 is most notable for representing all system interfaces, including those required for networking and the user-interface, through the filesystem rather than specialized interfaces. Plan 9 aims to provide users with a workstation-independent working environment through the use of the 9P protocols. Plan 9 continues to be used and developed in some circles as a research operating system and by hobbyists.
ReactOS - The ReactOS® project is dedicated to making Free Software available to everyone by providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.
Syllable - The goal of Syllable is to create a reliable and easy-to-use open source operating system for the home and small office user. We also want to encourage developers to create an operating system that is intuitive, easy to use, and powerful.
Visopsys - An alternative operating system for PC compatible computers. Under development since late 1997, this system is small, fast, and open source. It features a simple but functional graphical interface, real preemptive multitasking, and virtual memory. Though it attempts to be compatible in a number of ways, Visopsys is not a clone of any other operating system. You can demo the distribution from a "live" CD or floppy disk.
Web Based
eyeOS - A completely free (Open Source) Web Operating System running from your browser, where anybody can collaborate and expand it.
YouOS - YouOS is a web operating system that lets you run diverse applications within a web browser. Small applications like sticky notes or clocks. Large applications like word processing, mp3 players, and instant messaging. Even better, it's very easy to tweak an existing application or write your own.
ajaxWindows - a complete virtual PC you can experience using only a browser from any web connected computer.
eyeOS - eyeOS is a new kind of Operating System, where everything resides on a web browser. With eyeOS, you will have have your desktop, applications and files always with you, from your home, your college, your office or your neightboor's house. Just open a web browser, connect to your eyeOS System and access your personal desktop and all your stuff just like you left it last time.
Source:
http://saveload.org/content/view/13/
Proprietary
AmigaOS - It is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000. It ran on the Motorola 68k series of 32-bit microprocessors, except for AmigaOS 4 which runs on PowerPC microprocessors.
Athene - Athene is a commercial operating system developed by Rocklyte Systems for use in the home and office. Athene combines years of Rocklyte's R&D with the latest Linux technology to create one of the fastest operating systems available today. With boot times as fast as five seconds and advanced graphics technology not available in standard Linux distributions, Athene is the best low-cost alternative to Windows for your computer desktop.
BeOS - BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. Unlike some other operating systems of the time, BeOS was written to take advantage of modern hardware.
eComStation : eCS is what has become of the once famous IBM OS/2 operating system. It is currently 100% OS/2 compatible. Version 2.0 is currently in RC3 stage (release canditate). There are plans on one more RC version before the final version is released.
MAC OS - Mac OS is the trademarked name for a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface. The original form of what Apple would later name the "Mac OS" was the integral and unnamed system software first introduced in 1984 with the original Macintosh, usually referred to simply as the System software.
Microsoft Windows : Need I say more?
OS/2 - OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as the preferred operating system for IBM's "Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of second-generation Personal Computers. OS/2 is no longer marketed by IBM, and IBM standard support for OS/2 was discontinued on December 31, 2006. Currently, Serenity Systems sells OS/2 under the brand name eComStation. Wikipedia Entry.
RISC OS - Is the superbly efficient operating system designed in the 1980's by Acorn Computers, and its latest incarnation is used by thousands of people around the world. Pre-dating both Windows and Mac OS to use a task bar or 'Dock', RISC OS includes many revolutionary features which are only just being copied by other systems. Its anti-aliased font technology is still the envy of the computer world and its drag 'n' drop, stackable windows GUI, flexibility and ease of use make it arguably the most productive computer system in the world today. More at http://www.riscos.org.
SkyOS - The Sky Operating System, or SkyOS, is an operating system written for x86-based personal computers. SkyOS was created in 1996 by Robert Szeleney as a small bootloader. In the past 8 years, SkyOS has evolved into a full-featured, modern operating system, with a goal to be the easiest to use desktop operating system available for the average computer user. The development staff has also increased to include business, software, and graphics developers. As of SkyOS 5.0, SkyOS will be a commercial operating system.
Unix - (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. Today's Unix systems are split into various branches, developed over time by AT&T as well as various commercial vendors and non-profit organizations.
Zeta : Zeta is an proprietary reincarnation of BeOS originally developed by YellowTAB and then by magnussoft . Due to legal problems it is now shut down and doesn't look like it will come back anytime soon.
Open Source and/or Free
AROS (Amiga Research Operating System) - The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 at the API level (like Wine, unlike UAE), while improving on it in many areas. The source code is available under an open source license, which allows anyone to freely improve upon it.
BlueIllusion OS - BlueIllusion is a micro kernel based operating system, which operates on the Intel X86 Architecture. It uses some features like paging to some excess to get work done. Other things like TSS-based Hardware task switching aren´t used. It will - in the future - have a graphical user environment, which I intend to be analogous to the MAC OS 9 GUI, with a Menu bar that appears when moving the mouse to the upper border of the screen - as well as support for a right-click-popup menu under the mouse at needs.
Cosmoe - Cosmoe is a new user interface that runs on top of the Linux operating system (and soon others). Cosmoe implements a powerful but easy-to-use high-level C++ API that is quite similar to BeOS. In fact, many BeOS programs can be recompiled to run on Cosmoe with little or no changes!
Cosmos - Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System) is an operating system project implemented completely in CIL compliant languages. The team is committed to using C#, however any .NET language is usable.
Cosmoe is not a polished, completed work yet. Most of the current work is going on "under the hood", so we don't have a lot of flashy graphics to lure you in. However, Cosmoe does have a very solid foundation, and we look forward to the involvement of the developer community in helping Cosmoe to mature.
FreeDOS - A free MS-DOS clone.
GeekOS - GeekOS is a tiny operating system kernel for x86 PCs. Its main purpose is to serve as a simple but realistic example of an OS kernel running on real hardware. (Actually, most of the development is done on the Bochs emulator.)
The goal of GeekOS is to be a tool for learning about operating system kernels. As of version 0.2.0, it comes with a set of projects suitable for use in an undergraduate operating systems course, or for self-directed learning. GeekOS has been used in courses at a number of colleges and universities.
Haiku : Haiku is an open source operating system currently in development designed from the ground up for desktop computing. Inspired by the Be Operating System, Haiku aims to provide users of all levels with a personal computing experience that is simple yet powerful, and void of any unnecessary complexities.
HelenOS - The HelenOS project is an effort to develop a complete and usable modern operating system, yet offering room for experimenting and research. HelenOS uses its own microkernel written from scratch and supports SMP, multitasking and multithreading on both 32-bit and 64-bit, little-endian and big-endian processor architectures, among wich are AMD64/EM64T (x86-64), ARM, IA-32, IA-64 (Itanium), 32-bit MIPS, 32-bit PowerPC, SPARC V9 and Xen 3.0. Thanks to the relatively high number of supported architectures and suitable design, HelenOS is extremely-well portable.
JNode - Java New Operating System Design Effort. JNode is a simple to use & install Java operating system for personal use. It runs on modern devices. Any java application will run on it, fast & secure!
KolibriOS - KolobriOS is an open source operating system with a monolithic preemptive kernel, video drivers, for 32-bit x86 architecture computers, developed and maintained by The KolibriOS Project Team. KolibriOS is a fork of MenuetOS , written entirely in FASM (assembly language).
Linux : Here is the definition from Wikipedia - "Linux (IPA pronunciation: /ˈlɪnʊks/) is a Unix-like computer operating system. Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free software and open source development; its underlying source code can be modified, used, and redistributed by anyone, freely."
MenuetOS - MenuetOS is an Operating System in development for the PC written entirely in 32/64 bit assembly language, and released under the License . It supports 32/64 bit x86 assembly programming for smaller, faster and less resource hungry applications.
MikeOS - MikeOS is a 16-bit operating system for x86 PCs, written in assembly language, which boots from a floppy disk or CD-ROM. It features a text-based dialog-driven user interface, a command-line, support for FAT12 (DOS) floppies and PC speaker sound. It can load external programs and has over 30 system calls. Basic DOS .COM program support is also included.
osFree - osFree is a open source free (non-commercial) software development project. Goals of the projects are to replace all (or most) of OS/2's subsystems with open-source analogues. The base compatibility system is OS/2 Warp 4 (Merlin), but that doesn't mean we won't be supporting features of newer versions of OS/2 like OS/2 WarpServer for e-business and eComStation by Serenity Systems.
