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
- UEFI "Secure Boot Doesn’t Play Nice at the Moment"
- UEFI "Secure Boot" does not improve security. It's an artificial obstacle in service of monopoly.
- If You Want to "make your 'Windows PC' lean, mean, and fast" You Will Install GNU/Linux or Some BSD
- That kind of article says a lot about IDG
- "Bad Shim Signature"; So 'Secure' That It Overrides Users' Preferences and Turns Itself Back on (Coercive Measure)
- This was a few hours ago
- We Covered UEFI 'Secure Boot' Scandals. The World Listened.
- To hell with UEFI 'secure boot'
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- Satya's Plan B: Try to Hide the Massive Extent/Scale/Scope of Microsoft Layoffs
- fewer people buy Microsoft
- Red Hat News About De Facto Mass Layoffs (Bluewashing) Gone From Reddit (Censored by Gatekeepers), Still Online in The Register
- With RTOs, PIPs, relocation etc. expect IBM to "shed off" many Red Hatters
- Gemini Links 14/09/2025: ROOPHLOCH, Music, and Reddit
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: Google News Infested With Slop (About Half of the Results for "Linux" Today)
- This is the sort of junk one finds when looking for "Linux" in Google News these days
- Links 14/09/2025: Ricky Hatton Dies and McDonald's Declares War on Tipping Culture
- Links for the day
- Links 14/09/2025: Disasters for CEOs Obsessed With Slop and Slop Companies School Like Fish
- Links for the day
- "Bad Shim Signature" (Microsoft 'Secure' Boot)
- "Fresh install not booting"
- What Microsoft Garrett and Microsoft Lunduke Have in Common
- Similar tactics, different "wings"
- Links 14/09/2025: US "Economy Sagging", "Michigan Economy Wobbles From Tariffs"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/09/2025: Minimalist Snippet Manager and Omarchy Linux
- Links for the day
- The Face of the Digital Far Right: Microsoft Lunduke
- Microsoft Lunduke is an online extremist that belongs to and panders to the far right
- 20 Years Later and Academia Isn't the Same
- "I never dreamed of being a professor"
- 'Cancel Culture' by the Right: Microsoft Lunduke Contacts People's Employers Trying to Get Them Fired
- Microsoft Lunduke panders to extremists online
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 13, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, September 13, 2025
- Microsoft is Rapidly Dropped From Web Servers, Shows Survey
- Microsoft lost about 8% "market share" in just 3 months
- Many GNU/Linux Users Report MOK (Machine Owner Key) Issues in Recent Days
- many people don't report this online and never post in Reddit
- Links 13/09/2025: Escalations in East Europe and POTUS’ Health Cover-Up
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/09/2025: Lagrange Turns 5 and Lagrange 1.19.2 Released
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Inside Your Linux: "Security vulnerability that allowed an attacker to bypass UEFI Secure Boot."
- 2 hours ago
- A New Low for "Linux Journal": Promoting MICROSOFT WINDOWS Using LLM Slop
- They've just jumped the shark entirely
- Fake News With Fake Numbers About Microsoft
- "This is what happens when the world's economy is governed by sick old men"
- Slopwatch: "Google News" is Fast Becoming a Mashup of Slopfarms, Linux Journal ("LJ") is a Dump of LLM Slop
- Well done, Google News. Google itself can flourish as a slopfarm mashup.
- Torturing Users Who Just Want to Run GNU/Linux on Their Own PC
- "Linux does not want to install"
- The Register MS Still Takes Money to Hype Up "AI" in Articles by Microsoft Resellers With the Term "AI" 30+ Times in Them
- Notice how many times they mention "AI"
- The Apache Logo News is VERY Old, Racists and 'Anti-Woke' Bigots Look for Something to Incite Other Bigots With
- Nothing to see here, move along
- Linux Mint 9/11: "4th One Today..." (in Reddit)
- Remember that not everyone having an issue reports it to social control media like Reddit
- Nepal Will Fall Without a Single Shot Fired, Thanks to Social Control Media
- Or very few shots (by the authorities)
- European Corruption in the European Patent Office (EPO) Targets Culture
- "In reality, the project includes a new “legal instrument” shifting administrative burden and liability on EPO staff while creating new uncertainty and externalising Amicale activities."
