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Unsorted
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I've not put many links up here yet.Sorry.
- Dillo: Nice little
browser for Linux and Unix- very small and very fast and rather stable;
I use it quite a lot. If you have a machine that this browser works on,
I recommend you give it a try, as long as you don't mind that it lacks
certain features. NB: It's been made clear that Dillo is a closed
project, and if you want to either contribute or use patches for it,
you should see the Dillo
Patches mailing list. Questions regarding patched versions of Dillo
should be directed to those responsible for them.
- Blender: A
strange integrated 3d graphics system that is sort of part modeller,
part renderer, part scene graph. I don't really know how exactly
to describe it best. I do find it pretty confusing due to the
unusual user interface, but there's plenty of people who swear by
it. Personally, I think I'm more likely to swear at it.
Still, some people have produced very impressive work with it,
and it works on most (all?) operating systems.
- Wings 3D: A great
free cross-platform 3D modeller, originally inspired by "Nendo".
It's what's known as a "subdivision modeller", and works with
structures known as "winged edges" (hence the name). It's pretty
versatile, and is improving all the time.
- The GIMP: The
Open Source / Free Software graphics manipulation program. Often
described as a free version of Photoshop, except this unfortunately
makes Photoshop users try it and scream "This is rubbish! I can't
do anything!" - but a clue: just because it can do most of the
same things as photoshop, doesn't mean it works the same as
Photoshop. Still, I do find a good few things about it very
annoying.
- Open Office: The
Open Source / Free Software word-processing and general office-type
software package thing. If you can't understand that, think in terms
of Microsoft Office, but free, cross-platform, with somewhat different
user interfaces, and without the attempts to lock you in with evil
proprietary file formats.
- GNUnet:
An anonymous peer-to-peer network framework, which currently has
a censorship-resistant filesharing system implemented with it.
If, for example, you use some other filesharing system, and
frequently worry that some IP syndicate is going to sue you
into oblivion (correctly or otherwise) for copyright
infringement, you might well consider this sort of thing useful.
OTOH, you might have content of your own that you want to
legitimately share with the world, but bandwidth costs for
a website would be huge if your content was very popular, or
you think others might (perhaps for reasons other than simple
malice) want to disrupt your attempts to share it. In which case,
GNUnet could be useful here too (GNUnet smoothly securely allows
content to spread across the network, improving accessibility and
reducing strain on any individual machine). WARNING: So far,
GNUnet only works for Unix; Versions for Mac and Windows are being
worked on but aren't ready.
(NB: I used to have some pages about GNUnet around here, but I'm taking
them down because I've not been keeping them up-to-date, and they've
got far too stale to be helpful)
- MPlayer:
One of the best media players for Linux and other versions of Unix.
Plays almost every sort of file, and is pretty damned fast. Not
intended for use with Windows.
- Ogg Vorbis:
The cost-free, patent-free, high-quality, compressed audio format.
Huh? You're probably familiar with MP3, right? It's "internet music",
which lets you freely convert your music into much smaller files that
you can share with your friends or put on your web page. Well, not
quite. Turns out MP3 is patented, and anybody making free MP3
software is breaking the law as they can't pay to do so.
On top of that, there's much talk of Fraunhoffer (who hold the
patent) demanding royalties from artists and others who distribute
MP3s because of use of their file format! Sounds like fun?
So along came a bunch of similarly clever programmers, who created
the Ogg Vorbis audio compression format, wrote software to work with
that format, and (IIRC) placed the format in the public domain, for
the general good of the world. On top of that, they made sure that
music compressed with Ogg
Vorbis would actually sound better than MP3s of the same
file size! Thanks to their generosity and open approach to
software, it is supported on pretty much all operating systems and
computer types, plus some home audio equipment. Why are you not
using this yourself already? GO GET IT!
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Games
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I'm still not sure if these should go under "Fun" or "Software", but
whatever.
- Nethack: One of the first
Roguelike games I ever played. Still excellent. If I make some sort of a
Roguelike links page, I'll probably move this link there!
- Kobo Deluxe: Improved
version of the excellent old-school 2d shoot-em-up "XKobo" (which might have
been a clone of another game, but not to my knowledge), works on pretty much
every system, and has (AFAICT) all the brilliance of the original plus
things like sound and music ;)
- Globulation2: A free
RTS (Real Time Strategy) game, still in development but quite playable already
(currently 0.8.8 as I write this). The only thing that makes it incomplete
IMO is the bugs (which are few but significant), and that it's a bit slow
on old machines. Some people have said the graphics are bad, but they look
excellent to me.
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