Plan 9 from Bell Labs - Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system, primarily used as a research vehicle. It was developed as the research successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002. Plan 9 is most notable for representing all system interfaces, including those required for networking and the user-interface, through the filesystem rather than specialized interfaces. Plan 9 aims to provide users with a workstation-independent working environment through the use of the 9P protocols. Plan 9 continues to be used and developed in some circles as a research operating system and by hobbyists.
ReactOS - The ReactOS® project is dedicated to making Free Software available to everyone by providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.
Syllable - The goal of Syllable is to create a reliable and easy-to-use open source operating system for the home and small office user. We also want to encourage developers to create an operating system that is intuitive, easy to use, and powerful.
Visopsys - An alternative operating system for PC compatible computers. Under development since late 1997, this system is small, fast, and open source. It features a simple but functional graphical interface, real preemptive multitasking, and virtual memory. Though it attempts to be compatible in a number of ways, Visopsys is not a clone of any other operating system. You can demo the distribution from a "live" CD or floppy disk.
Web Based
eyeOS - A completely free (Open Source) Web Operating System running from your browser, where anybody can collaborate and expand it.
YouOS - YouOS is a web operating system that lets you run diverse applications within a web browser. Small applications like sticky notes or clocks. Large applications like word processing, mp3 players, and instant messaging. Even better, it's very easy to tweak an existing application or write your own.
ajaxWindows - a complete virtual PC you can experience using only a browser from any web connected computer.
eyeOS - eyeOS is a new kind of Operating System, where everything resides on a web browser. With eyeOS, you will have have your desktop, applications and files always with you, from your home, your college, your office or your neightboor's house. Just open a web browser, connect to your eyeOS System and access your personal desktop and all your stuff just like you left it last time.
Source:
http://saveload.org/content/view/13/
Virtualization with Virtual Box
VirtualBox -- professional, flexible, open
innotek VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.
Some of the features of VirtualBox are:
* Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.
* Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.
* Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).
* Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.
A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only (see the "Editions" page for details):
* Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.
* Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.
* USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.
Versions
VirtualBox comes in different versions, depending on your needs. Please see the Editions page for details.
Download
Credits: Open Computer
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Ever had such an annoying message given by Windows?
It has many other flavors:
Cannot delete file: Access is denied
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.
# Unlocker is the solution!
1. Simply right click the folder or file and select Unlocker
2. If the folder or file is locked, a window listing of lockers will appear
3. Simply click Unlock All and you are done!
Source:
Download Here
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Reduce Windows Vista's Size from 15GB to 1.4GB
Free utility condenses Windows Vista from 15GB to 1.4GB
Croatian student created vLite utility that enables users to trim Vista to a tenth of its normal size by ditching unwanted parts
By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
January 31, 2008
A Croatian college student has created a utility that installs a seriously stripped-down Windows Vista, saying the heft of Microsoft's biggest desktop operating system is just too big to believe.
"Who can justify a 15GB operating system?" asked Dino Nuhagic, a fifth-year student from Split, a Croatian city on the Adriatic. Not Nuhagic, or the uncounted users who have turned to his creation, vLite.
The free program lets users pick and choose which Vista components, hot fixes, drivers, and even language packs are installed, then builds a disk image that can be burned to a DVD for unattended installation of the operating system.
"Why did I do it? Well, it's performance and work environment," Nuhagic said when asked why he came up with vLite. "Performance, that's easy to explain. The less things running, the more responsive the OS. But the environment part is where it gets down to personal preference."
Those preferences include options for leaving out virtually every component of Windows Vista, from the minor -- such as the bundled screensavers -- to the major, such as the firewall or Universal Plug and Play.
Some vLite users, in fact, have made it a contest of sorts to come up with the puniest-possible installation package for the operating system. While Microsoft recommends that users set aside 15GB of hard-disk space to install its pride and joy, Nuhagic's fans boast of squeezing it into an image file as small as 515MB that takes up just 1.4GB on the hard drive.
One user reported condensing Windows Vista Home Basic into a 526MB ISO file and installing it in a virtual machine that used just 1.3GB of drive space. "It worked well inside the virtual machine, and since I have 1GB of RAM on the host, I guess the little Vista would work well," said amocanu.
Nuhagic didn't come right out and say it, but he hinted that he -- like more critical users and pundits -- thought Vista was bloated and could use some reducing. "To be frank, I don't need 90 percent of Windows. But that 10 percent, which guarantees that you can run [the] majority of games out there, is what is worth isolating."
rafting vLite wasn't easy, he said. But the time Nuhagic spent on its predecessor, nLite, which similarly squeezes Windows 2000 and Windows XP, paid off in spades. "Since I had four years of experience with tampering [with] older Windows, it was a lot easier than nLite," Nuhagic said of the development of vLite. "Also, it was easier than in XP because Vista does not have the old-style installation. It doesn't install components one by one, but simply extracts the image. Where XP would fail during install because a certain file was missing, that issue is not present in Vista."
Even though vLite features a simple graphical interface that lets users remove a component with a click, Nuhagic warned that the utility isn't designed for the average user: "Because of certain possible compatibility issues with the programs out there [that] expect full Windows, I'd recommend [it] only to users [that] want exactly that kind of tool. In other words, I would not recommend it to someone who installs their OS once every few years. But if you do it every few months, then it's a must."
Nuhagic couldn't say how many people use vLite, or even the number of times it's been downloaded from his Web site. "I don't have counters installed because the FTP mirrors were donated, and I would have to upgrade my hosting for some extra script processing," he said of his shoestring operation. It shouldn't be a surprise, however, that nLite, the Windows XP miniaturizer, remains four to five times more popular than vLite, based on the number of visitors to the different nLite and vLite Web sites.
Microsoft knows of the tools -- Nuhagic said the company has contacted him in the past about possible employment -- but it's done little to quash the condensing. When asked whether it had any thoughts on vLite, a company spokeswoman e-mailed a lukewarm warning.
"Microsoft does not recommend using any tool to strip out applications from Windows Vista prior to installing it on your system, as it may affect your ability to download future Windows Updates and Service Packs, and may cause your system to become unstable," she said.
But vLite's users praised Nuhagic's efforts with blunter language. "Thanks for spending your time making our OS less bloated," said one.
VLite 1.1 can be downloaded from Nuhagic's Web site.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
Croatian student created vLite utility that enables users to trim Vista to a tenth of its normal size by ditching unwanted parts
By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
January 31, 2008
A Croatian college student has created a utility that installs a seriously stripped-down Windows Vista, saying the heft of Microsoft's biggest desktop operating system is just too big to believe.
"Who can justify a 15GB operating system?" asked Dino Nuhagic, a fifth-year student from Split, a Croatian city on the Adriatic. Not Nuhagic, or the uncounted users who have turned to his creation, vLite.
The free program lets users pick and choose which Vista components, hot fixes, drivers, and even language packs are installed, then builds a disk image that can be burned to a DVD for unattended installation of the operating system.
"Why did I do it? Well, it's performance and work environment," Nuhagic said when asked why he came up with vLite. "Performance, that's easy to explain. The less things running, the more responsive the OS. But the environment part is where it gets down to personal preference."
Those preferences include options for leaving out virtually every component of Windows Vista, from the minor -- such as the bundled screensavers -- to the major, such as the firewall or Universal Plug and Play.
Some vLite users, in fact, have made it a contest of sorts to come up with the puniest-possible installation package for the operating system. While Microsoft recommends that users set aside 15GB of hard-disk space to install its pride and joy, Nuhagic's fans boast of squeezing it into an image file as small as 515MB that takes up just 1.4GB on the hard drive.
One user reported condensing Windows Vista Home Basic into a 526MB ISO file and installing it in a virtual machine that used just 1.3GB of drive space. "It worked well inside the virtual machine, and since I have 1GB of RAM on the host, I guess the little Vista would work well," said amocanu.
Nuhagic didn't come right out and say it, but he hinted that he -- like more critical users and pundits -- thought Vista was bloated and could use some reducing. "To be frank, I don't need 90 percent of Windows. But that 10 percent, which guarantees that you can run [the] majority of games out there, is what is worth isolating."
rafting vLite wasn't easy, he said. But the time Nuhagic spent on its predecessor, nLite, which similarly squeezes Windows 2000 and Windows XP, paid off in spades. "Since I had four years of experience with tampering [with] older Windows, it was a lot easier than nLite," Nuhagic said of the development of vLite. "Also, it was easier than in XP because Vista does not have the old-style installation. It doesn't install components one by one, but simply extracts the image. Where XP would fail during install because a certain file was missing, that issue is not present in Vista."
