QuakeLive Game for Linux and Mac

Announced last week at QuakeCon 2009, the Mac and Linux versions of Quake Live is now active and can be accessed on your Apple or penguin-powered personal computer.

Just head on over to QuakeLive.com and register, download the plug-in, and get fragging. I loaded it up in Linux 3D OS and found it a little buggy. What is your experience with Quake Live on Linux Or Mac so far?

About Quake Live:

Quake Live is a browser plugin-based first person shooter video game developed by id Software, which first appeared in 2007. It is a variant of its predecessor, Quake III Arena, running a slightly updated version of this game's engine. The focus is on usability enhancements rather than graphical upgrades, including the plugin that runs compile code on the user's processor and a more streamlined heads-up display. Notably, this game doesn't make use of Adobe's Flash technology to run. Quake Live is free to play, as financial backing for this project comes from in-game advertising.

Don't expect any graphical wonders from this game; based on a title released in 1999, it's meant to have a quick and simple installation procedure for casual gaming or maybe aid team-bonding through lunch break tournaments.

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Sauerbraten / Cube 2

Sauerbraten, also known as Cube 2 or Sauer, is a partially (not all data is) open source Quake-like first-person shooter computer game that runs on Windows, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. The game uses OpenGL and SDL, features single-player and multiplayer gameplay and contains a built in level editor.

Sauerbraten is a branch of the computer game Cube and expands its original concept.It shares most of design goals and philosophy with Cube, but is using a new 6-directional heightfield world model. This allows much more complex level geometry and easier editing. Much like the original Cube, the aim of this game is not necessarily to produce the most features & eyecandy possible, but rather to allow map/geometry editing to be done dynamically in-game, to create fun gameplay and an elegant engine. The engine supporting the game is entirely original in code & design, and its code is Open Source (ZLIB license)

On the DVD : 3D OS Game Center Edition
Menu : Start > Games > Adventure > Sauerbraten

Among its new features added to the original Cube are:
* 3D floors (also known as Floor-over-floor)
* Editing Cubes on all six sides (including pushing/pulling faces/corners, etc.)
* Lightmaps (with shadows)
* New weapons (pistol and grenade launcher)
* New gamemodes (Capture)
* New physics (notably, grenades can bounce about)
* MD3 player-model support
* Pixel shaders
* Normal mapping
* dot3 lightmap / radiosity lightmap for normalmaps
* Separation of the gameplay and engine sourcecode
* Color coding for the console
* Better server control
* Voice announcer



Changes to the gameplay include the addition of two new weapons, the pistol and the grenade launcher. A new game mode, capture, has also been added. This mode is similar to the Domination mode in Unreal Tournament. Other gameplay changes include voice announcements for gameplay events and automatic team selection. A Browning 9 millimeter Hi-Power Ordnance pistol of the French Navy, 19th century, using a Percussion cap mechanism Derringers were small and easily hidden. ... A grenade launcher is weapon that fires or launches a grenade to longer distances than a soldier could throw by hand. ... Unreal Tournament, abbreviated UT, (sometimes referred to as UT99, UT Classic, UT1, or UT:GOTY to differentiate from Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Unreal Tournament 3 is a popular first-person shooter video game. ...


Some of the changes to the server include optimized networking code, server-side demo recording, and a "master mode" allowing players to control the server. A game server is a server used by game clients. ...


The game currently has singleplayer and multiplayer modes. Multiplayer functionality is possible with LAN, Local, and Internet play, which gets its server data from a master server. Online offers deathmatch, instagib, last man standing, and "capture" gameplay (where teams vie over control of points on the map), as well as online cooperative map editing, which is one of Sauerbraten's most interesting and popular features. There are also single player modes featuring both episodic gameplay and also deathmath on multiplayer maps with AI bots instead of human opponents over the internet.



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Elisa : All in One Media Center

The Elisa Media Center has many advanced features that will make your media center experience unique. It features an intuitive interface with a professional look and feel which can be easily used with a standard TV remote control.

Elisa is an open source media center connecting the Internet to an all-in-one media player. The Elisa Media Center has many advanced features that will make your media center experience unique. It features an intuitive interface with a professional look and feel which can be easily used with a standard TV remote control.

On the DVD : 3D OS Standard + Warnet Edition
Menu : Start > Multimedia > Elisa Media Center

Features:

• Movies - Watch your own movies and video clips as well as those found online.
• Music - Manage your music collection by artists or album covers.
• Peripheral Devices - Automatically detects iPods, cameras, hard drives, etc…
• Pictures - Watch your pictures with previews and nicely animated slideshows.
• Fully Networked - Elisa automatically finds media from other computers on your local network.
• Internet - Everything from Flickr to Youtube and other popular internet services.

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Second Life - Virtual World

Second Life : Live Your Virtual Life in a Virtual World

Second Life, established in 2002 by San Francisco based software company Linden Lab, is an alternative online game currently hyped by the media. It is based on fully customizable avatars evolving in a virtual 3D space and and incorporates a variety social networking tools. Joining is easy: You can sign up Second Life for free.

Users, called residents, create an alter ego and enter the scene as mere standard creatures. They then get to alter their avatar according to their wishes and preferences. In order to do so, Second Life residents pay any changes to their avatar or their environment with money - called Linden Dollars.

On the DVD : 3D OS Game Center Edition
Menu : Start > Games > Online > Second Life

Unlike in the real world, everything in Second Life can be created and altered according to your wishes. Be it your body or looks, real estate or clothing – sky is the limit. Second Life residents can use their avatars to wander around in the virtual landscape or may even be teleported to various Spots using a specific SLurl, a Second Life specific address.

They meet many new people and interact on various levels. Communication is a central element. Thus among the SL features you will find chat and messaging tools. Even private encounters – and (pseudo) sexual activities are possible. Everything can happen without the restrictions of the real life. Second Life is the perfect metaverse.



