Archive for July, 2008
Free software is better for web pages
Despite the considerable advances that the free software has made in the last years in its «market share» in different fields in informatics, only in a few of this fields free software has the supremacy. One of these is the field of web servers.
Sure enough, Apache, a free web server, is one of the most used and, probably, free software alternatives in conjoint are more used than its privative equivalences. Free software has proved that is the best alternative to manage the software that servers needed, but free software also provides good tools to compose them.
In fact, it is possible to build almost any kind of website using free software. Those people who were accustomed to use visual publishers to build webpages, such as Dreamweaver, will be happy to know the existence of kompoZer. Mozilla created an application to create webs as easily as write a rich text document. This application was named Mozilla Composer and was integrated in the Internet suite that now is known as Mozilla Seamonkey. This software package is no longer maintained by Mozilla, but for a community of developers that forked it, and so Mozilla Composer is not currently being updated at all.
Then, Linspire, a free software company, sponsored a sort of continuation of the Mozilla Composer, that was named NVU. NVU neither has been updated since September of 2006, so a group of programmers has made kompoZer, that basically is a new version made from the last published version of NVU with the correction of all the bugs that they found. In spite of all the problems in the long development progress, kompoZer is a very useful tool to create simple websites without HTML knowledge, and is good to edit them without complications.
Nowadays, however, many users are looking for something a bit more complex. Such as a blog software. There are several alternatives that allow to make blogs easily, some of them were created many years ago, are very mature and have a lot of support in forums because a lot of people are using them (such as Wordpress); other just begin its development (such as Gesbit); others were privative and have switched to free software (such as MovableType). Between all these, we will focus the comment in Wordpress, cause it is perhaps the most used.
Once installed, Wordpress allows you to manage a blog and it is simple and comfortable. It Includes an intuitive administration dashboard to such effect. Any detail has been covered by the programmers: there is an option to upload and manage images easily, to include links to other blogs, to order categories for posts, etc. Also it is possible to write «Pages», that is to say, entries that are not in chronological order, for example the legal warning, the prvacity policy or other texts that have to be permanent visible.
You can also use free software if you look for even more complete solutions. For example, if we want to create a website for an association, probably we will need to include a forum, a place to upload documents, a space for news, etc. It’s not necessary to say that developing all this from the very beginning would be outrageous. We can use free software alternatives that already exists, for example PHP-Nuke, PostNuke, Drupal or Joomla.
PHP-Nuke Is free software that allows the creation of «portals» or «spaces for communities» very easily. Once installed, it has got an internal searcher, news, documents and articles module, a forum and a basic stats service (among another things). All his functionalities are expansible thanks to its modular structure and to the quantity of free modules that can be found on the internet.
From PHP-Nuke was developed PostNuke, a software with strength similitudes and some differences, such as a more complex system of permission management to users (the systems of permission management is used to specify who can see each content). So the security is improved.
Besides these alternatives commented, Drupal and Joomla are programs that also can be used for this same task, very mature and with a big community, which has allowed them grow in popularity recently. As of today, when Drupal and Joomla are probably more used than PHP-Nuke and PostNuke.
However, maybe you need only a complement for your web, such as a forum (no a complete solution for communities like those that we already have commented) or any tool that allow you to edit texts collaboratively, such as happens in Wikipedia. The software will allow you to do this, respectively, phpBB and MediaWiki.
phpBB is the ideal tool to made a forum. The administrator can choose if it is necessary that the visitors register to take part in discussions and, in general, can select the options that believes most convenient from a very extensive list of options. The participants can attach to their contributions a small text or photos as a footer, that helps to identify them.
MediaWiki is the software that is used by the Wikipedia and, therefore, one of the best alternatives to write texts collaboratively. It includes control tools to ensure that amongst the people who take part in the writing process, there is always good faith and no malicious user damages the work.
You will need neither privative software to edit your graphics for your web: with GIMP or Krita free image editors you will do a good job. To sum up: they are many high-quality free tools that can serve to make websites.
Ultamatix, the new Automatix
Automatix was one of the tools that made our life easier during the first Ubuntu versions (more or less until the Feisty release). But each new Ubuntu release, all those tasks that Automatix did, were completed by default. So Automatix became useless.
Later, Automatix team wanted Canonical to include it inside Ubuntu. That should have been the solution for all… but Canonical said no to Automatix explaining that Automatix is, in itself, a poor quality package which fails to conform to Debian or Ubuntu policy.