Even though vLite features a simple graphical interface that lets users remove a component with a click, Nuhagic warned that the utility isn't designed for the average user: "Because of certain possible compatibility issues with the programs out there [that] expect full Windows, I'd recommend [it] only to users [that] want exactly that kind of tool. In other words, I would not recommend it to someone who installs their OS once every few years. But if you do it every few months, then it's a must."
Nuhagic couldn't say how many people use vLite, or even the number of times it's been downloaded from his Web site. "I don't have counters installed because the FTP mirrors were donated, and I would have to upgrade my hosting for some extra script processing," he said of his shoestring operation. It shouldn't be a surprise, however, that nLite, the Windows XP miniaturizer, remains four to five times more popular than vLite, based on the number of visitors to the different nLite and vLite Web sites.
Microsoft knows of the tools -- Nuhagic said the company has contacted him in the past about possible employment -- but it's done little to quash the condensing. When asked whether it had any thoughts on vLite, a company spokeswoman e-mailed a lukewarm warning.
"Microsoft does not recommend using any tool to strip out applications from Windows Vista prior to installing it on your system, as it may affect your ability to download future Windows Updates and Service Packs, and may cause your system to become unstable," she said.
But vLite's users praised Nuhagic's efforts with blunter language. "Thanks for spending your time making our OS less bloated," said one.
VLite 1.1 can be downloaded from Nuhagic's Web site.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
Bill Gates' Last Day at Microsoft - CES 2008
Featuring Bill Gates, Brian Williams, Jay Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, Matthew McConaughey, George Clooney, Jon Stuart, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, and from Microsoft: Steve Ballmer, Christine White, Lisa Brummell, Robbie Bach, Kevin Turner, Ray Ozzie, and Craig Mundie.
Monday, February 11, 2008
What is the trend in browser usage?
Web Statistics and Trends
Statistics are important information. From the statistics below, you can see that Internet Explorer is the most common browser. However, FireFox has become quite popular as well.
Browser Statistics Month by Month
January 2008
IE7 - 21.2%
IE6 - 32.0%
IE5 - 1.5%
Fx - 37.2%
Moz - 1.3%
S - 1.9%
O - 1.4%
Legend:
IE - Internet Explorer
Fx - Firefox (identified as Mozilla before 2005)
Moz - The Mozilla Suite (Gecko, Netscape)
S - Safari (and Konqueror. Both identified as Mozilla before 2007)
O - Opera
N - Netscape (identified as Mozilla after 2006)
AOL - America Online (based on both Internet Explorer and Mozilla)
More results here:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Statistics are important information. From the statistics below, you can see that Internet Explorer is the most common browser. However, FireFox has become quite popular as well.
Browser Statistics Month by Month
January 2008
IE7 - 21.2%
IE6 - 32.0%
IE5 - 1.5%
Fx - 37.2%
Moz - 1.3%
S - 1.9%
O - 1.4%
Legend:
IE - Internet Explorer
Fx - Firefox (identified as Mozilla before 2005)
Moz - The Mozilla Suite (Gecko, Netscape)
S - Safari (and Konqueror. Both identified as Mozilla before 2007)
O - Opera
N - Netscape (identified as Mozilla after 2006)
AOL - America Online (based on both Internet Explorer and Mozilla)
More results here:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Tips to Supercharge Mozilla Firefox with Middle Mouse Button
A typical computer mouse has 3 buttons but only two buttons remains dominant in our daily computer usage. For those who don’t know, the middle mouse can become quite useful too, if one know how to use it properly.
In this post, I will show you 6 tips to supercharge your Mozilla Firefox with the middle mouse button , thus making your web browsing experience better than before.
1- Click on a link with the middle mouse button to quickly open a link in a new tab. No more right click -> “Open Link in new tab”!
2- Press the Control (Ctrl) button and scroll the mouse wheel backward to increase Firefox’s font size. Scroll it forward to decrease the font size.
3- Press the Shift button and scroll the mouse wheel forward to move a page forward and scroll backwards to go the previous page.
Below are Mozilla Firefox’s about:config hack to modify hidden preferences (mouse related). Check out here on how to modify about:config.
4- Change the value of middlemouse.paste to true. This will let you paste a clipboard content to any text field with the middle mouse button.
5- Change the value of middlemouse.scrollbarPosition to true and restart your Firefox. The next time you click on a scrollbar location with the middle mouse button, Firefox will center the screen to that position.
6- Change the value of mousewheel.withaltkey.action to 1. This will enable you to scroll document by one page while pressing the Alt button.
That was all that I can find on how to optimize the usage of a middle mouse button in Mozilla Firefox. Feel free to add more tips and tricks by leaving a comment below. Enjoy!
Source: http://www.techmalaya.com/2008/01/17/6-tips-to-supercharge-mozilla-firefox-with-middle-mouse-button/
In this post, I will show you 6 tips to supercharge your Mozilla Firefox with the middle mouse button , thus making your web browsing experience better than before.
1- Click on a link with the middle mouse button to quickly open a link in a new tab. No more right click -> “Open Link in new tab”!
2- Press the Control (Ctrl) button and scroll the mouse wheel backward to increase Firefox’s font size. Scroll it forward to decrease the font size.
3- Press the Shift button and scroll the mouse wheel forward to move a page forward and scroll backwards to go the previous page.
Below are Mozilla Firefox’s about:config hack to modify hidden preferences (mouse related). Check out here on how to modify about:config.
4- Change the value of middlemouse.paste to true. This will let you paste a clipboard content to any text field with the middle mouse button.
5- Change the value of middlemouse.scrollbarPosition to true and restart your Firefox. The next time you click on a scrollbar location with the middle mouse button, Firefox will center the screen to that position.
6- Change the value of mousewheel.withaltkey.action to 1. This will enable you to scroll document by one page while pressing the Alt button.
That was all that I can find on how to optimize the usage of a middle mouse button in Mozilla Firefox. Feel free to add more tips and tricks by leaving a comment below. Enjoy!
Source: http://www.techmalaya.com/2008/01/17/6-tips-to-supercharge-mozilla-firefox-with-middle-mouse-button/
Friday, February 8, 2008
Open Source Alternatives
The following fifty proprietary programs are listed in no particular order within broad categories along with their open source alternatives. In some cases you could probably write your own book on frustrations with the proprietary programs shown here. In other cases, you’ll discover that the open source alternative isn’t quite up to snuff yet. And, in other cases still, you’ll learn that some proprietary programs are real gems, but that the open source advocate can replace those gems with equally shiny objects from the open source repertoire.
Basics
1. Windows Vista OS to Ubuntu OS: This is Microsoft’s operating system (OS), and even Microsoft fans have become disillusioned with this product. Open source OS alternatives have expanded; but these OS often are difficult for the average user to install, learn, and operate. Why deal with it when Ubuntu has become so easy to use that even the most computer illiterate can jump into this operating system with very little time spent on a learning curve? In fact, users can purchase a Dell computer with Ubuntu already installed. Remember, however, that when it comes to using open source software that the open source community often focuses on applications that can be used through Windows, Mac, Linux, or Unix with the majority seemingly devoted to Windows.
2. Internet Explorer Browser to Firefox Browser: Sure, Internet Explorer (IE) is free; but, that’s because it comes packaged with Windows’ operating systems. Free is far different from open source software, where users have more control over how that software works. While you might feel more comfortable with a proprietary operating system, you can still use an open source browser like Mozilla’s Firefox, an exceptional product that expands its use with ‘add-ons‘ created by avid users.
Office Suites
3. Microsoft Office to OpenOffice: If the price makes you feel that Microsoft has worked you over, then switch! If you compare Microsoft’s Office with other products, then you’re looking for something that includes an email client, a word processor, a spreadsheet tool, and a multimedia presentation application. The only product that provides a competitive edge against Microsoft is Google (that includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Presentation and more). But, some would argue that Google isn’t truly open source. So, the next best bet alternative would be OpenOffice, an open source project that includes everything you’d find in Microsoft Office except the email client.
4. Mactopia to NeoOffice: Another Microsoft office suite, but this time meant for MacIntosh computers. Try NeoOffice instead. NeoOffice® is a full-featured set of office applications, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs for Mac OS X. This suite is based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, but it has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.
Office Tools
5. MathWorks MATLAB to Scilab: MATLAB is a highly used application for numerical computing. It provides a programming language that allows users to work with numbers in any possible way imaginable through visualization. Scilab is the open source alternative to MATLAB, and it provides visualization of numerical data just as MATLAB does. Scilab is partly compatible with MATLAB, and both tools are suited for Windows, Linux, and UNIX.