Linden Lab also created Teen Second Life targeted at adolescents from 13 to 17 as a response to many underage registrations. According to official Second Life statistics, about 3,5 million accounts have already been created with about 10% being weekly users.

Just like Ebay, Second Life seems to become a money generator for many of its members. More than 20,000 people actually earn more money than they spent inside the game: They create and sell items, clothes, houses – virtually everything you can imagine. It thus gives a certain twist to the entire game. Especially, because registration is completely free of charge.


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Step Mania - Dance Dance Revolution

StepMania is a rhythm video game.

It was originally developed as a simulator of Konami's popular arcade game series Dance Dance Revolution, and has since evolved into an extensible rhythm game engine capable of supporting a wide variety of rhythm-based game types.

The player presses different buttons in time to the music and to note patterns that scroll across the screen.

On the DVD : 3D OS Game Center Edition

Menu : Start > Games > Arcade > Music > StepMania

Website : www.stepmania.com
Requirements : 64 MB of RAM, Video card with OpenGL drivers
Features include:

• Custom Songs ("Stepfiles"): StepMania allows users to create their own custom dance patterns to their favorite songs. The program includes a Step editor to aid the creation of the stepfiles
• Background animations: Support for many types of animations behind the arrows onscreen, including sprite-based animation sequences, a single full-motion video or multiple FMV visualization overlays
• Modifiers: Visual mods that affect the scroll of arrows and either increase or decrease difficulty. StepMania includes multiple modifiers featured in Dance Dance Revolution as well as dozens of additional modifiers created exclusively for StepMania.
• Multiple arrow types: Mines, Holds, Rolls, Lift
• Multiple game types, including partial simulation of other dance games like Pump It Up, ParaParaParadise and EZ2Dancer
• Real-time lyrics, which display on the opposite side of the screen for stepfiles that have accompanying lyric data
• Custom themes: users can create their own skins for Stepmania
• Dancing characters: 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional character models that dance in the background according to a pre-defined routine.
• Network play: support for lobby-based online play, dubbed StepMania Online.
• Typically, users connect through the StepMania Online centralized server.
  

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PyTube - All in One Video Tool

PyTube - Search, Download and Convert Videos

Looking for an easy to use tool for downloading videos from YouTube ? You can use PyTube for this tasks. With PyTube, you can directly convert the downloaded video to various video formats.

PyTube allows you to search, download, and encode Online Videos. It also provides some unique features like inserting your own audio tracks into downloaded videos and creating custom ringtones for your cell phone.

On the DVD : 3D OS Standard + Warnet Edition
Menu : Start > Multimedia > Video > PyTube

Follow these step to search and download YouTube videos using PyTube :

1. Open your PyTube application from 3D OS.
2. Copy the YouTube video link to PyTube and start tthe download process.
   

Search for Videos

Download Videos

Convert video and audio

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"We're Linux" Video Contest Winners!

The wait is over! After receiving nearly 100 entries from all over the world, The Linux Foundation is exceptionally please to announce the winners and runners-up for the "We're Linux" Video Contest. These videos reflect the best of what was truly a global community effort with videos being submitted from Asia, Europe, North America and South America.

The winning video and the runners up were announced on April 8, 2009 at the annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco. The winner of the "We're Linux" contest will receive a free trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium, which will co-located with the Linux Kernel Summit, in October, 2009.

And now, the winners of the 2009 "We're Linux" Video Contest are :

Winner

What Does It Mean to be Free?

Amitay Tweeto lives in Bet Shemesh, Israel. The 25-year old freelance graphic designer and UI consultant entered this contest because he thinks Linux is suffering from bad PR. When people think of Linux they think "technical," gray stuff for programmers only. Amitay wants to let people get to know the other side of Linux, the flexibility they can get with no technical background. "That's the reason why I love Linux, it can be everything I want it to be."

Runner-Up #1

The Origin

Agustin Eguia is a 28-year-old Uruguayan native living in Brussels. He discovered Linux at the age of 14, thanks to people like his father Hugo Eguia, family friend Hugo Godoy, and the UYLug (Uruguayan Linux group). Agustin works in two fields quite different from each other. In the IT field, he handles server implementation (domain controllers, storage, render farms, dispatching computations, optimization), and networking, mostly for the stable income. The second field is the one that defines what he really loves to do and himself: art. Concept, design, animation, 3D, and VFX. He specializes in design, motion graphics, and 3d animation with a strong influence of dynamics, particles, and fluids.

Runner-Up #2

Linux Pub (with subtitles)

Sébastien Massé lives in Paris, France and is a graduate of the EICAR, The International Film School of Paris. He is an Audio-Visual Technician with a passion for film and television cinematography. Sébastien also devotes a lot of his time to the development of Table Ronde Films, a group that he created along with five other graduates of EICAR. The goal of Table Ronde Films is to encourage and help young artists implement their cinematic and artistic projects.

View all of the "We're Linux" Video Contest entries here.
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FreeCol 0.8.0 Released

Version 0.8.0 of FreeCol has now been released. FreeCol is a free/open source turnbased strategy game based on Colonization which in turn was based on Civilization.

You can build new colonies in America, interact with the natives and struggle for domination against other European nations.



The largest change introduced by this release is the ability to define gameplay mechanics using XML-files. You can easily change the rules you don't like or create a different game similar to FreeCol. Take a look at the chapter Changing the Rules in FreeCol's user manual if you would like to know more.

Other changes include:

* Units now slide between tiles while moving.
* New terrain graphics.
* Menu music added.
* Sound effects for dragoons, artillery capturing a colony, building complete, church and blacksmith.
* New sound effects for artillery and buying/selling goods.
* Short music clips for Aztecs and fountain of Youth.
* Named regions and nicer placement of native settlements.
* New nations added: Portuguese, Swedish, Danish and Russian
* Games with up to eight European players are now supported.
* A lot more new features and bugfixes.
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3 ways to turbocharge your Linux desktop

Manufacturers and PC vendors would have you believe that there's only one way to speed up your machine: buy new kit. And then, in 18 months, buy new kit again. However, it's usually our software that's the real bottleneck.