But it seems that the Automatix team went on developing tools and some days ago the released a new tool, similar to Automatix, but its name is Ultamatix. Ultamatix can be installed on Ubuntu Ultimate Edition, Ubuntu Hardy and Debian systems (including unstable branch). This is the software list that Automatix can install:
| Ripping | Chat clients | EyeCandy | Tools | Audio/Video | Programming | Games | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DVD Ripper (DVD ripper tool) | Pidgin + All its plugins | Checkgmail (system tray GMail checker) | Avant Window Navigator (Mac OS X dock-like) | Acrobat Reader (PDF viewer) | Amarok 2 (versatile audio player) | Glade 3 | Enemy Territory |
| DVD Styler (DVD authoring system)) | AMSN (MSN Messenger client) | Swiftdove (Thunderbird clone) | Gdesklets (desktop widgets) | Gourmet (recipe manager) | Banshee (audio player) | Quanta Plus | The Battle for Wesnoth |
| K9copy (DVD backup software)) | Kvirc (IRC client) | Screenlets (desktop widgets) | Google Earth | Dragon Player (video player) | Screem Editor | Vegastrike | |
| Man DVD (DVD-Video generator)) | Skype (Voice Over IP software) | Ultimate Edition themes | Google Picasa | Totem-Xine | Bluefish Editor | Globulation 2 | |
| xDVDshrink (DVDshrink clone)) | XChat (IRC client) | Microsoft Office OpenXML Translator | Songbird (iTunes like music manager) | Anjuta IDE | Neverball | ||
| OpenOffice Clipart | VLC (video player) | Tremulous | |||||
| Lives (video editor) | iLinux (iLife alternative) | Warzone 2100 |
The only thing that is more or less interesting of Ultamatix are the games that can be installed. Some of them can be installed by Add/Remove, but not others like Vegastrice or Warzone 2100. So in that case Ultamatix is useful. Even though all this, there are no really new things. Actually, the look is not different in comparison with the old Automatix. So you decide.
aMSN, emesene and pymsn programmers, together to develop aMSN2
Something happened in the aMSN forums one month ago. A group of programmers from aMSN, emesene and pymsn started a discussion about how to develop aMSN2.
First of all, the main change in aMSN2 will be that from now, they won’t use tcl/tk anymore. They are now using python and EFL libraries (Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) with which the gui will be much nicer than the current one (that’s not really complicated).
aMSN2 will be a multi-front-end program. This means that there will be different gui depending on the desktop or operating system we use. For example, on Mac they will use cocoa as a front-end, on KDE4 QT and XUL and GTK on GNOME.
Emesene programmers will focus on the GNOME version while pymsn programmers will work on the MSN protocol. The rest of the programmers will work in other general purposes.
All this still in development, there is one interesting screencast about what the current state of the program is. We hope to try in a few months this new internet messenger.
- Source | SomGNU.cat
- Link | aMSN forums
30 wallpapers selection
It’s been a long time since I’ve been collecting wallpapers that I do like. They are not all about linux topics. There are wallpapers about nature (the most part), animals, girls, comics, abstract…
These wallpapers are generally from gnome-look and other links that you can find on this post (visiting the links you can see license…. the most part have no problems). This is a selection of the 30 wallpaper that for me are the best (at this moment, I’ll change my mind in the future, for sure).
- Donwload | 30 wallpapers selection
What’s coming on Ubuntu 8.10
Two weeks ago, after the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Praga, a report about what will be the new goals and features on the next Ubuntu was published.
There are many improvements and changes that the developers want to include. Maybe one of the most important changes is the goal about reducing start-up time.
These will be the new features:
- New theme and visual changes on the desktop (they were about to change it on Hardy, but there were no time to do it)
- Better firefox 3 integration on KDE (at this moment Oxygen and Firefox are not good friends)
- 3G network support
- Faster start-up system and general improvements on the system
- The want Wubi to be better, more options, more possibilities
- They will include the kernel 2.6.26 (that’s a shame because webcam and wifi drivers will be included on the 2.6.27)
- Grub2 is going to get in. Basically, grub will became prettier with a nice graphical aspect
- New Compiz Fusion plugins, above all the plugin that will turn soft the log-in and log-out from GNOME or KDE
- Better flash integration and free flash players promoting
Guake!
One of the most important tools that linux users need to use almost everyday is the terminal. Even though you are a new user, you have to use the terminal.
When you get used, the terminal became an indispensable friend that allows us to control everything and reports much more better the information about our system than all gui applications can do together.
For that reason exist Yakuake (on KDE) or Tilda (on GNOME), two programs that run a terminal just pushing one of the function keys. Even though Yakuake is a good solution for KDE, tilda is not really good for GNOME. The integration and functionality is limited in comparison with Yakuake.
But there is other solution on GNOME: Guake!. Guake is basically Yakuake for GNOME and is more or less exactly the same, with the same functions and appeareance. At this moment there are only precompiled versions for Ubuntu. The rest, we have to compile it from the source.
- Source | SomGNU.cat
- Download | Guake! 0.3.0
