An Open Source Guide For The Average PC User

prostoalex writes "The regular Yahoo! News feature Tech Tuesday this week is dedicated to open source software for the home user. Open source for all spells out the open source ideas for a regular PC user, while providing some helpful links to some popular software. The open source PC is a guide on most popular open source apps that would be common for a home user to have. Is open source for you? discusses shortcomings of open source software and cases when it's not recommended." From the article: "Never fear, counterculture types. You can still liberate the code, and experience many other perks, by becoming part of the open-source movement. With the steadily increasing number of open-source applications on the Web, there are more projects than ever to check out, covering nearly every imaginable application: from word processors and e-mail applications to media players and video games."

Comments

Opensource list

[xtrvd]

I don't remember how I got this list, but I think I picked it up on a slashdot post a while ago. Here's a list that I generally use to give people new to Linux wondering what software to use.

My thanks go out to the original poster whom I cannot remember.

1. Web Browsing? Mozilla/Firefox
2. E-mail? Thunderbird or Evolution
3. Group Calendaring? Mozilla Sunbird + Apache/SSL/WebDAV + iCal
4. Audio CD Archiving? Grip + Ogg Vorbis
5. Advanced Media Player? Xine or MPlayer
6. Audio Streaming of Archived CDs? Icecast + Ices
7. Recording of online streams for archival purposes? ALSA + ALSA Utils + Ogg Vorbis + Any required media player format in Xine or MPlayer
8. Firewall? Linux Kernel + iptables
9. Office Functionality? OpenOffice.org
10. Digital Image Editing? GIMP
11. IM Client? GAIM
12. IM Server? Jabberd
13. File sharing? NFS
14. Sane storage management? LVM
15. File compression? BZip2, GZip, or 7Zip also File Roller if you really need a GUI
16. Digital Photo Management? Gthumb or Nautilus
17. PVR? Mythtv.org
18. Video streaming? VLC (Video LAN Client)
19. X10 Home Automation? Bottlerocket
20. Remote desktop/application serving? VNC 4
21. Remote assistance? x0vncserver or the vnc extension for Xorg
22. VPN/Tunneling? OpenVPN or OpenSSH with TCP port forwarding
23. Web Serving? Apache
24. Mail Serving? Courier
25. Server Based Spam Filtering? ASSP
26. Client Based Spam Filtering? Thunderbird
27. Image Scanning? SANE
28. Audio Editing? Rezound or Audacity
29. Multitrack Audio? Ardour
30. MIDI Sequencing? Rosegarden
31. CD Burning (Data and Audio)? cdrecord + various GUI frontends
32. Simple PC Based Puzzle Games? Too many to list from both the GNOME and KDE projects
33. SpyWare/Malware Prevention Removal? None at this point since I don't use the internet via Windows

-Jesse

Re:Canard

[erikharrison]

While true, you beg the question

They do not care because they do not know. That's no good reason to criticize a series of articles that tries to the get the word out

Average users don't want to care about how their car works either. But they still know to get their oil changed every month, and have opinions on issues like the classification of SUVs.

My usual response

[Spy der Mann]

"How much does it cost?"
It doesn't, it's free.
"Oh, does it have spyware or something?"
No, it's open source.
"Open source? What's that?"
It means they give away the source code, you can modify it and make your own.
"Hey dude, that's sweet!"
Yup!

Re:A better 1-CD solution than OpenCD

[WilliamSChips]

I agree with everything here except Bochs. Just do a s/Bochs/QEMU/ and you'll be fine though.

Re:Minor beef

[ImaLamer]

"get your pale-faced neighbor to burn you this Live Linux CD - it will NOT change the rest of your computer in any way"

That's funny because I've tried for years to get a buddy to run Knoppix on an old PC he's got and he'll never do it. Even though he knows I have a computer/networking related degree he doesn't believe that Knoppix won't affect his Windows install (which is very broken).

I was going to type "I don't know why he doesn't believe me..." but then I think about all of the Windows software that destroys systems without user intervention and realize that some people just don't trust software not made by a major companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and their ilk or major game developers.

The sad thing is that if people got over the hump of just trying the (open source) software they'll learn there is a lot less to fear than with it's proprietary counterparts.