Power up with Fluxbox, Enlightenment and Ratpoison
If you've been using Linux for a while, you'll already have discovered lighter alternatives to some of the platform's bloatfests – for example, using AbiWord and Gnumeric in the place of OpenOffice.org.

But what about the desktop itself? To start with, let's look at how the layers of the Linux GUI fit together.

That's the setup when you're running one of the big three desktops (Gnome, KDE, Xfce). However, if you choose a standalone window manager (WM), you can cut out the first and third layers in this stack. A window manager tends to incorporate all desktop functionality into a single executable that doesn't have additional programs such as file managers.

Also, most standalone window managers don't rely on a widget toolkit, instead rendering their own graphics and interfacing directly with the X Window System libraries. This helps to keep their RAM consumption to a minimum.

1. Fluxbox
Raw speed and low dependencies, free up screen space
When you first start Fluxbox, you'll probably be scratching your head and pondering: is this it? Well, that's the idea: Fluxbox wants to give your screen real estate back to you. It may look a bit daunting at first, but give it some time and you'll learn to love it.

Straight away you'll notice that there's no program menu to click like the K button in KDE or Applications in Gnome. However, you can bring up a similar type of menu by rightclicking anywhere on the desktop. This menu contains submenus for different program categories, and you can drag it around your desktop by clicking on the bar at the top. To get rid of the menu completely, just right-click on the menu's top bar.

Now let's turn our attention to the panel at the bottom of the screen, known as the Toolbar. It's very thin compared with the KDE panel and stretches across only two-thirds of the screen's width. On the left, you'll see the word 'one': this displays the current virtual desktop, so click the arrows to the right of the word to switch desktops.

Take me to task

After this, you'll see a task bar implementation. It's much the same as in Gnome, KDE and Xfce: programs are displayed along with their icons, and you can right-click on a program's entry to 'sticky' the window (that is, make it visible on all virtual desktops) and perform other operations.

To the right of the task bar area you'll see another pair of arrows, which enable you to cycle through currently running programs. Lastly, there's a clock. You can configure the behaviour of the toolbar by right-clicking in a nontask bar area. This brings up a menu which sets the toolbar's position, width (left-click to shrink it and right-click to grow it) and whether it should auto-hide.

To configure Fluxbox, right-click on the desktop and go to Configuration. Some of the options you'll see are:

Focus Model This changes whether you select windows by clicking them, or by hovering over them with the mouse.

Tabs Options By unchecking the Tabs In Titlebar option, each window will have a small tab above its title bar, making it easy to group windows together.

Opaque Window Moving By default, Fluxbox draws only the outline of a window when you move it. Ticking this option displays the contents when moving, but causes a small loss in performance.

Further fine-tuning

Under Applications > Tools you'll see Fluxconf and Fluxkeys, two extra configuration tools. The former has many overlaps with the Configuration submenu, but if there's something you want to change about the desktop, look here. The latter is handy for redefining the keybindings for closing windows, switching desktops and so on.

Now you're well prepared to give Fluxbox a serious go. It may take you a few hours to get comfortable with it, so we recommend giving it a couple of days to let the simplicity and speed boosts soak in. Oh, and if you get bored with the default theme, see Styles in the desktop menu for more.

2. Ratpoison

Eliminate the mouse and save screen space
The mouse is a pretty clumsy input device. Sure, it's served us fairly well over the years, but it's a common source of RSI problems, and you have to keep reaching over to grab it when you're typing.

For web browsing and graphics editing tasks, the mouse isn't a hindrance – chances are you keep one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse. But what about when you're editing documents or programming? Just to hit a menu entry (if you don't know the keyboard shortcut) you have to reach over and grasp that increasingly annoying rodent.

Ratpoison, as the name suggests, is designed to terminate the mouse's job in window management. You won't find title bars for dragging windows, resize handles or any of the other bits you'd expect in a traditional window manager here.

The goal is that every window management operation you'd expect to perform in a normal setting should be achievable using the keyboard alone, so that if you're working on documents and/or programming, your hands never have to leave the keyboard as you're working.

There's another side to Ratpoison too, called tiling. With our regular window managers, we spend a lot of time juggling windows, making them maximised to use the whole screen or trying to align them with minimal overlap so that we can see two programs at once. Even with snap-to-edge placement, it's a scrappy and time-consuming job.

What tiler?

Ratpoison ignores all of this with its tiling system. This automatically places and resizes windows on the screen with no overlap, making sure as much screen space as possible is used.

When Ratpoison starts, you'll see either a blank screen or a terminal window that's the full size of the screen. With no title bars, panels, menus nor anything else to tempt your clicking fingers, it looks completely impossible to use.

If you've just got a blank screen, hit Ctrl+T then C to open a new terminal window. This will occupy the whole screen. In that window, run your favourite text editor (for example, Gedit or Mousepad), and that program will then occupy the entirety of your screen's real estate.

OK, fair enough – but open a few more apps and each of those takes up the screen as well, so how do we navigate between them? First, hit Ctrl+T then W to show a list of windows in the top-right of the screen. You'll see that each window has a number, starting from zero, so to switch to one of them, hit Ctrl+T followed by the number of the window you want. It'll pop into view, using up the whole screen again.

Flex your fingers

Now let's look at tiling. We can split up the screen horizontally or vertically based on the last two windows selected. Using Ctrl+T and the number keys, select one window and then another. Then hit Ctrl+T then S to split the screen horizontally, or Ctrl+T then Shift+S to split it vertically.

