Open Source Pixels

It's been a busy year, so maybe you didn't get a chance to check out all the Linux.com Weekend Projects. If you've missed out, don't worry — we've bundled the top 10 Weekend Projects of 2010 here for your convenience. Whether you want to set up OpenID, analyze your network, take your instant messaging Off the Record, or record Skype calls, we've got you covered.

Grandma Embedded Linux, aka Grannybuntu: The next big thing in desktop technology, or just another fanboy pipe dream? Well, who cares; As long as it has pipes, it’s cool.

Debian has updated phpmyadmin
(multiple vulnerabilities).

InternetNews.com revisits some of the memorable, off-the-wall quips of 2010: Apple's distortion field, cloud computing, Star Trek and more.

Many times i download live cd distros to preview and install them, but sometimes the livecd does not have an installer, even the official site says that this cd cannot be installed, thats the case with CentOS 5.5 livecd. Well i did install it, with "some assembly required" but i did it, this are my notes to make this process "easy" to you.

BaculaFS is a tool, developed independently of Bacula, that represents the Bacula catalog and backup storage media as a read-only filesystem in userspace.

Changes: Batch extract mode was added.

Tags: backup, FUSE, filesystem

Licenses: GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3)

IPA is a pluggable, flexible, general-purpose
accounting system. It supports static and dynamic
rules, limits, sublimits, and thresholds. It works
with external accounting, database and statistics
modules. Accounting is done per specified period
of a week. Complete documentation is included.

Changes: A race condition with signal handling in ipa was corrected. Output of autorules from parsed configuration file in ipa was corrected. Checks whether used modules support rules were added. Limit and thresholds were added in ipastat.

Licenses: BSD Revised

Aspose.BarCode is a .NET component for generation and recognition of Linear and 2D barcodes on all kinds of .NET applications. It supports WPF with 29+ Barcode symbologies like OneCode, QR, Aztec, MSI, EAN128, EAN14, SSCC18, Code128, Code39, Postnet, MarcoPDF417, Datamatrix, UPCA, etc. Other features include barcode insertion in PDF, Word, and Excel documents. It can also take image input in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, and WMF formats. You can also control image styles such as background color and bar color.

Changes: This release includes support for barcode generation for the Microsoft Silverlight platform. It also includes features like barcode recognition, barcode recognition in Compact Framework, and VIN barcode recognition. the following barcodes are supported in this version: Codabar, Code128, Code11, Code39Extended, Code39Standard, Code93Extended, Code93Standard, Interleaved2of5, MSI, Standard2of5, Matrix2of5, DeutschePostIdentcode, PZN, ItalianPost25, IATA2of5, and VIN.

Release Tags: Generate barcode for Silverlight platform, barcode generation for Silverlight platform, barcode recognition, barcode recognition in Compact Framework, VIN barcode recognition

Licenses: Evaluation License, Developer Enterprise License, Developer OEM License, Site Enterprise License, Site OEM License

SharpBox implements a .NET driven application programming interface for existing cloud storage services developed in C#. The library currently supports DropBox and follows a provider interface approach to adopt any other cloud service as well, such as Amazon S3 or iDisk.

Changes: This release is a minor upgrade with a number of bugfixes and the ability to get status notifications during downloading or uploading files.

Release Tags: Stable, Minor

Tags: cloud, Mono, MIT, DropBox, MonoTouch

Licenses: MIT

Blender is a free 3D animation studio. It includes tools for modeling, sculpting, texturing (painting, node-based shader materials, or UV mapped), UV mapping, rigging and constraints, weight painting, particle systems, simulation (fluids, physics, and soft body dynamics and an external crowd simulator), rendering, node-based compositing, and non linear video editing, as well as an integrated game engine for real-time interactive 3D, and game creation and playback with cross-platform compatibility.

Changes: Fixes and improvements were made across many areas. Over 440 bugs were fixed since 2.55 beta.

Release Tags: Beta, Bugfixes, Development

Tags: multimedia, Graphics, 3D Modeling, 3D Rendering, Scientific/Engineering, Video, Non-Linear Editor, Games/Entertainment

Licenses: GPL