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The 10 Coolest Open Source Products of 2008

Posted by timothy on from the not-the-transom-of-the-novel-white-jazz dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Open Source Software is about more than just the Linux operating system, and 2008 brought advances in the form of OpenOffice.org, IBM Lotus Symphony, Firefox and Android. But Linux is still the heart of the FOSS movement, and this year brought key developments in the operating system as well. Here's a look at the coolest open source products to come across the transom in 2008." Along roughly similar lines, davidmwilliams points out the year in review of the iTWire's "Linux Distillery" column.

10 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Zzzzzz by sunderland56 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Of the 10, 9 are merely updates of existing products - nothing new here.

    Android *is* new - but is hardly newsworthy by now.

    1. Re:Zzzzzz by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Informative

      1 is Open Office, 1 is an open office derivative. 1 is a website. 1 is firefox 3. 1 is Android. The rest are linux distros.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    2. Re:Zzzzzz by mcgrew · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Thanks for that. I tried to RTFA and found it was one of those "one paragraph and ten thoudsand ads per screen" sites so I didn't go any farther.

      How can you trust any tech site with a gawdoffal layout like that? Pathetic!

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    3. Re:Zzzzzz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Plus Ubuntu's on the list twice. So here's the article reproduced verbatim, sans ads, just as a giant middle finger extended in the direction of CRN and all the other assbags using this format these days.

      OpenOffice.org 3.0

      The popular -- and free -- open source productivity suite hit its milestone 3.0 version in 2008, making it more clear than ever that its functionality and compatibility with Microsoft Office (including OpenOffice Impress, which is PowerPoint compatible) make it a force to be reckoned with. With an acquisition cost of between $150 and $200 less than Microsoft Office 2007, it could have a big year in a down economy in 2009.

      IBM Lotus Symphony

      IBM has taken great pains to position itself as more of a middleware company than a desktop productivity software company, but diverged from that path a bit in 2008. By launching and upgrading its IBM Lotus Symphony suite of productivity apps based on OpenOffice.org, IBM is once again using the Lotus brand to take aim against Microsoft on the desktop.

      Firefox 3.0

      Die-hard Firefox users showed thanks for the Mozilla community's efforts to eliminate memory leaks and other annoyances in the most recent iterations of the open-source browser. Features like its "awesome bar" are also helping it continue to gain market share against Microsoft Internet Explorer, even as it's fending off new challenges from Google's new Chrome browser.

      Laconica

      If microblogging site Twitter became the social networking smash of 2008, 2009 could be a great year for the open-source microblogging platform called Laconica. The best-known site using that code, Identi.ca, allows communication through browsers, e-mail and SMS messaging -- giving a powerful, free alternative to those seeking to build their own social networking or microblogging platforms.

      Fedora 9

      Test Center highlighted three intriguing aspects for Fedora 9: the new desktop schemes, the new package management system and back-end improvements to memory usage and performance. On the desktop front, Fedora 9 Beta offers GNOME 2.22 and KDE 4.0.2 as the defaults. GNOME 2.22 in Fedora 9 has better file system performance, security improvements and the ability to manage power right at the login screen (quite handy on a laptop). There's also better Bluetooth integration, especially for Palm devices.

      Ubuntu 8.10

      Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Edition, nicknamed "Intrepid Ibex," provides so much functionality and ease of use, at zero cost of acquisition, that it is really impossible to ignore. For anyone or any business not tied to Microsoft legacy desktop applications, Ubuntu 8.10 may realistically be considered a smarter choice in many scenarios.

      OpenSuSE 11

      Novell didn't launch a new version of its SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop in 2008, but it did shepherd the OpenSuSE community that delivered OpenSuSE 11. OpenSUSE is powerful, and improvements in usability, performance and stability should attract and win back users from other Linux distributions. There is some business advantage to consider OpenSUSE instead of Ubuntu or Fedora because of Novell's relationship with Microsoft, such as the tweaks to OpenOffice.org that make document conversion and migration easier, as well as the hypervisor adapter support. OpenSUSE is probably best for power users, those who can take advantage of the virtualization support and those with more experience using Linux.

      Novell JeOS

      SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS (pronounced "juice"), the beta "Just enough" operating system from Novell is a lightweight and barebones version of the company's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The code base is SLES 10 Service Pack 2. The stripped-down operating system is intended specifically for virtual appliances. Applications certified to run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server will carry that certification onto the JeOS

    4. Re:Zzzzzz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Article has wrong title, should be: "1 Cheesy Way To Drive Up Your Ad Revenue"

  2. Spoiler by ojintoad · · Score: 5, Informative
    The coolest are:
    1. OpenOffice
    2. IBM Lotus Symphony
    3. Firefox 3.0
    4. Laconica
    5. Fedora 9
    6. Ubuntu 8.10
    7. Open SuSe11
    8. Novell JeOS
    9. Ubuntu 8.04
    10. Android
  3. WTH? by MBGMorden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    5 of the 10 are just Linux distro's. Ubuntu 8.10 AND 8.04 were both on the list as seperate entries!?!? And Lotus Symphony, a version of OOo, was listed along with OOo as seperate products. For the most part this could have been condensed down to:

    Linux, Firefox, OpenOffice, Android

    Which is so boring a list that it's of no use to anyone actually using open source already.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  4. Re:I don't get it... by owlnation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually as far as a medium to large organization is concerned, OpenOffice wouldn't be free in accounting terms. There would be training and admin costs on top of that -- which would initially be high. Training is expensive, and there would be a re-productivity curve for employees too, and thus a resultant increased cost again. It's probably a show stopper for many companies. While they do have to pay licences etc for MS Office, they don't really need to provide training in most corporations as Office knowledge is an expected skill to have, and most IT depts are familiar with it too.

    Which brings me to the fact that the real key to having the oft-heralded Year Of Linux, is to have a Year of the Office Replacement first. (I'm not sure that Open Office is currently anywhere near that happening). MS Office / Exchange are the whole key to Microsoft's dominance, not the OS. Find a viable solution for that, and Linux will follow.

  5. Re:I don't get it... by Kt.foss.zealot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't think it's just me,.. but I was pretty much crippled when forced to use Microsoft Office Suite 2007 at work for the first week or so. The whole ribbon bullshit interface just seems completely counter-intuitive to me. Not to mention the unexpected way Microsoft Word 2007 handles simple things, It seems like I spend 20 minutes writing a document, and hours trying to make an unwanted line-gap go away, or trying to figure out some stupid header or footer issue. Somehow even LaTeX seems easier to use. Anyway, OpenOffice seems pretty intuitive to me for most uses, such as simple text editing, which is what most people sans-OCD do pretty easily anyway on pretty much any text editor. While the total cost of migrating to OpenOffice in most offices is most definately not 0, it's probably not higher than Microsoft Licenseing fees, and even if they were I think in the long run it could still save the company money, as most users have to re-learn MS Office every few years anyway.

  6. Great Linux Innovations Of 2008 by TinuvaZA · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I actually think the article "Great Linux Innovations Of 2008" on http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=great_linux_innovations_2008&num=1 was much better.