You can then switch between windows in the split using Ctrl+T followed by a number as above, and select two windows to do yet another split. Take the screenshot, above, for instance. To get that setup, we did this:

1. Logged in to Failsafe Terminal and ran ratpoison, which displayed the terminal full-screen.

2. Hit Ctrl+T then C to open another terminal window.

3. Ran 'gedit &' in the new terminal window (to keep the shell process going).

4. Hit Ctrl+T then 1 to switch back to the second window.

5. Hit Ctrl+T then Shift+S to split the screen horizontally.

6. Used Ctrl+T then the number to select the first terminal and then the second.

7. Hit Ctrl+T then S to split those terminals vertically.

That looks like a lot of work, but after some practice you'll be quickly knocking out key combos to get your desktop just the way you want it.

Ratpoison won't give you a huge productivity boost if you spend most of your time in graphics programs, but if you're a coder or writer, you absolutely have to try it out.

Quick key combos

Ctrl+T then C – Start a new terminal

Ctrl+T then W – Show list of windows

Ctrl+T then number – Switch to a window

Ctrl+T then S/Shift+S – Split last two selected windows vertically/horizontally

Ctrl+T then Shift+Q – Show current window full-screen

Ctrl+T then N/P – Switch to next/previous window

Ctrl+T then Ctrl+T – Toggle windows (like Alt+Tab on other WMs/desktops)

Ctrl+T then K – Close current window

3. Enlightenment

Eye candy and power-user functionality
Any mention of Enlightenment (colloquially 'E') brings two things to mind: bling and a ridiculously protracted development process. Despite having been in the works since 1996, this WM has only managed to reach a 0.16 version number (commonly referred to as E16).

But let's be clear: the 0.16 release could realistically be called 1.0. It's stable, loaded with features and many long-time Linux/Unixers run it as their full-time WM. Indeed, a lot of hardcore E users find it hard to get excited about Compiz Fusion – E had transparent windows and drop shadows back when a 233MHz CPU was seen as pretty decent kit.

At the login screen, after choosing Select Session, you may be given three options for starting E: one with Gnome, one with KDE, and one that's just 'E16'. E is flexible enough to replace Metacity in Gnome or KWin in KDE, but just choose the 'E16' option for now.

Pretty as a picture

Enlightenment's visual pizzazz is apparent right from the start. After a loading progress bar, you'll see the screen unfurl like a scroll. The desktop looks quite bare at first glance, although it's bustling compared with Ratpoison.

As in Fluxbox, you start programs by clicking on the desktop. However, you need to middle-click to bring up the main menu. In Ubuntu this includes a submenu called Debian Menus, which contains your installed applications. If you right-click instead, you'll see the Enlightenment Settings menu, and leaving the mouse pointer static summons a help bubble.

So, launch a program by middle-clicking and going into the App menu. When you have a window, look at the pair of boxes at the bottom-left of the desktop. These are the virtual desktop pagers: by default you have two desktops, each containing two workspaces – and, best of all, the window icons are thumbnail representations of the full window.

If you minimise a window, you'll see that it goes into the bottom-right box on the desktop: the icon box. This gives you thumbnail version of your programs; right-click and choose Settings to enlarge the icons, or you can set up the list vertically if you prefer – E is highly customisable.

Sifting through settings

In fact, the many Settings dialogs can be overwhelming, so let's explore a few. Right-click on the desktop and choose Composite Settings to enable some effects. Check the Enable Composite box, Enable Fading box and Shadows Blurred radio button then hit Apply to give windows drop shadows. Next, go to Move & Resize Settings and choose Translucent in the Move Methods list. Moving windows are now semi-transparent.

You can also make menus roll out by going to Menu Settings and selecting the Animated option. And if the Sloppy Focus setting annoys you (focusing the window beneath the mouse pointer) choose Focus Settings and 'Focus follows mouse clicks'.

Now that you have the basics sorted out, have fun exploring. Reverting to the stock E setup is easy, just log into a different WM, remove the .e16 directory from your home directory and then restart E.
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Alien Arena 2008 v7.21 released

Do you like fast paced deathmatch? How about rich, colorful, arcadelike atmospheres? How about...retro Sci Fi? Then you're going to love what Alien Arena 2008 has in store for you! This game combines some of the very best aspects of such games as Quake III and Unreal Tournament and wraps them up with a retro alien theme, while adding tons of original ideas to make the game quite unique.

On the DVD : 3D OS Game Center Edition
Menu : Start > Games > Online > Alien Arena

Alien Arena is a fast paced, furious frag fest with arenas ranging from the small, to the massive. With a large built-in player base, it's never hard to find a good match going on, at any hour of the day. The community is friendly, as well as prolific. Dozens of maps, models, and various accessories have been created by community members to add on to the game experience.

Alien Arena has running tournaments and you can organize your own at TournamentFront
Current tournament is Qexpo 2008 Aliens For Animals 1v1 Tourney.

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Top 50 Linux Alternatives to Popular Apps

Linux is quickly gaining popularity, but there are still many users afraid to convert as they are not familiar with the applications. Today our Linux guru Blair Mathis is back to introduce fifty of the most popular applications on this OS


ANIMATION SOFTWARE

Blender 3D: Blender 3D is a high-quality, robust animation program with a steep learning curve and the ability to create commercial-quality 3D animations. The software is completely free, with extensive documentation available online for free.

Pencil (2D): Pencil is a free 2D animation program intended to make traditional hand-drawn animations possible. Animations are drawn on individual 'pages', and then compiled together in a digital flipbook of sorts.

KPovModeler: KPovModeler is a composition/modeling program for making POV-Ray scenes: an excellent addition to Blender 3D, and intended KDE.

Stopmotion: Stopmotion is a program that allows you to capture and/or combine photos together to create a smooth stopmotion animation video. Not only works well for claymation and similar, but can also be used to create timelapse videos.