6. Microsoft Access to Kexi: Microsoft Access is a versatile tool for creating database-driven applications and to maintain office or personal data. Access contains an embedded database engine, but it also connects to other databases through ODBC. On the other hand, Kexi allows users to design forms to gain access to and to create data, just like Access. Kexi also contains an embedded database engine and it can import data to Microsoft Access databases. Plus - Kexi is open source, whereas Access belongs to Microsoft.
7. Microsoft Word to OpenOffice Writer: If you want to break that office suite down and begin to replace the suite item by item, then you can start with this product first. Writer is the word processor component of the OpenOffice.org software package that is similar to Microsoft Word, and with a roughly equivalent range of features. Writer can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Writer also includes the ability to export Portable Document Format (PDF) files with no additional software, and can also function as a WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing web pages. One plus over Word is that Writer carries functions and number formats in its tables from Calc, OpenOffice’s spreadsheet application.
8. Microsoft Excel to OpenOffice Calc: Another Microsoft product, Excel still carries its productivity pluses as a spreadsheet, but it no longer carries an air of absolute necessity. Google’s Docs can bring an online, sharing atmosphere to your spreadsheets now. As for a truly open source product that can replace Excel, try OpenOffice.org Calc. This tool provides full spreadsheet functionality incl. a huge number of statistical and scientific functions, pivot tables and charts.
9. Microsoft Visio to Dia: Visio actually is a great application that allows users to go from complicated text and tables that are hard to understand to diagrams that communicate information at a glance. The only thing that spoils the context is the fact that this software is that it’s not open source. Instead, use Dia, a GTK+ based diagram creation program for Linux, Unix and Windows released under the GPL license. Dia was ‘roughly’ inspired by Visio, which should make this tool easy for transition.
Productivity
10. Blackboard to Moodle: Blackboard has been the CMS (Course Management System) ‘industry standard’ for educational purposes for many years. This program allows instructors to build courses, manage student workloads, and more. But Moodle has gained significant ground as an open source alternative to Blackboard, as it helps educators to create effective online learning communities in a scalable package that costs nothing to use.
11. Box to Cabos: If you’re into file sharing, you’ve probably heard of Box.net, if not used them. Not only can you share files, Box allows you to store your files securely online, allowing you to access them from any computer, phone or mobile device for a fee. Cabos, another file sharing program that’s open source, provides simple sidebar user interface, firewall to firewall transfers, proxy transfers, Universal Plug and Play, iTunes + iPod integration, “What’s New?” searches, international searches, and more. All you need is Windows 2000 or later. Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later. Mac OS 8.6 or later. Granted, you don’t have the file storage capacity, but at least you can share files with Cabos without that extra storage capacity.
12. Microsoft Project to Open Workbench: Microsoft allows users to control project work, schedule, and finances, and effectively communicate project data to other users. But, it costs to do that with Microsoft. Instead, use open source Open Workbench to accomplish exactly the same project details for free. When users need to move beyond desktop scheduling to a workgroup, division or enterprise-wide solution, they can upgrade to CA’s Clarity™ system, a project and portfolio management system that offers bidirectional integration with Open Workbench.
13. Mindjet to FreeMind: Mindmapping is a way to share ideas among individuals and groups for productivity. This type of activity takes time, but it saves time. So why should you pay for a product when you can save money by using FreeMind? This latter product will accomplish all the Mindjet does and more. That “more” is the fact that FreeMind is open source.
Graphic Programs
14. Adobe Illustrator to Inkscape: Adobe’s vector drawing system is one of the best in the industry. However, like Photoshop, the price can be prohibitive for some designers and artists. Try Inkscape instead, an open source vector graphics editor similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X. Inkscape uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format and it supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.). Finally, the streamlined interface is easy to use to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.
15. Adobe PhotoShop to GIMP: Even if you’re paying for upgrades instead of the original package, the price for Adobe’s Photoshop can be prohibitive for some photographers and graphic designers. Try GIMP to see if this open source tool can’t provide you with all the power you need for your photography and graphic design needs. GIMP stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program, and it’s the solution that comes closest to emulating the Photoshop environment.
16. Adobe Premiere to Avidemux: Premier is state of the art real-time non-linear video editing for any format including High Definition (HD). Supports 16-bit color resolution, GPU accelerated rendering for faster effects and even advanced DVD authoring. On the other hand, Avidemux provides Windows, Mac, and Linux users with an easy-to-use open source tool for DVD/DivX converting and editing. Avidemux also has scripting support for automation and even offers DVD authoring with the addition of the open source software, dvdauthor.
17. AutoCAD to Archimedes: AutoCAD is an AutoDesk tool used by any designer who creates design drafts - mostly architects. Archimedes is an open source computer aided design (CAD) alternative that focuses primarily on architectural design. AutoCAD definitely has the winning score thus far, but Archimedes shows promise. The latter program contains all the drawing features a designer would need, but its interoperability is weak. Designers still can export scalable vector graphics, so there’s a real market for this open source tool (this opinion isn’t based upon Archimedes’ newest release).
18. Microsoft PowerPoint to OpenOffice Impress: You can make a move away from this Microsoft tool with the use of Google’s Presentation or with OpenOffice’s Impress. Both tools represent full-featured presentation applications that allow users to create and modify diagrams and pictures right within the application.
19. Microsoft Paint to Tux Paint: While not a serious graphics program, it is widely used by many computer users, mostly children Try Tux Paint instead of Paint, as this open source product stands apart from typical graphics people edit software (such as GIMP or Photoshop) in that it was designed to be usable by children as young as 16 months of age. The user interface is meant to be intuitive, and utilizes icons, audible feedback and textual hints to help explain how the software works.
20. TruSpace to Blender: Caligari offers a range of products that enable designers and artists to produce 3D images - at a hefty price. Blender, on the other hand, provides one tool that provides full multiresolution sculpting capabilities with 2D bitmap/3D procedural brushes (Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Grab) supporting symmetry. And, that’s just the beginning of Blender’s capabilities. This open source software is free to download and use.
Web Editors
21. Adobe GoLive CS2 to Mozilla SeaMonkey: GoLive is an integral part of the Adobe Creative Suites products, so it works with your InDesign documents and allows those documents to be converted to Web pages. But, you might want to try Mozilla’s SeaMonkey before you commit to the total Adobe suite option. The Mozilla SeaMonkey project includes a Web-browser, email and newsgroup client, HTML authoring program and IRC chat client. The Composer is simple but it handles tables, CSS, positioned layers and more without sweat. Add-ons currently include Scribefire, the blog blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.
22. Adobe Dreamweaver to NVU: While this tool is a powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor, other options exist that can save money. NVU (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) is a complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Use NVU to create Web pages and manage a Website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.
23. Macromedia Flash Professional to OpenLaszlo: Developers use Flash to create multimedia events on the Web. Since the program utilizes vector-based graphics, it provides a venue that goes beyond the Web. As an open source product, OpenLaszlo provides developers with a platform to create zero-install Web applications with user interface capabilities of desktop client software. In other words, OpenLaszlo applications developed on one machine will run on all leading Web browsers on all leading desktop OS. These applications, like Flash, provide animation, layout, data binding, server communication and more.
24. Microsoft Frontpage to Bluefish: While not as powerful as Dreamweaver, Front Page is a widely used proprietary application used to create Web pages. Take a gander at this list to understand your many open source options for HTML editors. Try Bluefish as one option that can save you money and, possibly, time.
25. Windows Notepad to ConTEXT: Yes, you can get the world’s most versatile HTML editing tool absolutely FREE when you purchase Windows version 2.0 and above. But, why would you want to do that when you can work with open source ConTEXT? This application is a small, fast and powerful freeware programmers text editor, developed to serve as a secondary tool for software developers.
26. Altova XMLSpy to XML Copy Editor: XMLSpy is one of the most popular XML editors on the market today. Its editing features and support for both schema and DTD development along with XSLT, XQuery and XPath development make it an ultimate XML tool. As an open source alternative, XML Copy Editor is a versatile XML editor primarily focused on text editing with XML files. However, XML Copy Editor provides many other features including validation of DTD and XML schemas - as well as XSLT and XPath with tag-free editing. Both tools are Windows applications.
Publishing
27. Adobe Acrobat to PDFCreator: Yes, you have a free trial to create a PDF through Adobe. However, this PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application.
