Links: PC-BSD 8.1 and Lightspark 0.4.2 Released, Other Free Software/Open Source News
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-07-22 18:55:05 UTC
- Modified: 2010-07-22 19:00:10 UTC
Summary: Today's news about digital freedom and openness
Morevna is an open source anime project made using open source tools like Synfig, Blender, GIMP and Krita. Unlike Project London Movie, Morevna is not only created using free and open source tools, but Morevna anime will also be released and distributed as free content. This project definitely deserves a lot of appreciation.
Whether you just want to balance your checkbook or you need to track the finances of a large global corporation, you can find open source software to do the job. For our list of open source financial tools, we cast a wide net and included applications related to enterprise resource management, point-of-sale and even employee time tracking. Not to mention traditional accounting and financial management tools.
One trend worth noting -- a huge number of the open source tools on this list, particularly the business applications, are now available on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis. For businesses, this model seems to make sense, as it gives them access to support and reduces the need for in-house staff to deploy and monitor applications. It also enables a more mobile workforce and keeps costs low. And of course, this model is also great for open source vendors as it gives them another way to monetize their open source projects.
Without further ado, here are fifty open source applications that might be able to replace the financial software you currently use for your home or business.
If you haven’t run into a situation where you need to rename multiple files in one go, you haven’t been using a computer for long. When the next time comes, turn to KRename. Its simple graphical interface makes renaming files easy for average users, and it offers a powerful template language for advanced users with more complex renaming tasks. Although it was written for the KDE desktop, KRename works under other Linux platforms and even on Windows.
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Web Browsers
Last week we showed Opera 10.60 to be the world's fastest Web browser. That was in the Windows world. But where do Chrome, Firefox, and Opera stand in Linux? Today we find out. Adding the Win 7 results, we'll also learn which OS has the speediest browser.
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Mozilla
Firefox 3.6.7 and Firefox 3.5.11 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.7.
The latest Firefox 4.0 nightly build adds a new download ("Save link as") / upload dialog - in Linux that is, as I didn't try Firefox 4.0 Windows or Mac builds. This may have been added earlier but only now I've noticed it.
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SaaS
There’s a real explosion of cloud platforms and management tools, it seems you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one these days. In the commercial proprietary solutions space you have – CA’s 3Terra AppLogic, Enomaly, Nimbula, RightScale. In open source there are Eucalyptus, Cloud.com, Open Nebula and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. There are a bunch more that I failed to mention. It makes you wonder do we really need another one? How much different can they be?Rackspace Champion's Open Source Cloud I am not sure but the newest one appears to be rather significant.
NASA is dropping Eucalyptus from its Nebula infrastructure cloud not only because its engineers believe the open source platform can't achieve the sort of scale they require, but also because it isn't entirely open source.
NASA chief technology officer Chris Kemp tells The Reg that as his engineers attempted to contribute additional Eucalyptus code to improve its ability to scale, they were unable to do so because some of the platform's code is open and some isn't. Their attempted contributions conflicted with code that was only available in a partially closed version of platform maintained by Eucalyptus Systems Inc., the commercial outfit run by the project's founders.
In some ways Facebook is still a LAMP site (kind of), but it has had to change and extend its operation to incorporate a lot of other elements and services, and modify the approach to existing ones.
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BSD
The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.1 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE, and KDE 4.4.5
One of the features that sets FreeBSD apart from other open source opeating systems, is its governance structure. FreeBSD is not owned by a company, though many companies use it and contribute code back, but yet is run as if it were a company, with the Core Team taking decisions and steering the Project.
The FreeBSD Foundation funds various projects each year and there are several interesting projects in progress:
* DAHDI (formerly known as Zaptel) FreeBSD driver port--this project will make it possible to use FreeBSD as a base system for software PBX solutions
* resource containers and a simple per-jail resource limits mechanism
* userland dtrace
* BSNMP improvements
* jail-based virtualization
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Project Releases
The Lightspark project has released version 0.4.2 of its free, open source Flash player. According to Lightspark develoepr Alessandro Pignotti, the alternative Flash Player implementation is "designed from the ground up to be efficient on current and (hope fully) future hardware".
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Government
Operating as the Open Information Security Foundation, and working with a number of government-related private companies, a team headed by Mark Jonkman of Emerging Threats and Victor Julien of the Vuurmuur firewall project are offering an intrusion detection and prevention engine with multi-threading automatic protocol detection for a wide variety of protocols.
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Openness/Sharing
It's an ambitious effort to preserve, restore and promote the re-use of traditional skills and inventions from all over the world.
We risk stifling the development of new tools, both commercial and academic, and new knowledge under the weight of a legal regime that was designed to cope with the printing press. At the same time a simple statement that this kind of analysis is fair dealing will provide certainty without damaging the interests of copyright holders or complicating copyright law. These new uses will ultimately bring more traffic, and perhaps more customers, to the primary documents. By taking the simple and easy step of making automated analysis an allowable fair dealing exception everyone wins.
After the election and looking to the post-Becta future, Open Source Schools has been making new plans to ensure that the community is able to respond to the changing educational landscape where the benefits offered by open source are becoming ever more important.
