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
- US Government: 6.1% of Site Visitors Use GNU/Linux
- GNU/Linux has a considerable share and it is growing
- Why the FSF No Longer Recommends Debian, as Explained by Richard Stallman This Month
- some weeks ago
- Defeating LLM Abuse (State-of-the-Art Plagiarism) in the Area of Linux and GNU, Free Software, BSD, Security and So On
- The aim is to get them to stop using LLMs to rip off other people's work
- Digital Sanitation Good Practices
- leave behind Microsoftism
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- As Economies Crumble Free as in Beer Will Matter, Not Just Free as in Freedom/Libre (Libertad)
- French regions choosing to embrace Software Freedom
- 25 Years Ago, an Explanation of How Reducing Free Software to 'Apps' Would Interfere With Freedom Goals
- there's nothing unreasonable about it
- A List of 63 Known Gemini Clients (Software to Browse Geminispace Content With Gemini Protocol)
- Not counting browser plugins for Web browsers
- Gemini Links 19/10/2025: "Firma Odin Is Transforming" and Bot Attacks While "AFK"
- Links for the day
- LLM Slop Could Not Rise to Prominence Without Media Complicity and Artificial Hype
- Inane garbage disguised as "journalism"
- All the Latest Half Dozen Articles by Mehedi Hasan (UbuntuPIT) Only Admit at the End That He's Using LLM Slop
- Disclosure is OK, but the practice of using slop is not
- The 'Modern' Web of Fake Security and Easy Censorship of Whole Domains
- Each year it gets worse
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 18, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, October 18, 2025
- The Term "AI" is Not New and What Today's Media Calls "AI" Isn't Even AI
- Only the hype was new... and totally artificial
- Gemini Links 18/10/2025: "Planetary Rings", Steam, and PSU Replacement
- Links for the day
- Links 18/10/2025: Russell Vought in Charge, US Government Leans to Russia Again
- Links for the day
- Credit Where It's Due: LinuxConfig.org Quit Doing LLM Slop, Back to Original and Real Articles
- We waited for a while to say this, now it seems conclusive
- Of Note: UbuntuPIT Aware of Critics of Slop, Adds Disclosure of Use of LLMs
- We appreciate the honesty
- Links 18/10/2025: Madagascar's President Flees and ICE Arrests Protest Comedian Robby Roadsteamer
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman Near the European Patent Office (EPO) in 3 Days From Now
- It'll be a good opportunity for patent examiners to listen, ask questions, and maybe greet him in person
- From Scholar to Booster of Slop (and Even Slop in His Own Blog)
- We're going to keep an eye on future posts of his
- End of Vista 10 Also Good News for the BSDs
- There are many news sites that recommend trying GNU/Linux this month
- What's Wrong With Liking Parrots or Birds as Pets?
- They'd demonise people for speaking about freedom, no matter what they say or do
- 10 Days Ago Richard Stallman Gave a Long Interview in French (linuxfr.org)
- English translation
- Science, Not Fast Food/Junk Food
- The commercial exploitation of users won't stop until users exercise full control over their software or - more broadly - their computing (including data)
- The Free Software Foundation, Which Has Appointed a 43-Year-Old President, is Looking to Add Another Board Member (or Treasurer)
- expect the FSF to add more people
- Richard Stallman Confirms Next Week's Talk at Technical University of Munich, We Urge EPO Staff to Attend
- That's probably late enough for EPO staff to attend after work
- Gemini Links 18/10/2025: Notifications and Geminaut
- Links for the day
- Many Red Hat People Are Leaving, But It'll Be Framed Publicly as Leaving IBM
- Similarly, IBM layoffs (or "RAs" as they're called) include Red Hat layoffs
- Expect More Waves of Microsoft Layoffs This Month (at Least Two Rounds Confirmed Already)
- From what we can gather, assuming the recent rumours about XBox are true, there will be at least 3 waves of Microsoft layoffs this month alone
- Security Issues in Cisco and Jenkins Passed Off as "Linux" Problems
- Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) tactics
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 17, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, October 17, 2025
- [Video] Dr. Richard Stallman at Technické Univerzitě v Liberci
- New/via libre-liberec.cz
- Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Linux Journal (Slashdot Media), UbuntuPIT, and Google News (Noise)
- egregious plagiarism
- Links 17/10/2025: Better Answers Sought After Air Crashes, "China Fans Patriotic Sentiment as Trade War With U.S. Heats Up"
- Links for the day
- Security is Desirable, But Not When the Term Security is Misused to Imply Centralisation of "Trust" (Whose?)
- 'Security' is not an excuse for vendor lock-in
- Links 17/10/2025: Fentanylware (CheeTok) Causing Problems, Japanese Government Blasts Slop
- Links for the day
- The Linux Foundation Seems to Have Turned Linux.com Not Only Into a Spamfarm But Also LLM Slopfarm
- it's polluting the Web, even important domains like Linux.com, with spam and LLM slop
- Links 17/10/2025: UK’s Largest Breach Penalty and Windows TCO Examples
- Links for the day
- Go Watch Video About Librephone, Get Microsoft Ads
- Very ethical company...
- Campaign of Defamation Against the People Who Built NixOS (and Are Now Pushed Out From Their Own Project)
- We've already grown familiar with - and resistant to - such tactics
- Links 17/10/2025: Nestlé Crisis, Canada Post Versus 'Gig Economy' [sic] and Vista 11 Breaks Itself
- Links for the day
- Tux Machines Has Helped Separate Opinions/Analysis From News
- In September 2023 we decided to split things apart and not repeat links in both sites
- Tux Machines Has Improved Navigation of GNU/Linux and BSD News
- Some more 'wiring' work
- What a World Would Look Like If Everyone Used Free Software Only
- Freedom is what matters, not "Open".
- The Media Helps Microsoft, Amazon and Others (GAFAM and Beyond) Lie About Mass Layoffs Amid Valuation Bubble
- The media, instead of saying that there's an "AI bubble" crashing the economy might instead choose the narrative of "jobs replaced by AI"
- Bad Tempered? You Might Have Just Given Away That You're Losing the Argument
- Brett Wilson LLP is fully aware that it is being investigated
- Richard Stallman (RMS) is a Target of Defamation Campaigns Because of His Views on Software (But Politics Are the Excuse for Defaming Him)
- Here in this site we try to refrain from politics, except in Daily Links
- End of Vista 10 and Rise of GNU/Linux as Client Side Operating System
- It seems certain GNU/Linux will grow in popularity over time
- Taking Stock of a Week's Worth of EPO Leaks
- We remain committed to exposing EPO corruption as long as it keeps happening
- Mathieu Parreaux claims FINMA knew since day one
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Calumny, Libel, Joerg Jaspert & debian-private untouchable cyberbullies
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 16, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, October 16, 2025
- Techrights Turns 19 in 3 Weeks
- coverage of suppressed topics and protecting all sources/whistleblowers
- International E-Waste Day Same Day as End of Vista 10
- message from Akira Urushibata
- The EPO's Central Staff Committee Presents Evidence That Staff Compensation Lowered While the Office Increases Income by Illegally Granting Invalid Patents
- These people become millionaires by doing illegal things
- Second or Third Wave of Microsoft Mass Layoffs in October 2025, This Time Portugal
- Those are just the ones we know about, there may be several more
- 'Help Net Security' (helpnetsecurity.com) May Have Become a Slopfarm as Well
- Zeljka Zorz, Editor-in-Chief at Help Net Security, was reported to us
- Gemini Links 17/10/2025: Rant About Network Solutions, Strange Anomaly on Lagrange
- Links for the day