28. Adobe Framemaker to DocBook: Adobe Framemaker software represents a powerful authoring and publishing solution for technical communicators who want to author and publish technical documentation in multiple languages. While this software is reliable, so is DocBook, an open source publishing tool. Additionally, you have access to all the free wikis and documentation that shows how to install, use, and customize the tools and stylesheets.
29. Microsoft Publisher to Scribus: When it comes to Desktop Publishing (DTP) Microsoft’s Publisher provides more control over document elements than Microsoft Word through a DTP-oriented approach. However, professional users still consider this program an entry-level application. Since it’s part of the Microsoft Office Package, many users will find its costs negligible as well. With that said, Scribus offers an open source DTP alternative. Scribus brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout. Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
Communications
30. AIM to Pidgin: Give it up. AIM, AOL’s Instant Messenger, no longer rules. The open source alternative is Pidgin, a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. Let’s break that down: No matter if you use Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr. Can AIM do that? No? Well, then.
31. FeedDemon to RSS Bandit: FeedDemon for Windows constantly searches through feed search engines with keyword-generated searches as well as generalized searches. It also allows offline reading as it ‘prefetches’ your subscribed feeds. NewsGator also synchronizes with FeedDemon so you can gain access to news without your computer. Except for the fact that FeedDemon isn’t open source, it’s an ideal, robust reader. But, for open source fanatics, RSS Bandit provides an equally robust alternative RSS and Atom reader that allows you to keep track of all of the news feeds you follow. Its newspaper view can be customized and the templates are compatible with those used in FeedDemon. Plus, RSS Bandit allows you to synchronize everything with NewsGator online. Finally, RSS Bandit also provides access to news on news servers (similar to Google Groups) - it uses NNTP to read and post to newsgroups anywhere on the net. It integrates to Google Groups by linking to posts on their website.
32. Microsoft MSN Messenger to aMSN: Microsoft offers MSN Messenger to the masses as freeware on Windows, and it’s grown from a simple IM application into a trendsetter in a competitive market. Features include voice and video chatting, gaming, remote support - on top of that it allows connection through mobile devices when you are not near a computer. aMSN, the open source Windows alternative to MSN, aims to mimic its proprietary competitor as much as possible. Most of its extra features are added through plug-ins. You can add, at your leisure, POP3 email support and translation, voice clips, Webcam support, Chat logs, Conferencing support and more.
33. Microsoft Outlook to Thunderbird: Say that you decided to switch to OpenOffice, but you need an email client to replace Microsoft’s Outlook. Try Mozilla’s Thunderbird, an application that carries a similar interface and that is easy to use. Additionally, you can use Lightning to integrate Mozilla’s Sunbird calendar application with Thunderbird.
34. Skype to Wengophone: Skype is a very strong freeware internet VoIP (Voice over IP) product in the telecommunications industry. It started with a simple and free PC-to-PC telephony, but today offers full integration with existing telephone systems. Skype today also offers voicemail, video conversations and sending SMSs. Its open source alternative, WengoPhone, also provides free PC-to-PC calls as well as chat and video conferencing. Created by Wengo, this phone also can provide SMS and call-out features that allow users to communicate with any phone at reasonable prices.
Media
35. iTunes to Songbird: If you’re accustomed to the equation where “Apple + iPod + iTunes” equals a ton of money, then you might consider a switch to Songbird. Songbird is an open source player and a platform committed to “playing the music you want + from the sites you want + on the devices you want.” Songbird thereby challenges the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet.
36. Nero Burning Rom to K3b: Nero Burning Rom is a popular tool to burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. This software includes backup, cd copying, audio features and more, and it’s easy to use. But, it’s not open source like K3b (Windows). This latter program creates and burns CDs and DVDs, including ripping with DivX/XviD encoding, DVD copy, ISO burning, Video CD (VCD) creation, Audio CD creation for almost any audio file, CD-TEXT support for audio CDs, support for DVD-RW and DVD+RW and much more. Oh, and did we add that it was easy to use?
37. Quicktime to Darwin Streaming Server: Apple’s QuickTime 7 Pro is good for everything from creating podcasts to transcoding media in more than a dozen formats. And, the software isn’t that expensive when compared to other products. But, why not use an open source application that shares the same code base as Quicktime Streaming Server? Darwin Streaming Server is an open source project that’s perfect for developers who need to stream QuickTime and MPEG-4 media on platforms such as Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
38. TiVo Desktop to Galleon.tv: Tivo-to-Go users were disappointed to discover that their Tivo software wouldn’t work with Windows Vista. Some answers to this problem included spending more time and money on various solutions that might work to restore that software’s functionality. One solution included using the open source software, Galleon, instead of trying to “fix” Tivo or Windows Vista. Galleon is a free open source media server for the TiVo® DVR which allows you to enjoy many kinds of content and interactive applications right on your TV. The server runs on your home computer and organizes your media collection so that they can be viewed on your home network. Galleon also brings Internet content and applications to your TV.
39. Windows Media Player to Miro: This application seems ubiquitous…no matter what you try to open, Windows Media Player is in your face, right? Well, replace that in-your-face attitude with Miro, an open source program that turns your computer into an internet TV. Miro has 2,500 unrestricted channels with a huge selection of HD content. Plus, you have access to any publisher with video RSS feeds, including anyone on YouTube, Revver, Blip, and many, many more.
Utilities
40. CuteFTP to Filezilla: Sure, CuteFTO is cute, but it’s not free. Sure, it’s reliable, but so are many other File Transfer Protocol applications. Try Filezilla, a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with tons of features - easy to install, easy to use, very reliable, secure, and open source.
41. iBackup to ZManda: Who can you trust with your backup files? It’s difficult to decide, as price alone means nothing. You want safe, reliable servers or tools that can keep your backups available and intact. iBackup has proven to be worthy of that task, but you might want to look at ZManda as well. This open source solution protects more than half a million of servers and desktops running various versions of Linux, UNIX, BSD, Mac OS-X and Microsoft Windows operating systems worldwide. Not only do they backup information, they’re into recovery as well.
42. Norton Ghost to Partition Image: Norton Ghost isn’t a shabby backup system, as it’s a complete tool that backs up everything but the kitchen sink. If you have a complete disk failure, Norton Ghost can bring it back to life on a new hard disk (although you don’t need to make a complete backup every time). You can take this backup to external drives, CDs or DVDs. If you’re an open source advocate, however, Norton Ghost doesn’t cut the cake. You’ll want something like Partition Image (for Linux) or Ghost for Unix (G4U) for Windows or Unix users. Both tools are disk cloners that act differently, but they’re as robust as Norton Ghost. Read more at their respective Web sites before you make the jump. (For a complete rescue disk including Partition Image see SystemRescueCd).
43. Rational Purify to Valgrind: IBM’s Purify is a well respected and much used debugging tool. It uses topnotch memory corruption and memory leak detection to keep hard-to-find bugs from any application. As an open source alternative, Valgrind also detects leaks and other memory related programming errors. But, it also detects threading bugs and includes a call-graph profiler that detects bottlenecks in code. as well as threading bugs. A user might say that Valgrind is better than Purify, even if it is open source.
44. WinZip to 7-Zip: Some of us grew up with WinZip, so it’s sad to say goodbye. But, we all gotta leave home at some point, and when the open source 7-Zip beckons, maybe you should heed the call…
Security
45. Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal to Winpooch: Kaspersky Anti-Virus probably is among the top products on the market for Windows-based anti-virus tools, mainly because it’s well known for its outstanding detection rates. It commits to multiple tasks as it protects against viruses, script viruses, checks file archives (such as zip files) and removes viruses from mail. It also provides protection against spyware as well as adware. As an open source alternative, however, Winpooch also scans files on your computer, detects malware, and prevents all the viruses, trojan horses and other problems that Kaspersky hunts down as well. Winpooch, by the way, adds a real-time scanning capability that ClamWin (noted below) lacks.
46. McAfee VirusScan to ClamWin: McAfee is well known as one of the oldest companies in the anti-virus market. Many individuals need to deal with this software company, as its tools come packaged with many new Windows OS computer systems. The plus side to McAfee is that it is reliable and that it offers 24/7 support. The downside is that it’s not open source. ClamWin, on the other hand, is a free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. It features high detection rates, scheduler, automatic download of virus database updates and a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. As noted above, ClamWin doesn’t provide on access realtime scanning, but when combined with WinPooch, this capability is added.
