Ubuntu, another choice

A little more than a year has passed since cyberpunkcafe.com created the original " Fresh Free Open Source Games for Linux and Windows list ". Which is a list that showcases the new and ongoing development of great free open source games. During the past year developers have been relentlessly pounding out new games and adding to their existing code base all in an effort to entertain the gamers. So without further ado i would like to introduce the "fresh free open source games list 2009 edition". Once again this is not your average top 10 Linux, windows and mac games list. Most games on this list are in a beta /stable state so they will be totally playable. The majority of these games are cross platform so everyone will be able to enjoy. If anyone knows of any more fresh free open source games that we should should be showcasing in the next list or adding to this one, please send us an email at suggestions@cyberpunkcafe.com and we will try to make sure...

Whether it’s down to the sagging economy or the slow but inevitable death of XP, I’m hearing from many people who are looking to jump off the Microsoft software bandwagon and pitch up with the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) movement. But could you realistically move your home or business PCs over to open source software and make a 100% switch? This question intrigues me, and I think that ultimately there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to it. I think that some people could, others can’t, and others could, but simply won’t. At one end of the spectrum you have the home user who spends 90% of their PC time on the Internet. These folks could switch to FOSS in a heartbeat. Even if they do more, like write lists, maybe compile a few reports, and maybe even mess about with photos and a bit of video, switching to FOSS would be a doddle. Could you switch over to being 100% open source? Yes No Maybe Don't know Don't want to! View Results At the other end of the spectrum you...

I was at a conference when two techies walked into the open bar, one an open source supporter and one staunchly anti. They got into it a bit after a few drinks, and Mr. Anti commented loudly, “I wish open source would just go away! It causes more trouble than it's worth.” Statements I obviously have issues with. Now, I know most people don’t understand the role of open source software in our world, or just how many services that we take for granted would disappear without it. If you’re a card-carrying member of the community, you probably know where I’m headed. Say at the stroke of midnight, all open source software magically vanished. What would still work tomorrow? For starters, the Internet would “disappear” for the average user. Most Domain Name Servers (DNS) are run on open source software like BIND, which turns www.whurley.com into the IP address of the appropriate server. The majority of basic Internet users would be literally lost in translation. Of ...

Stand for a Free Society I come up with new words, phrases, analogies, all kinds of fun stuff in the English language and people paraphrase what I had to say and make money talking about some of the same things that I did. If I try to lock down what I talk about and write about, the same way as a proprietary software company does, then the whole industry of speaking, writing, media, would be overly litigious, and transaction costs would be prohibitive.Don Marti, 2005 interview There is much more to software than being trustworthy (being "Open-Source"): what really counts is the freedoms you get over it. Can you learn from it? Can you build upon it? Can you distribute it? That's what we refer to as "free software". Not a crazy concept It sounds peculiar to many users that software should be free as in freedom, since none of Microsoft's products are. Yet our society works with many free things in it, for example: Though no one has a proprietary lock on y...

This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open source software / free software (abbreviated as OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS) is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary competition according to various measures. This paper’s goal is to show that you should consider using OSS/FS when acquiring software. This paper examines market share , reliability , performance , scalability , security , and total cost of ownership . It also has sections on non-quantitative issues , unnecessary fears , OSS/FS on the desktop , usage reports , governments and OSS/FS , other sites providing related information , and ends with some conclusions . An appendix gives more background information about OSS/FS. You can view this paper at http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html (HTML format). A short presentation (briefing) based on this paper is also available. Palm PDA users may wish to use Plucker to view this longer report. Old archived copies and a list of ...

FreeNetworks.org is a volunteer cooperative association dedicated to education, collaboration, and advocacy for the creation of FreeNetworks. You can show solidarity and support the cause by building a network that follows our peering guidelines, and identify it to your users as a FreeNetwork. FreeNetworks.org

MythTV is a Free Open Source digital video recorder (DVR) project distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. It has been under heavy development since 2002, and now contains most features one would expect from a good DVR (and many new ones that you soon won't be able to live without). If you are interested in learning more about MythTV (or just want to check out some screenshots), please take a look at MythTV In Detail . MythTV, Open Source DVR

The existence of software inevitably raises the question of how decisions about its use should be made. For example, suppose one individual who has a copy of a program meets another who would like a copy. It is possible for them to copy the program; who should decide whether this is done? The individuals involved? Or another party, called the “owner”? Software developers typically consider these questions on the assumption that the criterion for the answer is to maximize developers' profits. The political power of business has led to the government adoption of both this criterion and the answer proposed by the developers: that the program has an owner, typically a corporation associated with its development. I would like to consider the same question using a different criterion: the prosperity and freedom of the public in general. This answer cannot be decided by current law—the law should conform to ethics, not the other way around. Nor does current practice decide this...

The gender inequality among developers and supporters of free software is stunning. Less than 2% of us are women, according to studies conducted for the European Commission. Why? The evidence says we’re driving them away. There are even some pretty good published guidelines on how not to drive them away. What’s missing is a practical implementation strategy: here I present ten relatively simple changes in how you run your project, to make it more attractive to would-be contributors—especially women. Read the rest here Ten easy ways to attract women to your free software project | LinuxChix

Mozilla is an open source project and organization to develop a cross-platform Internet client software. Since it is open source, the source code is available to everyone - although you have to follow the licenses as defined in the respective source files (a mixture of MPL, NPL, GPL, LGPL). mozilla.org is the name of an organization that provides an infrastructure to help developers in the project. mozilla.org is also the address of the central web site for the Mozilla project. If you find errors in this document, or if you want to contribute updated or additional sections, please contact Kai Engert . Contents What is Mozilla? Motivation Audience Scope of this document What does Netscape have to do with this? C++ and JavaScript NSPR - Netscape portable runtime Threads Object oriented programming & Modularity Interfaces XPCOM / nsISupports / nsCOMPtr Exceptions / nsresult Strings in C++ Graphical User Interface / XUL Build System and Tree Application Startup I...

Bonfire is an application to burn CD/DVD for the gnome desktop. It is designed to be as simple as possible and has some unique features to enable users to create their discs easily and quickly. Features include: burn / copy / erase data and audio discs, allows full editing of data discs (remove/move/rename files inside a directory, ...) as well as audio discs, handle all audio files if Gstreamer supports them, with a customisable GUI. In Windows, there is one of the most popular Nero Burning ROM to burn your files onto CD or DVD. It goes that the KDE and Gnome deskops in Linux have their own popular burning software application. According to this article, it seems that k3b (the commonly used CD/DVD burner in Linux) is about to be dethroned by Bonfire, the fast upcoming application Currently, Bonfire is just another application to burn CD/DVD for the Gnome desktop. It is designed to be as simple as possible and has some unique features to enable users to create their discs easily...

Think Aqua interface in Mac OSX and 3D Flip in Windows Vista was the best looking Operating system? Ever thought that the 3D effects on hacker’s desktop shown in movies are not for real? No need to think again, just read on because the freedom and flexibility Compiz Fusion provides is beyond imagination. Compiz fusion is the result of a merge between the well-known Beryl composite window manager and Compiz Extras, a community set of improvements to the Compiz composite window manager. You don’t even need a high performance hardware for this, it will work fine with 256MB RAM and a decent processor. Many distros such as Ubuntu , openSUSE, Mandriva, Fedora, Sabayon etc comes with out of the box Compiz Fusion and for others distros it can be added as an add-on. This article is aimed at encouraging users to try linux if they want the best rather than using Windows and refraining themself to try something new and better. Here are screenshots of various effects that can be accomplished...