Synfig (2D): Synfig is a free 2D animation software package that states "two-dimensional animation has long been the domain of proprietary software...Synfig, a free software/open source tool for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources."

Anime Studio 5 (2D)($199.99): Anime Studio 5 is a powerful commercial application for creating 2D animations with the ability to import/export OBJ files, special effects scripting, layered animation, vector animation, and advanced timeline controls.


AUDIO SOFTWARE

Audio CD Extractor (ripper): Available through Add/Remove Applications, Audio CD Extractor (previously known as Sound Juicer) is an easy to use CD ripper, intended to make copying music CDs fast, simple, and straight-forward.

Audacity (recorder): Audacity is an excellent, free digital audio recorder/editor for nearly all audio types. It can record multiple channels, split channels, merge audio, and a wide array of other features. Supports recording from both line-in and sound card.

Sound Converter: This is an application for GNOME that accepts a wide array of different audio formats and converts them to mp3, wav, flac, or ogg.

Last Exit (player): Last Exit is a standalone player for Last.fm that allows you to add specific stations, search for stations, choose a neighbors station, or browse. You can set preferences, password protect it, and save changes.

Hipo iPod Management Tool: If you have an Apple iPod, the Hipo iPod Management Tool is an invaluable program that allows users to manage their device.

Utube-Ripper: Have you every come across a video on YouTube you wanted to save to your hard drive? With Utube Ripper, you can download and save either the entire video, or the audio only. Very sleek and easy to use.

Freqtweak: According to Add/Remove Applications, “FreqTweak is a tool for real time audio spectral manipulation and display. It provides several algorithms for processing audio data in the frequency domain and a highly interactive GUI to manipulate the associated filters for each. It also provides high resolution spectral displays.”


VIDEO SOFTWARE

VLC: VLC is arguably the most popular video player on any operating system. It supports nearly every video type available, offers the ability to change audio settings, choose audio channels (headphones, full bass, etc.), change video aspect ratio and more. The program is lightweight and easy to use.

AcidRip: AcidRip is a simple, straightforward tool for copying a DVD to a digital video file, with codecs such as XviD, x264, MPEG, and more available. It allows you to control file size, audio settings, quality, cropping, etc.

Avidemux: Avidemux is an excellent video editing application. You can add filters, meticulously manipulate audio and video, combine VOBs, combine videos, and much more.

DVD::RIP: While AcidRip is the best tool to use if you want to create a video straight from a DVD, DVD::RIP is ideal if you want to convert an ISO or VOB files. Simply start the program, load the file, and then choose the video settings and transcode to an AVI or other file format.

iriverter: iriverter is a frontend for mencoder that makes it simple to convert videos for a wide array of portable video devices, including the Creative Vision M and iRiver players. Single and batch conversions can be done.

Wink: Wink is a free video program for creating video screencasts; an excellent program for creating video tutorials and presentations, with the ability to add explanation boxes to the video.

XBMC Media Center: XBMC is an award-winning media center for multiple platforms, and is fully supported on Ubuntu. The program is sophisticated and high-quality, and is a top-notch media player that can organize and play videos, music, and photos, including previews and album covers.


GRAPHICS

GIMP: GIMP is the Linux alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It is an advanced image authoring/editing program with an animation engine and a wide array of plugins/filters/brushes. It can do nearly everything Photoshop can do, but does require one to learn it proficiently in order to exploit it's features.


Hugin: Hugin is a high-quality panorama maker. It combines two or more photos and combines them into one panorama. It blends colors to make seams between photos unnoticeable, allows you to choose a lens style for the pano (fisheyes, etc.), and to manually choose connection points.

Comix: Comix is a comic book viewer for Linux. It is high-quality, works smoothly, and offers all the necessary components for viewing digital comics, including double-page support, zoom, rotation, mirroring, fullscreen mode, fit-to-screen mode, image enhancement, image quality toggle, and bookmarks.


FlickrUploader: Flickr Uploader is a desktop program that makes it easy to instantly upload your images to your Flickr account.

Inkscape: Inkscape is a sophisticated vector graphics program similar to Adobe Illustrator.


Phatch Photo Batch Processor: Phatch is a batch processor for photos, making it easy to resize, crop, rotate, add rounded corners, change perspective, or a wide array of other features in just a few minutes.

QCaD: QCaD is as close to autoCAD as you can get on Ubuntu. It offers the ability to create and files, with support for autoCADR and similar files


OFFICE

xPDF: xPDF is a suite of PDF tools, including a lightweight viewer with support for standard, Truetype, and Type 1 fonts, conversion tools for converting PDFs into different formats, and support for multiple languages.

AbiWord: Abiword is a popular, lightweight and yet sophisticated word processor that works very well on Linux. It is best for those who need to create documents, but don't require a massive amount of features

OpenOffice Writer: OpenOffice Writer is a large, high-end word processor. It works well on Linux, and has all the features you could possibly need. If you're looking for a complete alternative to MS Word, Writer is your best option.

OpenOffice Spreadsheet: Very similar to MS Excel.

OpenOffice Presentation: Alternative to MS PowerPoint.

OpenOffice Impress: Alternative to MS Publisher.

KAddressBook: KAddress is a personal contacts/address manager.

KOrganizer: KOrganizer is a calendar and scheduling app with the ability to track important dates, add notes, and export to industry standard files.
GnuCash: GnuCash a finance management software suitable for both personal and business use. It can support major file types, such as Quickbooks files, and tracks multiple accounts, constantly calculating new balances and tracking everything needed, including investments and expenses.

xCHM: xCHM is a CHM HTML file viewer, suitable for viewing large HTML ebooks and files saved in the CHM file type.


UTILITIES

GPSDrive: A navigation system designed to work with a GPS receiver. Offers the ability to zoom and display maps downloaded or generated as needed via OpenStreetMap.

Virtual Box OSE: Virtual Box is a virtual machine application, allowing you to run different OS's inside your Linux machine.

