Open Source Pixels

A while ago, Apple sold heavily discounted Macs to schools, hoping to get students to choose the Mac. Obviously, the same technique will not work for Linux, but it is important to get students interested in Linux.

The new distribution gOS 3 Gadgets BETA is based on Ubuntu 8.04.1 and is able to interact with Google Documents, Calendar and Mail. The newest release of WINE 1.0 is included to now support thousands of Windows software. The new operation system will also be loaded with Lightweight X Desktop Environment (LXDE) and other Google software for Linux to improve the user experience. This workshop describes how to install and run the new software from an USB stick.

By rights, copyright really shouldn’t apply to binary executables, because they are purely “functional” (not “expressive”) works. The decision to extend copyright to binaries was an economically-motivated anomaly, and that choice has some counter-intuitive and detrimental side-effects. What would things in the free software world look like if the courts had decided otherwise? For one thing, the implementation of copyleft would have to be completely different. Hypothetical? Academic? Not if you’re a hardware developer! Because this is exactly what the law does look like for designs for physical hardware (where the product is not protected by copyright).

Tomboy is a desktop note-taking application for Linux and Unix. Simple and easy to use, but with potential to help you organize the ideas and information you deal with every day. Tomboy is written in C# and utilizes the Mono runtime and Gtk#. Automatic spell-checking is provided by GtkSpell.

Kimai is software that tracks work time and
classifies it. It tracks time and prints out a
summary (time sheet) of your activities on demand.
The reports can be yearly, monthly, daily, by
customer, by project, or by action. Its interface
is based on using a Web browser. You can install
it as a Web service or as a single-user program on
your local workstation. It is appropriate both for
multiple simultaneous users or a single user.
Kimai does not have to run to do the recording.

Mobius Forensic Toolkit is a forensic framework written in Python/GTK that manages cases and case items, providing an abstract interface for developing extensions. Cases and item categories are defined using XML files for easy integration with other tools.

Sahi is an automation and testing tool for Web
applications, with the facility to record and
playback scripts. Features include, in-browser
controls, text based scripts, ant support for
playback of suites of tests, and multi threaded
playback. It supports HTTP and HTTPS. Sahi runs as
a proxy server, and the browser needs to use the
sahi server as its proxy. Sahi then injects
JavaScript so that it can access elements in the
Web page. This makes the tool independent of the
Web site or Web application.

DOMjudge is an automated judgement system to run
programming contests. It provides a mechanism to
submit problem solutions and interfaces for teams,
the jury, and the general public. It is
lightweight, and depends on standard software to
do its task. It has a Web interface for
portability and simplicity. It is scalable, so
distributed judging is easy. There is a modular
system for plugging in languages and compilers. It
features rejudging, clarifications, and detailed
submission/judging info.

rwdtinker is the core application for a Ruby
application framework using the RubyWebDialogs
GUI. It provides a system for developing programs,
and uses a Web-based interface. It allows a
developer to combine and create applets to
implement an application. It features built-in bug
report submission, remote control with UDP ports,
a test framework, and context-sensitive help.

pdfrecycle creates a PDF file by composing pages from other PDF files. It lets you define PDF bookmarks, scale and rotate pages, put multiple logical pages onto each physical sheet, and add metadata. It uses a simple text file format to define the layout and what pages to include. From this input file, it creates a LaTeX file and then runs pdflatex to produced the PDF file.