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Open Data
Opening up food and agricultural data requires an information architecture and infrastructure that does not currently exist. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization is a leader in providing easily accessible, highly usable, and surprisingly current data, but right now it is far ahead of the pack in terms of transparency in reporting.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- FOSDEM is Called "FOSDEM" Because of Richard Stallman (RMS)
- The overlap there seems timely; yesterday RMS spoke in French-speaking (in part) Switzerland where questions in French were accepted
- January 20: Richard Stallman Talk in Europe
- evening time in Europe, around midday in the United States and Canada
- Slopwatch: Too Lazy to Write Real Articles, Offloading to Chatbots Instead (LLM Slop About "Linux")
- The Web was already full of garbage before the LLM frenzy. Now it's even worse.
- RMS 'Inauguration' in Montpellier (Government Administration) on January 20th
- Happy hacking
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- Links 18/01/2025: Restoring the Great Wall of China and Economic Expansion in China
- Links for the day
- Guardian Digital (linuxsecurity.com) is Spamming the Web With Microsoft's Promotional LLM Slop About UEFI 'Secure' Boot (Which is Against Real Security)
- This is an attack on honest journalism
- Links 18/01/2025: TikTok's Endgame, "Car Freedom", and Spying in Cars 'Fines' GM (Settlement)
- Links for the day
- Links 18/01/2025: Apple Getting Out of Hey Hi (AI) Slop (Too Much Misinformation), Chaffbots/Chatbots Try to Settle Copyright Infringement Lawsuits
- Links for the day
- What Fake News Sites Are Doing to GNU/Linux
- The LLM slop about Linux serves two purposes
- Links 18/01/2025: Microsofters Upset at Microsoft's Ridiculous Rebrands (Excuse for Massive Price Hikes), Chaffbot Company ('Open'AI) Faces More Lawsuits
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/01/2025: Surge in Illnesses, ctags, and Gemsync
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 17, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, January 17, 2025
- Even Technical Articles and HowTos From UNIXMen Nowadays Seem to be LLM Slop
- We've just permanently removed the RSS feed of UNIXMen
- The FSF's 2024 End-of-Year Fundraiser Succeeds: Over $400k to Support Software Freedom
- That's worth bringing up again because the SFC is trying to 'crash' this achievement of the FSF
- [Meme] Fentanylware (TikTok) Banned in the United States, Next Up European Union (EU)
- And the United Kingdom (UK)
- President Biden is Right, "Free Press is Crumbling" and the United States Exports Its Media-Hostile Culture to Other Continents
- perhaps Biden should pay closer attention to how Donald Trump-inspired Americans take their battles to other continents
- Links 17/01/2025: TikTok Banned by the United Stated (SCOTUS Rejects Appeal)
- Links for the day
- Software Freedom Conservancy Inc (SFC) Makes It Obvious It's Just a Copycat Trying to Exploit or Leech Off the FSF's (and GNU's) Work
- They swim next to the rich people (who "match")
- Links 17/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Herds Its (Drug) Users Into Even More Harmful "Apps"
- Links for the day
- Guardian Digital, Inc (linuxsecurity.com) Uses Microsoft-Controlled Front Groups and LLM Slop in Order to Spread Microsoft-Directed Anti-Linux FUD
- Microsoft garbage likely produced by Microsoft LLMs, spewing out Microsoft FUD
- Likely Fake 'Article' About Linux Mint 22.1
- BetaNews fired up its plagiarism machine (LLM)
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 16, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, January 16, 2025
- Links 16/01/2025: Conflicts, Overpopulation, and Software Patents
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Lock-down With DRM Server/s (in a Nutshell)
- Companies like Microsoft and Apple have a 'God complex'
- Thank You, London! There Was No Way to Still Reliably Host Gemini From Home (on a Raspberry Pi 4) Due to Scale
- The only regret we've long had is that we hadn't made the move earlier
- The Summit of Future (Kerala, 2025): Dr. Richard Stallman (RMS) to Give Keynote Talk
- promotional video was uploaded
- Richard Stallman's Talk This Coming Monday (European 'Tour')
- bunch of talks in Europe
- Total Lock-down Ambitions - Part II - Down to the Very Core, Including the Hardware (CPU, GPU, Peripherals, and More)
- instead of distinguishing themselves and antagonising these broadly reviled "antifeatures", both Canonical and IBM decided to join Microsoft in advocating lockdown
- FSF, Guardian of the GNU Project, to Reach $400,000 in Winter Fundraiser Ahead of 40th Anniversary
- The GNU Project Turns 42 later this year
- Links 16/01/2025: "Meduza, IRL" and the Clock is Ticking on TikTok in the US
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 16/01/2025: Yesterday's Gone, The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E Howard
- Links for the day
- Computer Users Aren't Zoo Animals
- Animals don't belong inside cages in zoos, either
- Links 16/01/2025: Scale and Scope of Microsoft Layoffs Revealed (Two Waves of Layoffs in 2025 Already)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 16/01/2025: Meta Has a Pixelfed Problem and Space Time Scoping
- Links for the day
- Anti-Linux 'Articles' in linuxsecurity.com (Guardian Digital, Inc) Are Composed by Bots, Probably Microsoft's
- linuxsecurity.com has become a mindless stream of LLM slop
- "New Year, New Career"
- published a few hours ago
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 15, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, January 15, 2025