47. Norton Personal Firewall to WIPFW: Many people could work with Norton in their sleep, as this company has been around that long. The Norton Personal Firewall for Windows will monitor and check all Internet traffic and it will reject any attack or intrusion attempt. Ubiquitous popups and permissions are part of the game, as it seems that each new Website carries its own set of Norton no-nos. As an alternative, WIPFW is a firewall for Windows based on IPFW for FreeBSD UNIX. It provides virtually the same features, functionality, and user interface as Norton Personal Firewall. The big difference? WIPFW is open source.
Financial
48. Authorize.net to OpenSSL: Granted, Authorize.Net’s preferred payment gateway connection, Advanced Integration Menthod (AIM), provides the highest level of customization and security to merchants for submitting transactions online. But, why pay for a secure SSL when you can get an open source product for free? The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. A worldwide community of volunteers uses the Internet to communicate, plan, and develop the OpenSSL toolkit and its related documentation manages the project.
49. Microsoft Money (Plus) to TurboCash: While Microsfot Money Plus is much more than a personal accounting software, Turbocash can boast that claim plus more. Turbocash is open source and free to use. In fact, you might compare TurboCash more to Quickbooks than to Microsoft Money. However, as a personal finance tool, TurboCash is much more user-friendly to the average home budgeter than Compiere.
50. Quickbooks to Compiere: Few people are unfamiliar with Quickbooks, as this software has made its way into many a small business computer. If you feel that few opportunities exist to switch, think again. Compiere, produced by Global Era, provides one solution to open source ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions for any small to large business. Compiere 3.0 marks the introduction of Compiere Professional Edition, a new premium offering targeted at larger organizations that require more advanced services and commercial licensing from Compiere.
Source:
http://whdb.com/
Basics
1. Windows Vista OS to Ubuntu OS: This is Microsoft’s operating system (OS), and even Microsoft fans have become disillusioned with this product. Open source OS alternatives have expanded; but these OS often are difficult for the average user to install, learn, and operate. Why deal with it when Ubuntu has become so easy to use that even the most computer illiterate can jump into this operating system with very little time spent on a learning curve? In fact, users can purchase a Dell computer with Ubuntu already installed. Remember, however, that when it comes to using open source software that the open source community often focuses on applications that can be used through Windows, Mac, Linux, or Unix with the majority seemingly devoted to Windows.
2. Internet Explorer Browser to Firefox Browser: Sure, Internet Explorer (IE) is free; but, that’s because it comes packaged with Windows’ operating systems. Free is far different from open source software, where users have more control over how that software works. While you might feel more comfortable with a proprietary operating system, you can still use an open source browser like Mozilla’s Firefox, an exceptional product that expands its use with ‘add-ons‘ created by avid users.
Office Suites
3. Microsoft Office to OpenOffice: If the price makes you feel that Microsoft has worked you over, then switch! If you compare Microsoft’s Office with other products, then you’re looking for something that includes an email client, a word processor, a spreadsheet tool, and a multimedia presentation application. The only product that provides a competitive edge against Microsoft is Google (that includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Presentation and more). But, some would argue that Google isn’t truly open source. So, the next best bet alternative would be OpenOffice, an open source project that includes everything you’d find in Microsoft Office except the email client.
4. Mactopia to NeoOffice: Another Microsoft office suite, but this time meant for MacIntosh computers. Try NeoOffice instead. NeoOffice® is a full-featured set of office applications, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs for Mac OS X. This suite is based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, but it has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.
Office Tools
5. MathWorks MATLAB to Scilab: MATLAB is a highly used application for numerical computing. It provides a programming language that allows users to work with numbers in any possible way imaginable through visualization. Scilab is the open source alternative to MATLAB, and it provides visualization of numerical data just as MATLAB does. Scilab is partly compatible with MATLAB, and both tools are suited for Windows, Linux, and UNIX.
6. Microsoft Access to Kexi: Microsoft Access is a versatile tool for creating database-driven applications and to maintain office or personal data. Access contains an embedded database engine, but it also connects to other databases through ODBC. On the other hand, Kexi allows users to design forms to gain access to and to create data, just like Access. Kexi also contains an embedded database engine and it can import data to Microsoft Access databases. Plus - Kexi is open source, whereas Access belongs to Microsoft.
7. Microsoft Word to OpenOffice Writer: If you want to break that office suite down and begin to replace the suite item by item, then you can start with this product first. Writer is the word processor component of the OpenOffice.org software package that is similar to Microsoft Word, and with a roughly equivalent range of features. Writer can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Writer also includes the ability to export Portable Document Format (PDF) files with no additional software, and can also function as a WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing web pages. One plus over Word is that Writer carries functions and number formats in its tables from Calc, OpenOffice’s spreadsheet application.
8. Microsoft Excel to OpenOffice Calc: Another Microsoft product, Excel still carries its productivity pluses as a spreadsheet, but it no longer carries an air of absolute necessity. Google’s Docs can bring an online, sharing atmosphere to your spreadsheets now. As for a truly open source product that can replace Excel, try OpenOffice.org Calc. This tool provides full spreadsheet functionality incl. a huge number of statistical and scientific functions, pivot tables and charts.
9. Microsoft Visio to Dia: Visio actually is a great application that allows users to go from complicated text and tables that are hard to understand to diagrams that communicate information at a glance. The only thing that spoils the context is the fact that this software is that it’s not open source. Instead, use Dia, a GTK+ based diagram creation program for Linux, Unix and Windows released under the GPL license. Dia was ‘roughly’ inspired by Visio, which should make this tool easy for transition.
Productivity
10. Blackboard to Moodle: Blackboard has been the CMS (Course Management System) ‘industry standard’ for educational purposes for many years. This program allows instructors to build courses, manage student workloads, and more. But Moodle has gained significant ground as an open source alternative to Blackboard, as it helps educators to create effective online learning communities in a scalable package that costs nothing to use.
11. Box to Cabos: If you’re into file sharing, you’ve probably heard of Box.net, if not used them. Not only can you share files, Box allows you to store your files securely online, allowing you to access them from any computer, phone or mobile device for a fee. Cabos, another file sharing program that’s open source, provides simple sidebar user interface, firewall to firewall transfers, proxy transfers, Universal Plug and Play, iTunes + iPod integration, “What’s New?” searches, international searches, and more. All you need is Windows 2000 or later. Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later. Mac OS 8.6 or later. Granted, you don’t have the file storage capacity, but at least you can share files with Cabos without that extra storage capacity.
12. Microsoft Project to Open Workbench: Microsoft allows users to control project work, schedule, and finances, and effectively communicate project data to other users. But, it costs to do that with Microsoft. Instead, use open source Open Workbench to accomplish exactly the same project details for free. When users need to move beyond desktop scheduling to a workgroup, division or enterprise-wide solution, they can upgrade to CA’s Clarity™ system, a project and portfolio management system that offers bidirectional integration with Open Workbench.
13. Mindjet to FreeMind: Mindmapping is a way to share ideas among individuals and groups for productivity. This type of activity takes time, but it saves time. So why should you pay for a product when you can save money by using FreeMind? This latter product will accomplish all the Mindjet does and more. That “more” is the fact that FreeMind is open source.
Graphic Programs
14. Adobe Illustrator to Inkscape: Adobe’s vector drawing system is one of the best in the industry. However, like Photoshop, the price can be prohibitive for some designers and artists. Try Inkscape instead, an open source vector graphics editor similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X. Inkscape uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format and it supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.). Finally, the streamlined interface is easy to use to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.
15. Adobe PhotoShop to GIMP: Even if you’re paying for upgrades instead of the original package, the price for Adobe’s Photoshop can be prohibitive for some photographers and graphic designers. Try GIMP to see if this open source tool can’t provide you with all the power you need for your photography and graphic design needs. GIMP stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program, and it’s the solution that comes closest to emulating the Photoshop environment.
16. Adobe Premiere to Avidemux: Premier is state of the art real-time non-linear video editing for any format including High Definition (HD). Supports 16-bit color resolution, GPU accelerated rendering for faster effects and even advanced DVD authoring. On the other hand, Avidemux provides Windows, Mac, and Linux users with an easy-to-use open source tool for DVD/DivX converting and editing. Avidemux also has scripting support for automation and even offers DVD authoring with the addition of the open source software, dvdauthor.
17. AutoCAD to Archimedes: AutoCAD is an AutoDesk tool used by any designer who creates design drafts - mostly architects. Archimedes is an open source computer aided design (CAD) alternative that focuses primarily on architectural design. AutoCAD definitely has the winning score thus far, but Archimedes shows promise. The latter program contains all the drawing features a designer would need, but its interoperability is weak. Designers still can export scalable vector graphics, so there’s a real market for this open source tool (this opinion isn’t based upon Archimedes’ newest release).
