Open Source Software You Can’t Live Without
What are the benefits of using Open Source software?
There are many standard open source software packages that can increase productivity in any office environment.
Open Source programs may be developed, improved and maintained by a community of programmers, but its programs can be useful to computer users of all levels. There are thousands of Open Source programs you can use to do just about anything on your computer. Here are a handful that you might find indispensable.
Create a blog. WordPress is an Open Source application that can be used to design and publish a blog. If you have any programming skill, you can create an entire website, including static and blog pages, using WordPress.
Go online. There are several Open Source web browsers available for Mac and PC, including Mozilla Firefox and Camino. Mozilla Firefox is considered by many to be one of the top browsers in the world.
Use your computer. There are many Open Source operating systems available, but Linux is one of the most widely known. It’s supported by many proprietary computing companies including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, IBM, and Novell.
Write documents. OpenDocument, NeoOffice, AbiWord, and Bean are all Open Source word processing programs.
Run Windows software on a Mac. The Q Emulator program will allow Mac users to run Windows software on their computers. The program can be slow for some models, however.
This list only scratches the surface of how computer users at all levels can use Open Source programs. Open Source programming makes effective, well-designed software open and available to everyone who wants to use it, share it, or improve upon it.
About the author: C.Smith works for www.on365.co.uk the UK-based server management and data centre management Company. For more info on server rooms visit www.on365.co.uk/Server-Room-Solutions.aspx.
| By Chris Smith Published: 10/24/2008 |
Where Open Source and Government Meet
The Obama administration recently excited the world of open source software by choosing to launch recovery.gov on Drupal. Their choice of a free, open source platform over any proprietary system is as hopeful and promising as the wave of the future.
Why should someone have to have a background in computer science to get value out of open source software? Of course projects like the Linux kernel, which is used by millions, have relatively few people contributing back.
Essential Open Source Resources
It discusses Piwik (open source web analytics software with useful plug-ins from the community), Kompozer (a very popular web development environment, especially for CSS fans), and OpenX (a free, open source ad server for monetizing