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Tag Archives: oss

Open Source Living – a Directory of OSS Apps

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, open source .

There maybe countless arguments for using open source applications, but one of the strongest is having a single interface to learn when working on Windows, Mac or Linux systems. Website directory Open Source Living helps you to find just those kind of programs. It’s not an extensive, all-in-one directory, but it seems to narrow its choices based on quality and widespread acceptance. Open Source Living is an archive of the best open source applications. Software is sorted by categories, such as Web, Graphics, Audio. And while not every application listed at Open Source Living is entirely cross-platform, a good deal of them are.

Check out also Mohawke’s Best of the Best Free and Open Source Software Collection: Mac OS X and Windows software Collection and Open Source Apps on Mac. Ah, and this one.

Start your new year with open source software :-p

KDE 4 Preview

Posted on by Posted in desktop environments, kde, review/preview/tests .

KDE 4 is coming. It’s starting to look and behave mature enough to use it on a normal desktop. This article is a little introduction to what you might be expecting from the brand new KDE due later this year.

It’s been a whole month when I’ve investigated the new environment called KDE 4. Honestly I wanted to wait till “Beta 3″, which should have appeared on 5th October. But as you all can see it has never happened. On the IRC channel #kde4-devel I was informed that the “Beta 3″ should have been tagged yesterday but unfortunately it didn’t turn out to be true. Not waiting any longer I made my mind and I have updated the SVN and have run the cmake.

First glance

Right after running the KDE you can tell at once that new wallpaper is far more beautiful than the grey old one and the marvelous contrasting flower is well matched to the bottom bar. Unluckily it does nothing more than displaying the clock. The taskbar despite the fact it was on the bar didn’t display processes and all the effort I made to add there any applet or the Pager was in vain, and ended with a complete crash of the bar. The only thing I succeeded in was to put there the Kickoff menubar.

desktop

Kickoff – the new KDE menu

The first appearance of Kickoff was in SUSE Linux 10.2 as a new menu for KDE. The icons were arranged in five categories: Favorite, Applications, My Computer, Recently used, Leave. There is nothing more than the search box that helps you finding applications and documents. It’s too early to discuss about the new KDE menu even talking about its appearance. IMHO I wish that the searching engine wouldn’t be based on Nepomuk or Strigi. I’d like to mention that it is only the initial version of this menu in KDE.

kick_fav

kick_app

kick_com

kick_lea

Kget – is still surprising

I’ve talked about this program a lot so far. Even now there has changed a lot of stuff, not only the appearance but the functionality. I’ll shortly remind that Kget is the download accelerator that provides you quequing, placing files in a specific directory chosen by some criteria. This version is enriched with the Transfer Graph applet, which shows you the graph of the download speed of current file. It’s the third applet like this. The first two are: Pie Graph and Bar Chart.

Kget

Kget_bar

Kget_pie

amarok

Kget_all

Plasma – new applets

I’m used to some sort of nice rule. All the time I check the state of KDE 4 I meet new Plasmoids – so is now. The first one is the old well-known Network Monitor which transformed from two flushing monitors to the graph that shows the traffic flow.

pla_net

The next two applets are quite new. The first one is the System Monitor. This applet in the intention of the creators will inform you about the state of the main parts of your PC. In the future you can expect for reading ACPI information such as temperature or fan speed. Unfortunately at the moment the applet tries to perform only the usage of the disc space.

pla_sysmon

Today the best applet I’ve tried was the Color Picker. It helps you to “pick” the color of any pixel on the screen. Using the standard tool, the “pipette”, you are provided with the color in a few color formats. Very interesting feature it seems to be the probe history that shows a few earlier tries.

pla_color

KWin Composite – defaultly enabled

It seems that KWin Composite effects are defaultly enabled. You can notice shadows under windows and the animated windows’ minimization. There are also available features from Compiz Fusion that pointing at the left top corner of the screen you are starting something similar to Scale plugin. Switching between windows using Alt+Tab displays thumbs of the windows. Quite interesting is the fact that KRunner looks different from when the Composite effects are disabled.

krunner

switcher

KSysGuard – the system guard

The System Guard has also changed its appearance by the new background under the graphs.

system_monitor

KStyle / KWin – styles and decorations

It is a rule that I always look very carefully at the appearance comparing Oxygen with Bespin (the unoffical style). IMHO Oxygen still seems too less contrast. I think authors are deserving of credit for continuous improvement. From the last version they improved the appearance of tabs and the highlightment of elements and buttons. The scrollbar turns to green under the mouse point. But still it is far away from mockups in the Internet.

oxygen

bespin

At last the buttons have tooltips. Now you don’t have to think which button closes the window :)

oxy

plastik

Dolphin and Kate – the new appearance

It is the high time to see how some applications look like in Oxygen. I’ve tried the file manager Dolphin and the text editor Kate.

dolphin

kate

Amarok – at least there is some noise!

