18. Bibliography
Mozilla Thunderbird (n.d.). Features. Retrieved from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/features/
Libre Office (n.d.). Features. Retrieved from http://www.libreoffice.org/features/
Ubuntu. (n.d.). Ubuntu desktop. Retrieved from http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop
Banshee. (n.d.). Banshee. Retrieved from http://banshee.fm/
GIMP. (n.d.). Features. Retrieved from http://www.gimp.org/features/
WINE (n.d.). About. Retrieved from http://www.winehq.org/about/
The Open Group. (n.d.). Unix past. Retrieved from http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html
Lily, P. (2013, October 29). Ubuntu linux gaming performance rivals windows 8.1. Retrieved from
http://hothardware.com/News/Ubuntu-Linux-Gaming-Performance-Rivals-Windows-81/
Bell, L. (2013, October 17). Canonical steals windows 8.1's thunder with ubuntu 13.10 release. Retrieved from
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2301281/canonical-steals-windows-81s-thunder-with-ubuntu-1310-release
Toulas, B. (2013, July 17). Best open source games. Retrieved from http://worldofgnome.org/best-open-source-games/
Noyes, K. (2010, November 5). 10 reasons open source is good for business. Retrieved from
http://www.pcworld.com/article/209891/10_reasons_open_source_is_good_for_business.html
Editor's Notes
Hello, my name is Rob Kerr and this is my presentation on Open Source Software. In this presentation I’ll be teaching you about open source software and how to build a computer using only open source software to run it.
First lets look at what open source software is and why people choose to use it over the traditional software. The term Open source means that the source code used to develop the software is made available to anyone for modification or enhancement. Open source software is having an increasing effect on the sales of traditional software since there are multiple benefits to choosing open source.
Because the source code is made available, you are able to customize the software to suit your needs. The code being available also means that there are thousands of developers constantly checking and fixing bugs in the program increasing the overall security of the software. When buying traditional software you are stuck upgrading to newer versions usually costing money, with open source you can upgrade at any time and the cost of most open source software is free. The software I will be showing you in this presentation is all free of charge and compared to their leading competitors you save over $1000.
The use of open source software began in the 50’s to make it simple for companies to share code with one another. In 1969, a team of developers at Bell Labs created UNIX, the first open source operating system. As UNIX became available to the public it lead to the GNU project in 1983, a team focused on creating a free open-source operating system. In 1984 the X/Open Company Ltd. Was formed, setting UNIX as the base platform of all open systems. In 1991, Linus Torvalds created LINUX, an operating system for regular desktop use created using peoples ideas and suggestions. Linux lead to the development of many operating systems, today there are over 100 different distributions of Linux available online.
With open-source software becoming more widely used it is common for people to build their computer using only open source software. The rest of this presentation will go over the main types of software required to run your system that compete with the leading traditional brands.
The most important software required to run your system would be the operating system. Aside from that you would generally need an Office Suite, a Web Browser, a photo suite, a video and audio player, and of course some games.
For the operating system, I recommend Ubuntu. Ubuntu was released in 2004 and has since improved to become todays most popular LINUX distribution and competes with Windows in performance. Ubuntu is compatible with most file extensions that are used in Windows and a similar layout to make it easy for a new user to learn. Ubuntu comes preloaded with strong firewall and virus protection, an office suite, a web browser, and a software center where you can search and download thousands of open-source programs. Ubuntus easy setup and design make it the ideal operating system for any open-source user.
As an office suite to compete with Microsoft Office we have LibreOffice. Libreoffice is an open-source office suite that has most of Microsoft Offices features and is compatible with their file extensions. Libreoffice comes packaged with Calc, a replacement for excel, Writer, a replacement for word, Impress, a replacement for PowerPoint, Math, a formula maker, Base, a replacement for Access, and Draw a diagramming program.
Mozilla is a company founded in 1998 that focuses on designing open source web applications. For your standard web browser, Mozilla Firefox has everything you would need. It competes with Internet Explorer as the number one browser. Firefox comes with a built in adblocker, master password, and many other features to make your browsing experience simple. Mozilla Thunderbird is an alternative to Microsoft Outlook, it manages multiple email accounts and is very easy to setup.
VLC is a free open source multimedia player, it handles most file extensions without any additional setup and can do media conversion.
Although VLC handles all media files, Banshee is the best choice for music. Banshee unlike other media players is compatible with all of todays MP3 players and iPods. It has a built in music store that combines multiple online music stores into one.
As a simple photo editor, GIMP comes with everything you could need. To compete with Adobe photoshop, GIMP is a free Image manipulation program that has most features or similar alternatives. If you require an editor more like Photoshop there are other alternatives, but for normal use you shouldn’t need anything more then GIMP.
Open-source gaming is lacking a bit currently since developers tend to be on a voluntary basis but there are still some games that are gaining popularity on the market. Speed Dreams is the number one 3D open source racing simulation. It is a spinoff of another open source game Torcs, but since it is more frequently updated and has received graphic enhancements it receives more popularity.
If your not a fan of racing but would rather shoot around there are open-source games for you to. Xonotic is a spinoff of the classic Quake, it is an open source arena based first person shooter game. With Xonotic you can compete online against other people and all records are kept on the Xonotic web site so you can see how you compare to other players.
Although still in heavy development, Planeshift is voted the number one free 3D MMORPG. Unlike other MMORPG Planeshift has no hidden costs or features you have to pay to get, it is the first MMO of its kind to do this.
The final program that I recommend installing would be WINE. WINE is a application that implements a Windows interface through a different operating system. It works by changing Windows actions into POSIX actions to improve compatibility between programs written solely for Windows and other operating systems. If there are any programs that you require that does not have an open-source or Linux compatible alternative, WINE should allow you to use it as if you were in Windows.