18. Microsoft PowerPoint to OpenOffice Impress: You can make a move away from this Microsoft tool with the use of Google’s Presentation or with OpenOffice’s Impress. Both tools represent full-featured presentation applications that allow users to create and modify diagrams and pictures right within the application.
19. Microsoft Paint to Tux Paint: While not a serious graphics program, it is widely used by many computer users, mostly children Try Tux Paint instead of Paint, as this open source product stands apart from typical graphics people edit software (such as GIMP or Photoshop) in that it was designed to be usable by children as young as 16 months of age. The user interface is meant to be intuitive, and utilizes icons, audible feedback and textual hints to help explain how the software works.
20. TruSpace to Blender: Caligari offers a range of products that enable designers and artists to produce 3D images - at a hefty price. Blender, on the other hand, provides one tool that provides full multiresolution sculpting capabilities with 2D bitmap/3D procedural brushes (Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Grab) supporting symmetry. And, that’s just the beginning of Blender’s capabilities. This open source software is free to download and use.
Web Editors
21. Adobe GoLive CS2 to Mozilla SeaMonkey: GoLive is an integral part of the Adobe Creative Suites products, so it works with your InDesign documents and allows those documents to be converted to Web pages. But, you might want to try Mozilla’s SeaMonkey before you commit to the total Adobe suite option. The Mozilla SeaMonkey project includes a Web-browser, email and newsgroup client, HTML authoring program and IRC chat client. The Composer is simple but it handles tables, CSS, positioned layers and more without sweat. Add-ons currently include Scribefire, the blog blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.
22. Adobe Dreamweaver to NVU: While this tool is a powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor, other options exist that can save money. NVU (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) is a complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Use NVU to create Web pages and manage a Website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.
23. Macromedia Flash Professional to OpenLaszlo: Developers use Flash to create multimedia events on the Web. Since the program utilizes vector-based graphics, it provides a venue that goes beyond the Web. As an open source product, OpenLaszlo provides developers with a platform to create zero-install Web applications with user interface capabilities of desktop client software. In other words, OpenLaszlo applications developed on one machine will run on all leading Web browsers on all leading desktop OS. These applications, like Flash, provide animation, layout, data binding, server communication and more.
24. Microsoft Frontpage to Bluefish: While not as powerful as Dreamweaver, Front Page is a widely used proprietary application used to create Web pages. Take a gander at this list to understand your many open source options for HTML editors. Try Bluefish as one option that can save you money and, possibly, time.
25. Windows Notepad to ConTEXT: Yes, you can get the world’s most versatile HTML editing tool absolutely FREE when you purchase Windows version 2.0 and above. But, why would you want to do that when you can work with open source ConTEXT? This application is a small, fast and powerful freeware programmers text editor, developed to serve as a secondary tool for software developers.
26. Altova XMLSpy to XML Copy Editor: XMLSpy is one of the most popular XML editors on the market today. Its editing features and support for both schema and DTD development along with XSLT, XQuery and XPath development make it an ultimate XML tool. As an open source alternative, XML Copy Editor is a versatile XML editor primarily focused on text editing with XML files. However, XML Copy Editor provides many other features including validation of DTD and XML schemas - as well as XSLT and XPath with tag-free editing. Both tools are Windows applications.
Publishing
27. Adobe Acrobat to PDFCreator: Yes, you have a free trial to create a PDF through Adobe. However, this PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application.
28. Adobe Framemaker to DocBook: Adobe Framemaker software represents a powerful authoring and publishing solution for technical communicators who want to author and publish technical documentation in multiple languages. While this software is reliable, so is DocBook, an open source publishing tool. Additionally, you have access to all the free wikis and documentation that shows how to install, use, and customize the tools and stylesheets.
29. Microsoft Publisher to Scribus: When it comes to Desktop Publishing (DTP) Microsoft’s Publisher provides more control over document elements than Microsoft Word through a DTP-oriented approach. However, professional users still consider this program an entry-level application. Since it’s part of the Microsoft Office Package, many users will find its costs negligible as well. With that said, Scribus offers an open source DTP alternative. Scribus brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout. Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
Communications
30. AIM to Pidgin: Give it up. AIM, AOL’s Instant Messenger, no longer rules. The open source alternative is Pidgin, a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. Let’s break that down: No matter if you use Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr. Can AIM do that? No? Well, then.
31. FeedDemon to RSS Bandit: FeedDemon for Windows constantly searches through feed search engines with keyword-generated searches as well as generalized searches. It also allows offline reading as it ‘prefetches’ your subscribed feeds. NewsGator also synchronizes with FeedDemon so you can gain access to news without your computer. Except for the fact that FeedDemon isn’t open source, it’s an ideal, robust reader. But, for open source fanatics, RSS Bandit provides an equally robust alternative RSS and Atom reader that allows you to keep track of all of the news feeds you follow. Its newspaper view can be customized and the templates are compatible with those used in FeedDemon. Plus, RSS Bandit allows you to synchronize everything with NewsGator online. Finally, RSS Bandit also provides access to news on news servers (similar to Google Groups) - it uses NNTP to read and post to newsgroups anywhere on the net. It integrates to Google Groups by linking to posts on their website.
32. Microsoft MSN Messenger to aMSN: Microsoft offers MSN Messenger to the masses as freeware on Windows, and it’s grown from a simple IM application into a trendsetter in a competitive market. Features include voice and video chatting, gaming, remote support - on top of that it allows connection through mobile devices when you are not near a computer. aMSN, the open source Windows alternative to MSN, aims to mimic its proprietary competitor as much as possible. Most of its extra features are added through plug-ins. You can add, at your leisure, POP3 email support and translation, voice clips, Webcam support, Chat logs, Conferencing support and more.
33. Microsoft Outlook to Thunderbird: Say that you decided to switch to OpenOffice, but you need an email client to replace Microsoft’s Outlook. Try Mozilla’s Thunderbird, an application that carries a similar interface and that is easy to use. Additionally, you can use Lightning to integrate Mozilla’s Sunbird calendar application with Thunderbird.
34. Skype to Wengophone: Skype is a very strong freeware internet VoIP (Voice over IP) product in the telecommunications industry. It started with a simple and free PC-to-PC telephony, but today offers full integration with existing telephone systems. Skype today also offers voicemail, video conversations and sending SMSs. Its open source alternative, WengoPhone, also provides free PC-to-PC calls as well as chat and video conferencing. Created by Wengo, this phone also can provide SMS and call-out features that allow users to communicate with any phone at reasonable prices.
Media
35. iTunes to Songbird: If you’re accustomed to the equation where “Apple + iPod + iTunes” equals a ton of money, then you might consider a switch to Songbird. Songbird is an open source player and a platform committed to “playing the music you want + from the sites you want + on the devices you want.” Songbird thereby challenges the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet.
36. Nero Burning Rom to K3b: Nero Burning Rom is a popular tool to burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. This software includes backup, cd copying, audio features and more, and it’s easy to use. But, it’s not open source like K3b (Windows). This latter program creates and burns CDs and DVDs, including ripping with DivX/XviD encoding, DVD copy, ISO burning, Video CD (VCD) creation, Audio CD creation for almost any audio file, CD-TEXT support for audio CDs, support for DVD-RW and DVD+RW and much more. Oh, and did we add that it was easy to use?
37. Quicktime to Darwin Streaming Server: Apple’s QuickTime 7 Pro is good for everything from creating podcasts to transcoding media in more than a dozen formats. And, the software isn’t that expensive when compared to other products. But, why not use an open source application that shares the same code base as Quicktime Streaming Server? Darwin Streaming Server is an open source project that’s perfect for developers who need to stream QuickTime and MPEG-4 media on platforms such as Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
38. TiVo Desktop to Galleon.tv: Tivo-to-Go users were disappointed to discover that their Tivo software wouldn’t work with Windows Vista. Some answers to this problem included spending more time and money on various solutions that might work to restore that software’s functionality. One solution included using the open source software, Galleon, instead of trying to “fix” Tivo or Windows Vista. Galleon is a free open source media server for the TiVo® DVR which allows you to enjoy many kinds of content and interactive applications right on your TV. The server runs on your home computer and organizes your media collection so that they can be viewed on your home network. Galleon also brings Internet content and applications to your TV.
