Welcome to Windows Webpage 2 !

Lonnie's Info and tweaks

Some of the commercial software like Photoshop are so expensive that an average user can not afford to buy it. Lately I am looking for some free or open source alternatives for windows programs and i was amazed with the range of programs available. Here i will list some of the open source or free programs as alternatives to windows commercial programs.

1. 7-zip 7-Zip is a open source file archiver program for windows. It supports packing and unpacking of 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR format files and supports onlu unpacking of RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS. It provides better compression ratio than WinZip for ZIP and GZIP formats. It is an alternative to programs like WinZip

2. Audacity: Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.Audacity can be used to record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files. cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.

3. Blender: Blender is a open source free software for creating 3D animations. Blender can be used for modelling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and creating interactive 3D applications. Blender has robust features et similar to programs like 3ds Max and Maya.

4. ClamWin: ClamWin is a Free Antivirus for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and 2003. ClamWin is a good alternative to commercial softwares like Norton, McAfee etc. Clamwin features include High detection rates for viruses and spyware, Scanning Scheduler, Automatic downloads of regularly updated Virus Database, Standalone virus scanner and right-click menu integration to Microsoft Windows Explorer, and Addin to Microsoft Outlook to remove virus-infected attachments automatically.

5. eMule: eMule is a open source peer to peer file sharing (P2P) client tool.

6. Feedreader: Feedreader is free desktop RSS aggregation tool. “Feedreader automatically downloads updates from your favorite Web sites. So, it eliminates the need for you to constantly monitor multiple Web pages, while allowing you to immediately identify and retrieve new articles”

7. Filezilla: FileZilla is a free, open source FTP client for Windows. It supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS protocols. It has all the essential features required for a FTP client. The main features of FileZilla are Ability to resume Uploads/Downloads, Site Manager with folders, Keep Alive system, Timeout detection, Firewall support, SOCKS4/5 and HTTP1.1 Proxy support, SSL secured connections, Upload/Download Queue, Drag&Drop.

8. Firefox: The best cross platform supported web brwoser available on the net, it doesn’t need any introduction and many of you might be using. The wide range of Firefox Add-On’s make this the most powerful browser for all types of users. Firefox is an alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer.

9. GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is free open source raster graphics editor for manipulating photos or images. GIMP is an excellent software and alternative to expensive photoshop, it is used for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

10. hugin: hugin is a open source easy to use cross-platform panoramic imaging tool. Using hugin you can assemble a mosaic of photographs into as complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much more.

11. Inkscape: Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor. Inkscape is a good alternative to commercial vector graphics tools like Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, Freehand or Xara X. Inkscape uses Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format. It can be used to create web2.0 buttons, banners, logos, icons etc. (see earlier review)

12. Juice: Juice is a free open source cross-platform podcast receiver application. It is used to download podcast media files, such as oggs and mp3s. Using juice you can schedule the podcast and juice will let you know when a new podcast is available. The downloaded files media files can be automatically copied to a digital audio player.

13. OpenOffice.org: OpenOffice.org is the open source office suite similar to Microsoft office available to different platforms. OpenOffice.org is a collection of applications with the features similar to Microsoft Office. The Components include Writer, Calc, Base, Impress, Draw, Math, Quickstarter etc.

14. PDFCreator: PDFCreator is a free program for creating PDF documents from windows programs. Once installed, it allows the user to select PDFCreator as their printer, allowing almost any application to print to PDF.

15. Pidgin: Pidgin, formerly known as Gaim is a multi-platform instant messaging client that supports many commonly used IM protocols. Pidgin is a free software and supports IM’s including Yahoo, Google Talk, Jabber, MSN, AOL, ICQ etc.

16. Programmers Notepad: Programmer’s Notepad is the free, open source, text editor for programmers. some of the features of Programmers Notepad: Code Folding/Outlining, Docking tool windows, Excellent external tool support with user-configurable output matching, Export to HTML (using CSS) and RTF, Word Wrapping

17. Scribus: Scribus is an open source desktop publishing (DTP) application. It has some nice page layout features and can be used as an alternative to Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. “It can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms. Example uses include writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books.”

18. Sunbird: Sunbird is open source desktop calender application from Mozilla foundation. Sunbird is a cross platform, open standards application built on Mozill Toolkit.