ClamAV: Clam AV is an anti-virus software app for Linux, and works very well.


INTERNET

Opera: Opera is a lightweight browser with wide support and a customizable launch page.

Mozilla Firefox: Firefox is the most popular Internet browser for Linux, offering stability, wide support, and a massive amount of plugins.

Thunderbird: Thunderbird a popular email client from the Mozilla line of Internet applications. It offers multiple account access, IMAP and SMTP, password protection, address books, and more.

SeaMonkey: SeaMonkey is based on Firefox Internet browser, but is more stable.

Evolution:Evolution is another email client, but appears very similar to Microsoft's Outlook.

Pidgin IM: An instant messaging client that support AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! IRC, Zephyr, Gadu, Groupwise, SIMPLE, SILC, Sametime, Napster, MSN, and Jabber.

gFTP: gFTP is a file transfer protocol app for Linux offering support for a wide array of uploads and downloads.


Sumber : http://www.e-linux.it/news_detail.php?id=7616 Read More..

"We're Linux" - Linux Foundation video contest

The Linux Foundation has formally announced the kick off for its "We're Linux" video contest, which will be comprised of user-generated video entries to promote and "elevate the strengths of Linux." The Linux Foundation is hoping that this campaign will help to demonstrate what Linux means to its users and that it will inspire others to try it.


Submissions will be open until the 15th of March, 2009 for users to submit videos. The winner will be announced at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit on the 8th of April, 2009 in San Francisco. The winner will be determined by a combination of online rankings and a panel of judges and will be awarded a trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the 1st annual Linux Foundation's Japanese Linux Symposium.

The campaign was renamed from the original "I'm Linux" to "We're Linux" after community input. "This name embodies the essence of community and better expresses how Linux is represented by more than any one person or company," according to the company blog post.

It seems obvious the competition is inspired by the Microsoft "I'm a PC" campaign, lets hope the result is not quite so annoying. If you would like to view the videos or submit a video, you will need to join the Linux Foundation's Video forum.
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Online Games Linux : Savage - The Battle for Newerth

Online Games Linux : Savage - The Battle for Newerth is a fantasy / science fiction computer game that combines aspects of real-time strategy and First-person shooter in a game. The producers of the game described as a 'Real Time Strategy Shooter', or 'RTSS. " The consultations will take place in the distant future, when man has (after an apocalypse) rebuilt society, but is threatened by intelligent beasts.

The goal of Savage is to destroy your opponents Stronghold / Lair, because that's the main point where the Soldiers spawn (they can also spawn of garrisons / sublairs (which can be built) and spawn flags (which can not)).

On the DVD : 3D OS Game Center Edition
Menu : Start > Games > Online > Savage Newerth

Savage is played entirely online with other human players. The game has two or more teams (mostly humans vs. animals, but other configurations, such as Human vs. Human, its possible). Each team has a commander, who plays the game as a Real-Time Strategy game. She weapons research, city buildings are constructed, and of course commands everyone. Anyone who clicks on the button first to proceed to the Commander, which can naturally lead to a number of problems with bad commanders and the like. To combat the team can call an impeachment vote (removal of the current commander), or they can vote for the election of a new commander. It is also easy for new players to go and learn to command on empty servers.

The remaining 1 to 63 players in the team are the soldiers, and they play as a First-Person Shooter, although most of the fighting is done in a Third-Person Melee combat style. Most of their work concerns the killing of the enemies, but they can also help build buildings and collection of funds. Some soldiers can be promoted to the rank of officer by their commander. Officers can assist in coordinating the other soldiers, and can cooperate with the commander to coordinate attacks that the commander failed to meet their fate. These slowly officers regenerate their own health as that of any other team-mates close to them.

There are also more than ten workers on both team, but they are directly controlled by the commander, and are usually used for the construction and resources, although they may be ordered to attack (but not much damage).

The soldiers fighting with a melee weapon, which is unique to their unit, and a selectable ranged weapon, which no unit restrictions (The beasts can choose to melee weapon as an alternative to the use of a weapon ranged). They have three slots to hold items. For humans, these items are Med Packs, Ammo Packs, Land Mines, Demolition Packs, Immobilizers, sensors, disrupt, and Relocaters. The beasts can choose between Mana Crystals, "Frenzy" crystal, sixth sense, Snare, Fire Wards, Sacrifice, Storm Shields, and Mist shrouds.

Each race has unique strengths and weaknesses. The beasts are proficient at melee attacks, as stressed by their ability to jump towards their enemies and by the fact that their first line weapon is completely melee based. Humans, on the other hand, focus on ranged attacks more, as evidenced by their lack of special melee weapons, and their ability to do something for them.
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Geexbox - Media Center

GeeXboX is a full operating system, running under Linux and based on the excellent MPlayer. No need for a hard drive, you just have to put the GeeXboX bootable CD into the CD-Drive of any Pentium-class or Apple Macintosh computer to boot it. Moreover, GeeXboX is free software, created as open-source software. This means that everyone can modify it and build his own release of the GeeXboX.



You may wonder why you should have to boot another operating system to play your media files, but just think about the Mini-ITX platforms like VIA Epia/Eden or Shuttle barebones. It's now affordable to bring DivX to your home cinema, plugging this kind of computer directly to your TV !!

At the time of the first development releases (Dec. 2002), it was only capable of playing DivX movies, but now, nearly every kind of media file can be played with GeeXboX, with the OS supporting :

* MPEG 1/2 movies (MPG files, VCDs, DVDs ...)
* MPEG 4 movies (DivX, XviD, H.264 ...)
* RealMedia and Windows Media movies.
* OggMedia streams
* Matroska streams
* Audio streams like : MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV (AudioCD), AC3, DTS, MusePack (MPC), FLAC ...
* Network streams : WebRadio and WebTV through SHOUTcast.
* Watching analog TV and digital DVB
* Playing analog Radio streams.
* Playing files from your local network (LAN) through remote NFS, Samba (i.e. Windows) or UPnP shares.
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Freevo - Media Center

Imagine a world where the tv guide is liquid, where the time slots are organised to suit your schedule. Imagine a place you can store all of your music, movies and photos for you and your family to enjoy. Imagine having access to all your games, podcasts, upto the minute weather and news reports. Imagine doing all of this for free. What a wonderful world that would be...
Stop imagining, GET FREEVO!