At the end I’ve checked my favourite audio player. The best way to describe it is to say “sometimes better. sometimes worse”. This time I couldn’t manage to make a collection, not even play one mp3 :/ But instead I could connect to Jamendo and listen to their songs. Thanks to that you can see how the Amarok looks like.

amarok

This article is a direct translation of text published on author’s blog: KDE 4 rev 723381

OpenOffice.org 2.3: New features, extensions and the much anticipated charting tool

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, office suites, open source, review/preview/tests .

Unlike previous 2.x releases, OpenOffice.org 2.3 is a new and enhanced feature release rather than a bug fix. There are several smart changes, a whole new approach to adding new features and of course the much anticipated new charting tool. This is definitely a release to get to know.

I’ll plunge right into what’s new:

  • A bunch of new and enhanced features like restoring the user-defined movement path in Impress and applying better default print settings in Calc. Check the release notes for complete information from OpenOffice.org.
  • A significantly different chart tool.
  • New extensions provided by Sun and other vendors. You will need to run 2.3 for the extensions to work. Read more about the new extensions on the OpenOffice.org web site.

Control multimedia applications with ReMoot

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, multimedia, open source .

You can manage most of today’s multimedia applications easily with ReMoot, a universal remote control program. ReMoot even provides an esoteric way of controlling your PC remotely from your cell phone or PDA, earning it top geek points.

Start by going to the ReMoot site and clicking on Source Download to get the latest version, 0.4. The software consists of Perl and Ruby scripts. After the quick download completes, open a console, go to the directory where you downloaded everything, and type these commands as root:

tar zxf remoot-0.4.tar.gz
cd remoot-0.4
chmod +x re*
cp remoot* /usr/bin
cp rewww00t* /usr/bin

ReMoot comprises three scripts: the basic remoot script itself, which you use to command the different multimedia applications; remoot-remote, which shows onscreen graphical controls; and rewww00t, which lets you govern your PC via a Web interface. You need Perl to use remoot, and you need Ruby to use rewww00t. If you don’t already have these available, use your favorite package manager to get perl, perl-Tk, and ruby. You’ll also need Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA), but most distributions already include it, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Begin by checking that ReMoot is actually working. Open your favorite music program, such as Amarok, and start playing something. From a console, try some commands, such as remoot volup and remoot voldown to turn the volume up or down, or remoot next to advance through the tracks.

Remoot commands Description
remoot voldown Turn the volume down.
remoot play Start playing.
remoot stop Stop playing.
remoot prev Go back to the previous track.

ReMoot supports several different programs, all with the same commands. For example, whether you’re listening to music with Amarok or watching a video with xine or Kaffeine, the remoot stop command will produce the same effect in the player program. As long as you’re running a program known by ReMoot, you’ll get consistent results. This lets you configure the multimedia keys on your keyboard in a single way that will work no matter which program you happen to be using at the time.

Programs known by ReMoot
Amarok Kaffeine Quod Libet
Audacious KsCD Totem
Exaile MPlayer xine

However, some of these programs require tweaks to work properly. Check the ReMoot wiki site if something doesn’t work as expected.

ReMoot can control several programs at the same time. If you pause Amarok, for instance, and then want to start it again, the remoot playpause command won’t start any other programs that might be running but instead will continue with Amarok. If you want to continue with other programs, you have to reactivate them manually before ReMoot will work with them.

If you are more graphically oriented, the remoot-remote program shows a bare-bones window with all available commands. No matter which program is running, you can click on one of these buttons to command the currently playing program. The company promises that a new version will feature icons instead of text.

If you really want to earn a “geek award,” start the rewww00t program (check the name carefully; it usually includes a version number) and navigate to yourOwnURL:14300. You’ll see clickable links that operate on your multimedia. With rewww00t, you could use your cell phone or PDA to connect to your server (though you’d have to open firewall ports and do some other things in order to get this to work) and turn the volume up from anywhere in the world. That may be of little use, but it’s interesting!

Program the multimedia keysWith the scripts installed and working, you can get Linux to perform certain commands whenever you press a multimedia key. Following the instructions in the article “Customize your laptop keyboard with X and KDE,” you should:

  • Open the Control Center.
  • Click on the Regional & Accessibility tab.
  • Pick the Input Actions option.
  • Add a group with the New Group command (give it a name such as Multimedia).

Then, for each key you want to program:

  • Add a new action to the group.
  • Go to the General tab.
  • Fill in the Action Name field.
  • Set the Action Type to Keyboard Shortcut -> Command/URL (Simple).
  • Go to the Keyboard Shortcut tab.
  • Click on the button and then press the Multimedia key (remember, you can use modifiers such as Shift, Alt, and Control).
  • Go to the Command/URL Settings tab.
  • Type in the appropriate command (for example, use remoot volup for the Volume Up key).

That’s all there is to it. ReMoot makes handling multimedia keys both simpler and more powerful.