19. Thunderbird: Thunderbird is the open source desktop email application from Mozilla foundation. Thunderbird has the best features in the industry. “Thunderbird 2 features many new enhancements to help you better manage your unruly inbox, and stay informed. Thunderbird 2 scales to the most sophisticated organizational needs while making it easy to find what you need.”

20. VLC Media Player: VLC Media Player is a open source media player from VideoLan project team. It is the best media player available in the net, it plays almost any file format available. It also supports streaming protocols. It is a good alternative to different media players.

HOW TO: Run Other OSes On Your PC

Many of you will undoubtedly have heard of VMware, but for those who have not, here is a little introduction:

But you can erase that bit about it being for “software developers/testers” and “enterprise IT professionals”, because I’m going to show you just how simple running another Operating System on your PC is.

VMware Workstation has always been (and still is) a commercial product, and you have to pay a fairly large sum to get your hands on it, but VMware have now released a free application dubbed “VMware Player”, which can run virtual machines produced by VMware and a few other companies. Yet, with some simple hacks, we can use VMware Player to run any x86 Operating System we like.

Please note that this hack is no longer required for there is a much simpler and better method of creating, running and managing virtual machines in the form of the free VMware Server. Please download and install that instead, and follow its simple procedures to create VMs rather than this tutorial.

Ingredients

1. VMware Player, which can be downloaded from VMware.com.
2. OS.zip, which we will use to install the Operating System. (mirror)
3. Either the .iso of the install CD for the Operating System you would like to run, or its CD.

With these, we can concoct the perfect potion.

Getting the OS up and running

First of all, install VMware Player onto your computer - it is available for both Windows and Linux.

Then, once you have done that, expand the OS.zip file you downloaded. A directory called “OS” should be created, and inside it there will be two files: OS.vmdk and OS.vmx. Switch to that directory and open up OS.vmx in your favourite text editor.

The third line in that file is: memsize = “512″. Here you can set how many MBs of your RAM you would like VMware Player to take up when running your Operating System. I have set it to 512MB, which is at my disposal, yet you really only need about 128-256MB for the average Linux distribution. As my Operating System, I have decided to install Mandriva Linux 2006 (which I have the DVD .iso of).

ide1:0.fileName = “c:\image.iso”, I would change it to:
ide1:0.fileName = “c:\Mandriva-Linux-Free-DVD.i586.iso”.

ide1:0.fileName = “c:\Ubuntu-5.10.iso”.

Note: If you would like to install an Operating System via your CD-ROM drive, then edit the OS.vmx file, replacing the following lines:

ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
ide1:0.fileName = “c:\image.iso”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-image”

with these:

ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
ide1:0.fileName = “auto detect”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw”

Ok, now that you’ve configured how much of your RAM you would like to dedicate to this process and pointed it to the correct .iso/CD drive, it’s time for some action.

Open up the OS.vmx file in VMware Player, and you should see something like this to begin with:

Make sure the CD-ROM button along the top bar is pressed, and as soon as the above screen appears press Esc. That will take to you a list of bootable devices, and on this list go down to “CD-ROM” and hit Enter.

Now, VMware Player will go to the “CD-ROM drive” (which you have pointed to a .iso), and so the installation of the Operating System will begin.
Hint: Do not be afraid to let the OS format the “hard drive” and automatically partition it within the virtual machine, because all it will be affecting is the OS.vmdk file - which will expand as you go storing more information on it (and is a maximum of 107GB).

Here’s a screenshot of Mandriva’s installation in progress:

And, the finished result:

Excellent - now you can make your own virtual machines! There are also a few prebuilt ones available for download on VMware’s Virtual Machine Centre.

-If you have had any issues while trying this out, please feel free to leave me a message below or drop me an email, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Extra Note:

Some Operating Systems require more than one CD to be installed (example: FreeBSD). This is not a problem when you have the actual CDs, but when you plan to install the OS from a bunch of ISOs, the situation becomes slightly more problematic. Here is what you can do (FreeBSD is being used as an example):

Change the .vmx file to read:

ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
ide1:0.fileName = “c:\FreeBSD.iso”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-image”

Then do the following:

Move the first FreeBSD ISO to your C:\ directory (or /home/user/ for Linux users), and rename it from “6.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso” to “FreeBSD.iso”. Good, now boot up VMware Player and install it as you would any other OS; but, when the installer asks you to insert the second CD, remove FreeBSD.iso from the C:\ directory and copy the second ISO there. Then, rename the second ISO (”6.0-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso“) to FreeBSD.iso, and press Enter to continue the installation. Voilà!