Freevo allows you to manage your entire digital media collection - music, videos, photos etc. via a remote controlled TV interface and through the built in web interface you can also access your media, view your TV guide and schedule recordings from anywhere in the world. The benefit of freevo above other HTPC solutions is that freevo is 100% DRM free, plays video in 99.99% of formats, and most of all puts you in control of the television.

As an open-source home theatre PC platform, Freevo employs a number of open-source audio/video tools, MPlayer and/or Xine are used to play audio and video files in most popular formats. Freevo can be used both for a standalone HTPC computer with a TV+remote, as well as on a regular desktop computer or laptop using the monitor and keyboard.

Main features

• Cross platform - runs on Linux, OSX and Windows (sort of ;) )^*8
• Watch & record television
• Pause live TV - DVB and analogue (with ivtv card)
• Support for multiple tuners - watch and record simultaneously.
• Separate recording server allows multiple backends and frontends on your network.
• Commercial detection/removal
• Play & backup^*1 DVD video
• Play any kind of file supported by mplayer/xine/ffmpeg including DIVX & MPEG4
• Watch the latest movie trailers^*2
• Retrieve video covers & information^*3
• Play & backup audio CDs and retrieve album track lists^*4 & covers^*5
• Play MP3/Wav/Ogg/Flac or any other audio supported by mplayer or xine
• Tune into Internet radio from around the world
• Read news headlines^*6 and the weather
• View and import images from a digital camera
• Play games^*7
• Control home automation equipment (lights, sockets etc.)

1. Requires encoding server plugin
2. Using the appletrailers plugin
3. Using the Internet movie database
4. Using the Free Internet CD database
5. Using Amazon web services
6. Using RSS technology
7. Includes Linux games, PSone, NES/SNES, Megadrive, Dreamcast, Mame and many more
8. Windows support is limited at the moment but Freevo is written in python so if you are a developer with Windows and python experience please join in and help. An email to the devel list would be the place to start. For a quick start you can just download Microsoft's Virtual PC and load up a Freevo Live CD on that!

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Entertainer - Media Center

Entertainer aims to be a simple and easy-to-use media center solution for the Gnome and XFce desktop environments. Entertainer is written completely in Python using an object-oriented programming philosophy. It uses GStreamer's multimedia framework for multimedia playback.

Entertainer user interface is implemented with the Clutter library, which allows sleek OpenGL animated user interfaces. Entertainer also uses other great projects like SQLite, pyIMDBb and iNotify.

The ultimate goal of this project is to create the best media center solution available for any platform. This means that Entertainer should be the best looking, most easy to use and most feature filled media center solution available. Not the easiest goal to achieve but we are working on it.
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XBMC - Media Center

XBMC is an award winning media center application for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and XBox. The ultimate hub for all your media, XBMC is easy to use, looks slick, and has a large helpful community.


Media Management

XBMC supports viewing and playing a vast library of audio, video and image formats. XBMC has a sophisticated library management system that allows you to organize all your media to give you quick and immediate access.

Fluid Interface
XBMC provides a user friendly interface that's intuitive, very flexible, and easy to use. The interface is completely customizable through user-created or downloadable skins.

Plug-ins and Extensibility
XBMC has a built-in Python interpreter that allows users and developers to write their own scripts and plugins that run inside XBMC using it's own widgets and controls. It also has a built-in web server that allows it to be controlled remotely.

Visualisations
XBMC's audio player supports many visualisations including ProjectM and Goom. In addition, it allows easy development of visualisations using a simple API.
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Myth TV - Media Center

MythTV is a GPL licensed suite of programs that allow you to build the mythical home media convergence box on your own using Open Source software and operating systems. MythTV is known to work on Linux and Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel). It does not run on Windows.

MythTV has a number of capabilities. The television portion allows you to do the following:

* You may pause, fast-forward and rewind live Television.
* You may install multiple video capture cards to record more than one program at a time.
* You can have multiple servers (called "backends"), each with multiple capture cards in them. All scheduling is performed by the Master backend, which arbitrates which recording will be performed by each device. All recording requests are managed by the Master backend, so you can schedule a recording from any client.
* You can have multiple clients (called "frontends" in MythTV parlance), each with a common view of all available programs. Any client can watch any program that was recorded by any of the servers, assuming that they have the hardware capabilities to view the content; a low-powered frontend will not be able to watch HDTV, for example. Clients can be diskless and controlled entirely by a remote control.
* You may use any combination of standard analog capture card, MPEG-2, MJPEG, DVB, HDTV, USB and firewire capture devices. With appropriate hardware, MythTV can control set top boxes, often found in digital cable and satellite TV systems.
* Program Guide Data in North America is downloaded from schedulesdirect.org, a non-profit organization which has licensed data from Tribune Media Services. This service provides almost two weeks of scheduling information. Program Guide Data in other countries is obtained using XMLTV. MythTV uses this information to create a schedule that maximizes the number of programs that can be recorded if you don't have enough tuners.
* MythTV implements a UPNP server, so a UPNP client should automatically see content from your MythTV system.

