Open Source Software

Written by Mike Servis

Open Source Logo This is my Open Source Software page - Open Source Initiative is the organization home page where you can read/learn all about exactly what it means to be open source software. Below is my collection of links where you can download open source software, starting with my favorite distribution of Linux. Ubuntu - that's pronounced oo-BOON-too.

Ubuntu is very possibly the most popular version of Linux on the home desktop/laptop computer - I know it's my favorite. Ubuntu is an African word, which has been described as "too beautiful to translate into English". The essence of Ubuntu is that "a person is a person through other people". It describes humanity as "being-with-others" and prescribes what "being-with-others" should be all about. Ubuntu emphasises sharing, consensus, and togetherness. It's a perfect concept for Free Software and open source. Here's a great article that describes Ubuntu, which may help define it. Wikipedia also has a good definition.
Sourceforge The world's largest development and download repository of Open Source ...
Open Office A multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, free to download, use, ...
The Gimp GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. (more...)
Firefox Web Browser With more than 15,000 improvements, Firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than ever before.
OScommerce is the leading Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is powered by a dedicated, strong, and ever growing community, and is released under the GNU General Public License.
joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Additional Information

Newsflash

Google opens up new front in browser wars with Chrome

By Ryan Paul | Published: September 01, 2008 - 07:05PM CT

Google has revealed plans today to release an innovative new open source web browser called Chrome that includes some extraordinary and unprecedented features. Google says that its new browser will move the web forward and provide a stronger platform for emerging web standards.

"We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser," said Google VP of product management Sundar Pichai in a blog entry. "What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."

The browser is built on top of Apple's WebKit HTML rendering engine, a lightweight renderer that is known for its clean code base, good performance, and excellent standards-compliance. WebKit's versatility and the ease with which it can be embedded in applications has led to its adoption in numerous contexts, including Google's Android web browser. Alongside WebKit, Google will be using its own JavaScript virtual machine called V8, which was designed for high performance and has some compelling features.

One of the most impressive technical innovations that Google has brought to Chrome is a multiprocess design. Each individual browser tab runs within its own isolated process, much like the way that processes work in an operating system. This will massively increase the robustness of the browser by insulating the application from bugs that cause crashes within individual tabs. The tab will go down, but the rest of the browser will remain unaffected. The multiprocess design also reduces the impact of memory fragmentation by ensuring that the memory used by a tab can be reclaimed completely when the tab is closed.

Another unique advantage of the multiprocess design is that it will allow users to see the distribution of memory between the various tabs and plug-ins used by the browser. Users will be able to use Chrome's built-in process manager to see how much memory is being used by each individual tab so that they can properly identify the real culprit when the browser begins to hog resources. Google has a few other strategies for reducing memory consumption too, like extremely aggressive and heavily-optimized garbage collection.

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Newsflash

Google opens up new front in browser wars with Chrome