- European Authorities, Already Bribed and Infiltrated by Microsoft, Won't Help You Find BigBlueButton, Jami, Ring, and Jitsi
- Because they're paid by Microsoft and are Microsoft 'addicts' themselves
- UEFI Secure Boot Failing, as Expected for Nearly 15 Years Already (Techrights Said This Since 2012)
- in the media
- Debian 9/11
- people report this issue
- Gemini and Web Links 13/09/2025: MElon's Slop Grift and "Autonomous Trains"
- Links for the day
- Moving From Content Management Systems (CMSs) to Static Site Generators (SSGs) Saves You Time, Makes You a Lot More Productive
- try to reduce the cost (financial and computational) of running your site
- Pursuing Peace Through Violence
- You cannot "see" a person's mind, until the mouth opens
- Leak: European Patent Office (EPO) is Now Attacking Amicale Clubs
- corruption has become the norm and scientists are robbed of any dignity
- Can We Please Stop Celebrating Shooters?
- "An important point to hammer on is that CoCs were never intended for uniform or symmetric application"
- Oracle Fraud (or Defrauding Shareholders)
- "the obvious [lie] is that watts are (wasted) electricity [and] and FLOPS are computing capacity"
- Geminispace is Growing Faster in 2025 Than It Did in 2024
- What matters is that corporations haven't ruined it and LLM slop is extremely rare
- Links 13/09/2025: China Punishes for 'Negative' Posts, US Police Unable to Find Shooter
- Links for the day
- Who's the Mystery Financier of SLAPP Against Techrights and Is That a Millionaire/Billionaire?
- Whose idea was it to fund meritless lawsuits against my wife and I?
- Slopwatch: Slow Slop Day
- This distracts from or may take traffic away from the original articles, actually written by actual people
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, September 12, 2025
- CoC Gone Wrong: Celebrating Murder OK, Complaining About the Celebration Gets You Banned
- Hopefully the NixOS Foundation will have a word with (maybe replace) the moderator/s
- Gemini Links 12/09/2025: Familiarity and Secondary Dominants
- Links for the day
- Explaining (in Length and Depth) the Damage Matthew Garrett Did to Linux and to GNU/Linux Users
- no matter how many threats we receive
- Links 12/09/2025: "Bad Reviews" as Extortion Weapon, "Free Speech At Risk in America’s Schools" According to ACLU
- Links for the day
- Only One Speaker Does Not Do Sharecropping for MElon (in X.com)
- The man who puts principles before PR/optics
- The Mind of the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI'
- in a nutshell
- A Day After "UEFI 9/11": UEFI Secure Boot Bypass
- In the news today (right now), as published in the past few hours
- Links 12/09/2025: Slop Code as Liability, Microsoft Outlook Down for Many
- Links for the day
- It's Still Not to Late to Turn Off "Secure Boot"
- If people reboot their PC or server today, and it relies on "Secure Boot" on Sept. 12 or later, then depending on the firmware there may be trouble ahead
- Links 12/09/2025: Shira Perlmutter is Back, “Software Per Se” Patent Rejections in In re McFadden
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: Linux Plagiarism, Slopfarms Still Infesting Google News, Many Images Are Fake
- Google is promoting plagiarism
- "This Morning Might Turn Out to be an Interesting One for System Admins Who Haven't Updated Their Devices' Secure Boot Certificate" (If They Reboot)
- Who asked for this anyway?
- Gemini Links 12/09/2025: Metric System, Dumping Windows, and Software Architecture is Dead
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 11, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, September 11, 2025