39. Windows Media Player to Miro: This application seems ubiquitous…no matter what you try to open, Windows Media Player is in your face, right? Well, replace that in-your-face attitude with Miro, an open source program that turns your computer into an internet TV. Miro has 2,500 unrestricted channels with a huge selection of HD content. Plus, you have access to any publisher with video RSS feeds, including anyone on YouTube, Revver, Blip, and many, many more.
Utilities
40. CuteFTP to Filezilla: Sure, CuteFTO is cute, but it’s not free. Sure, it’s reliable, but so are many other File Transfer Protocol applications. Try Filezilla, a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with tons of features - easy to install, easy to use, very reliable, secure, and open source.
41. iBackup to ZManda: Who can you trust with your backup files? It’s difficult to decide, as price alone means nothing. You want safe, reliable servers or tools that can keep your backups available and intact. iBackup has proven to be worthy of that task, but you might want to look at ZManda as well. This open source solution protects more than half a million of servers and desktops running various versions of Linux, UNIX, BSD, Mac OS-X and Microsoft Windows operating systems worldwide. Not only do they backup information, they’re into recovery as well.
42. Norton Ghost to Partition Image: Norton Ghost isn’t a shabby backup system, as it’s a complete tool that backs up everything but the kitchen sink. If you have a complete disk failure, Norton Ghost can bring it back to life on a new hard disk (although you don’t need to make a complete backup every time). You can take this backup to external drives, CDs or DVDs. If you’re an open source advocate, however, Norton Ghost doesn’t cut the cake. You’ll want something like Partition Image (for Linux) or Ghost for Unix (G4U) for Windows or Unix users. Both tools are disk cloners that act differently, but they’re as robust as Norton Ghost. Read more at their respective Web sites before you make the jump. (For a complete rescue disk including Partition Image see SystemRescueCd).
43. Rational Purify to Valgrind: IBM’s Purify is a well respected and much used debugging tool. It uses topnotch memory corruption and memory leak detection to keep hard-to-find bugs from any application. As an open source alternative, Valgrind also detects leaks and other memory related programming errors. But, it also detects threading bugs and includes a call-graph profiler that detects bottlenecks in code. as well as threading bugs. A user might say that Valgrind is better than Purify, even if it is open source.
44. WinZip to 7-Zip: Some of us grew up with WinZip, so it’s sad to say goodbye. But, we all gotta leave home at some point, and when the open source 7-Zip beckons, maybe you should heed the call…
Security
45. Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal to Winpooch: Kaspersky Anti-Virus probably is among the top products on the market for Windows-based anti-virus tools, mainly because it’s well known for its outstanding detection rates. It commits to multiple tasks as it protects against viruses, script viruses, checks file archives (such as zip files) and removes viruses from mail. It also provides protection against spyware as well as adware. As an open source alternative, however, Winpooch also scans files on your computer, detects malware, and prevents all the viruses, trojan horses and other problems that Kaspersky hunts down as well. Winpooch, by the way, adds a real-time scanning capability that ClamWin (noted below) lacks.
46. McAfee VirusScan to ClamWin: McAfee is well known as one of the oldest companies in the anti-virus market. Many individuals need to deal with this software company, as its tools come packaged with many new Windows OS computer systems. The plus side to McAfee is that it is reliable and that it offers 24/7 support. The downside is that it’s not open source. ClamWin, on the other hand, is a free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. It features high detection rates, scheduler, automatic download of virus database updates and a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. As noted above, ClamWin doesn’t provide on access realtime scanning, but when combined with WinPooch, this capability is added.
47. Norton Personal Firewall to WIPFW: Many people could work with Norton in their sleep, as this company has been around that long. The Norton Personal Firewall for Windows will monitor and check all Internet traffic and it will reject any attack or intrusion attempt. Ubiquitous popups and permissions are part of the game, as it seems that each new Website carries its own set of Norton no-nos. As an alternative, WIPFW is a firewall for Windows based on IPFW for FreeBSD UNIX. It provides virtually the same features, functionality, and user interface as Norton Personal Firewall. The big difference? WIPFW is open source.
Financial
48. Authorize.net to OpenSSL: Granted, Authorize.Net’s preferred payment gateway connection, Advanced Integration Menthod (AIM), provides the highest level of customization and security to merchants for submitting transactions online. But, why pay for a secure SSL when you can get an open source product for free? The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. A worldwide community of volunteers uses the Internet to communicate, plan, and develop the OpenSSL toolkit and its related documentation manages the project.
49. Microsoft Money (Plus) to TurboCash: While Microsfot Money Plus is much more than a personal accounting software, Turbocash can boast that claim plus more. Turbocash is open source and free to use. In fact, you might compare TurboCash more to Quickbooks than to Microsoft Money. However, as a personal finance tool, TurboCash is much more user-friendly to the average home budgeter than Compiere.
50. Quickbooks to Compiere: Few people are unfamiliar with Quickbooks, as this software has made its way into many a small business computer. If you feel that few opportunities exist to switch, think again. Compiere, produced by Global Era, provides one solution to open source ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions for any small to large business. Compiere 3.0 marks the introduction of Compiere Professional Edition, a new premium offering targeted at larger organizations that require more advanced services and commercial licensing from Compiere.
Source:
http://whdb.com/
Public beta for AVG 8
Grisoft has launched a free beta version of the newly developed AVG 8. The software is said to offer many improvements and has apparently been reprogrammed from scratch.
New features include a module for checking web and instant messenger traffic, the LinkScanner malicious script filter developed by the recently acquired Exploit Prevention Labs, and an anti-rootkit component. The new scan engine supposedly improves general detection rates and offers more effective heuristics – as well as being faster and requiring less resources than its predecessor. The new user interface is designed to make access easier for less experienced computer users, but the menu also still offers extended expert settings.
To take a preliminary look at the new software version you can register and download it from the vendor's beta page. Windows 2000, XP, Vista, the 64-bit versions of XP and Vista, Windows 2000 Server are supported, as is Windows Server 2003 both in its 32-bit and its 64-bit version. The beta version is running until March 1, 2008.
See also:
* Download AVG 8 Beta 2 (registration required)
Website: http://beta.avg.com/
New features include a module for checking web and instant messenger traffic, the LinkScanner malicious script filter developed by the recently acquired Exploit Prevention Labs, and an anti-rootkit component. The new scan engine supposedly improves general detection rates and offers more effective heuristics – as well as being faster and requiring less resources than its predecessor. The new user interface is designed to make access easier for less experienced computer users, but the menu also still offers extended expert settings.
To take a preliminary look at the new software version you can register and download it from the vendor's beta page. Windows 2000, XP, Vista, the 64-bit versions of XP and Vista, Windows 2000 Server are supported, as is Windows Server 2003 both in its 32-bit and its 64-bit version. The beta version is running until March 1, 2008.
See also:
* Download AVG 8 Beta 2 (registration required)
Website: http://beta.avg.com/
YouTube Download&Convert
YouTube Download&Convert, as the name suggests, allows users of the program to download any video from youtube and convert it into most formats - ready for sharing in emails or putting on an iPod (there are many more uses, these are just a couple).
The program itself is surprisingly easy to use - simply tell it the YouTube URL and what format you want to convert it to, and click Download. You can also choose what directory to download the file into. The program then downloads the file - giving you the progress along the way - and then converts using the FFmpeg library. It couldn't be easier.
This program and all it's updates are completely free - however a lot of hard work has been put into writing it. If you like this program please consider donating via PayPal - you don't even need an account. Any amount is appreciated!
Download:
http://cubedlabs.googlecode.com/files/Install-YouTubeDownloadConvert-v1.1.2.exe
Website:
http://www.cubedlabs.com/youtube_downloadconvert.php
How to hide a .rar in a jpeg file
Here’s some good old instructions that I found to hide a .rar file in a jpeg so that you can open it as either…
1. Get your .rar file and put it in the same directory as a jpeg picture (c:\hidden is a good place to put it)
2. Open up a command prompt by clicking Start/Run and typing “cmd” and click ok.
3. In the DOS window, type “cd c:\hidden” to navigate to the folder
4. Type “copy /b input.jpg + input.rar ouput.jpg
(where input jpeg is the picture you want to show, input.rar is the file you want to hide and output.jpg will be the name of the new combined file)
That’s it! You can double click the new file and it will show it as a picture, BUT… if you open it with winrar, you will see the files contained. The picture above has a secret file in it, right click and save picture to your computer and then open it with Winrar to see what I put in there!
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