ellipsys (Entries tagged as floss)

Google Chrome for Linux - Finally!

nospam@example.com (Marcus Friedman) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:00:00 -0800

Yes, I know it’s a Beta release, but…

We all know that “Beta” has a special meaning for Google, and besides…
Google’s Beta products and services are usually quite better than others that claim to be stable or mature.

On January of this year, I shared with you some facts that show that it takes Google no less than a year since it releases a new product for Windows to having a version of the same product running on Linux (see “Google, are we second-class citizens?“). The 1.0 release was launched on December 11th 2008. 362 days later, Linux and OS X users finally have a native beta for their respective platforms.

I’ve tried it on Debian Lenny, and I have to say that I’m really pleased and that it runs wonderfully. So, for those of you that are done with Firefox’s bloat and subpar performance, now you have the choice to run a modern, lightweight, reliable and extremely fast open source web browser.

The only bad news is that we’re still second-class citizens to Google, and that doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future. Now that we have Chrome… where’s the Google Talk client for Linux? 4 years and counting…

How to protect your PDF files with open source tools

nospam@example.com (Marcus Friedman) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:00:00 -0700

When you need to distribute documents in PDF format, you’ll probably want to protect them. If you are working on Mac OS X (or Windows) and you have Adobe Acrobat, that can be done quite easily.

But if you’re running Linux on your desktop —or even if you’re using Windows or a Mac and don’t want to use proprietary programs—, there are free tools that will let you protect your files by adding encryption, passwords and restrictions.

One of those tools is pdftk (the pdf toolkit). On Debian and Ubuntu, pdftk is already present in the official repositories, so all you have to do to install it is:

apt-get install pdftk

In the product’s website you’ll also find binary packages for FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Windows.

Here are some examples that show you how to use the program:

Encrypt a PDF using 128-Bit Strength (the default) and withhold all permissions:
pdftk mydoc.pdf output mydoc.128.pdf owner_pw foopass
Same as above, except that a password is required to open the PDF:
pdftk mydoc.pdf output mydoc.128.pdf owner_pw foo user_pw baz
Same as above, except that printing is allowed (after the PDF has been opened):
pdftk mydoc.pdf output mydoc.128.pdf owner_pw foo user_pw baz allow printing

Besides the security functions, pdftk has many more features that you might find useful too, including the ability to merge, split and rotate PDF documents, or applying watermarks.

Retrogaming: emulating a ZX Spectrum with open source tools

nospam@example.com (Marcus Friedman) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:00:00 -0700

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was one of the most popular home computers during the 80s (along with the Atari 800XL, the Amstrad CPC series and of course the Commodore 64, the best-selling single personal computer model of all time). For those who have ever owned a Speccy, this machine needs no further introduction.

Almost 25 years have passed since the golden era of home computers, and it seems like an eternity in these days of multi-core, multi-gigahertz CPUs, when even a cheap mobile phone is way more powerful than any of those machines from the eighties.

For those of you who would like to revive those old times, today we’ll take a look at the best open source ZX Spectrum emulator (which you’ll be able to run on Linux, BSDs, Mac OS X, Windows and many other platforms, including modern game consoles like the PSP and the Nintendo Wii).

© 2008-09 by Marcus Friedman - All rights reserved [ 33fb10b7 - 22fd4412 ]
Continue reading "Retrogaming: emulating a ZX Spectrum with open source tools"

How to manage your video collection with open source tools

nospam@example.com (Marcus Friedman) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:00:00 -0700

When you have a large movie collection, keeping track of it can become troublesome. Many times you’ll want to watch a movie again, but searching through a huge set of DVDs in order to find it can take a lot of time. Maybe you lent that movie to a friend, then forgot about it, and now you wonder why is it that you can’t find it. Sometimes you won’t even remember the title of the film you’re looking for, but you can remember who was its director, or the name of the leading actor. But then again, conducting a manual search by directors’ names can be quite difficult.

Fortunately, there are many open source programs that can help you to catalog your movies and manage your collection with ease. Building your catalog takes time, specially if you have a large collection, but in the long run it’s time well spent. And after you’re done, you’ll be able to search your catalog in almost any way you can think of (by title, by genre, by cast or crew, by year, etc.) and find a movie instantly.

Most of the video collection managers are desktop-based applications. However, we’ll focus on a web-based product, which can be a bit more difficult to set up than a desktop program, but it has some important advantages, like being a platform independent solution and allowing you to browse and manage your collection anywhere.

Broadcatching with open source tools

nospam@example.com (Marcus Friedman) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:00:00 -0700

Broadcatching can be defined as the downloading of digital content that has been made available over the Internet through RSS feeds. Instead of having to spend time visiting multiple websites to find the contents that you want to download, you just need to find a relevant RSS feed and add it to your broadcatching client. The program will monitor the feed, and when it finds new contents it will let you know, allowing you to start new downloads with a single click. You can even tell the broadcatching client to download new contents for you as they become available, so the whole process becomes fully automated.

If you want to know how to take advantage of broadcatching by using open source programs (on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows), please read on.

Please note that downloading copyrighted television broadcasts is not considered legal in some countries or states. The purpose of this article is to give you an overview of some open source tools available for broadcatching. It is up to the readers to decide if or how they should use such tools.