Other modules in MythTV include:

* MythArchive, a tool to create DVDs
* MythBrowser, a web browser
* MythControls, an application to configure your remote control
* MythFlix, a Netflix module
* MythGallery, a picture-viewing application
* MythGame
* MythMusic, a music playing / ripping application which supports MP3 and FLAC
* MythNews, a RSS news grabber
* MythPhone, phone and videophone using SIP.
* MythVideo, DVD ripper and a media-viewer for content not created within MythTV
* MythWeather
* MythWeb, which allows you to control your MythTV system using a web browser. With MythWeb, you can schedule and delete recordings, change keybindings and more. With proper security, you may even schedule a program over the Internet and have it immediately acted on by the Master backend.

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Blender - 3D creation suite

BLENDER

Blender is a free open source 3D content creation suite available for many operating systems including Linux. It used to be developed commercially, but is now released under the GPL. It is the most popular Open Source 3D graphics application available, and is one of the most downloaded with more than 200,000 downloads of each release.

Targeted at media professionals and artists, Blender can be used to create 3D visualizations, stills as well as broadcast and cinema quality video, whilst the incorporation of a real-time 3D engine allows for the creation of 3D interactive content for stand-alone playback. Blender has a huge variety of uses including modelling, animating, rendering, texturing, skinning, rigging, weighting, non-linear editing, scripting, compositing, post-production and much more.

Blender has a robust feature set similar in scope and depth to other high-end 3D software such as Softimage|XSI, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max and Maya.

Features include:

* Modeling: 3D Object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves; Multiresolution sculpting capabilities; Modifier stack deformers; Mesh modeling; Python Scripting
* Rigging: Skeleton creation code; Skinning; Bone layers; B-splines interpolated bones
* Animation: Non-linear animation editor; Vertex key framing for morphing, Character animation pose editor; Animated deformers; Audio playback; Animated constraint system
* Rendering: Inbuilt raytracer; oversampling, motion blor, post-production effects, fields, non-square pixels; Render layers and passes; Render baking to UV maps, Effects including halo, lens flares, fog, vector motion-blur post-process, and defocus post-process; Export scripts for external renderers
* UV UnWrapping: Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping methods; seam based unwreapping; Proportional falloff editing of UV maps
* Shading: Diffuse and Specular shaders; Node editor; Subsurface scattering; Tangent shading; Reflection maps
* Physics and Particles: Particle system can be attached to mesh objects; Fluid simulator; Realtime soft body solver
* Imaging and Compositing: MultiLayer OpenEXR support; composite node filters, convertors, color and vector operators; 8 processor support; near realtime sequencer; Waveform and U/V scatter plits
* Realtime 3D/Game Creation: Graphical logic editor; Bullet Physics Library support; Shape types: Convex polyhedron, box, sphere, cone, cylinder, capsule, compound, and static triangle mesh with auto deactivation mode; Discrete collision detection; Support for vehicle dynamics; Supports all OpenGL lighting modes; Python scripting; Audio

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... C: wait... SD: wait...

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KDirStat - graphical disk usage utility

KDirStat is a graphical disk usage utility, very much like the Unix "du" command. In addition to that, it comes with some cleanup facilities to reclaim disk space.

While KDirStat is a KDE program, it runs fine on every X11 desktop, i.e., it runs on Linux, BSD, and lots of other Unix-type systems (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, ...).

MS Windows Users please note that there are operating systems and window systems beyond those from Redmond, WA. This may come as a surprise to some people. ;-) There is a MS Windows clone called WinDirStat. Yes, that one is the clone. KDirStat is the original.



Display Features

• Graphical and numeric display of used disk space
• Files kept apart from directories in separate items to prevent cluttering the display
• All numbers displayed human readable - e.g., 34.4 MB instead of 36116381 Bytes
• Different colors in the directory tree display to keep the different tree levels visually apart
• Display of latest change time within an entire directory tree - you can easily see what object was changed last and when.
  

Treemap Display

• Treemap as alternate (auxiliary) view of a directory tree
• Easily find large in a directory tree: You see the entire tree at once. Large rectangles are large files - you can see them even if they are hidden somewhere deep within the tree.
• Treemap view slaved to the tree (list) view: Click on a file in the treemap, and it is selected in the tree view - and vice versa.
• Treemap tiles are colored by file type - all images in cyan, all audio tracks (MP3 etc.) in yellow, executables in magenta etc.; you can see from the color what a treemap rectangle is.
• Many treemap variants available:
  o Plain treemap
  o Squarified treemap (no thin elongated rectangles)
  o Cushion treemap
  o Colored treemap
  o All combinations of the above
• Fast implementation: Treemap built in fractions of a second (on quite ordinary machines: Athlon-550 class)
• Treemap subwindow can be resized as the user prefers
• Treemap can be switched off with a single keypress (F9)
• Context menu with cleanup actions etc.
• Zoom the treemap in/out treemap with double click (left/right)
• Many treemap configuration options
  

Directory Reading

• Stays on one file system by default - reads mounted file systems only on request. You don't care about a mounted /usr file system if the root file system is full and you need to find out why in a hurry, nor do you want to scan everybody's home directory on the NFS server when your local disk is full.
• Network transparency: Scan FTP or Samba directories - or whatever else protocols KDE support.
• Cache file reading and writing: Use the supplied Perl script kdirstat-cache-writer to scan directory trees in cron jobs over night and view the result with KDirStat whenever it is convenient - without creating I/O load on the machine you are scanning. You can also use that script to scan directories on a server and view the result on any machine that has KDE running. The server doesn't need any more infrastructure than a normal Perl installation (i.e., no X11 or KDE required).
• PacMan animation while directories are being read. OK, this is not exactly essential, but it's fun.
  

Cleaning up

• Predefined cleanup actions: Easily delete a file or a directory tree, move it to the KDE trash bin, compress it to a .tar.bz2 archive or simply open a shell or a Konqueror window there.
• User-defined cleanup actions: Add your own cleanup commands or edit the existing ones.
• "Send mail to owner" report facility: Send a mail requesting the owner of a large directory tree to please clean up unused files.
  

Source : SourceForge.net
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