Freedom matters.

This page was last updated in 2002, but some of the links are still of interest. We are planning to implement a better resource in the future -- TJH (2006-5/10)

Useful links

The Linux Documentation Project: Homepage

This is the definitive hub of Linux documentation. The "HOW-TOs" are task oriented help, and are their most popular product. They also originate the Linux Gazette which is an electronic magazine. All free of course, in both senses of the word.

Upgrading & Repairing PCs Eighth Edition -- Table of Contents

Electronic version of a popular hardware book for PC "intel" hardware. You need to think about hardware more when using Linux, as support can be spotty. You also generally get more out of good hardware on Linux and since you're not paying expensive licensing fees, you'll generally want to spend your money on better hardware.

Embedded Linux Consortium

"The Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC) is a nonprofit, vendor-neutral trade association whose goal is the advancement, promotion and standardization of Linux throughout the embedded, applied and appliance computing markets. Members contribute dues and participate in management, promotion, implementation and platform specification working group (WG) efforts, in return for a growing market opportunity for all."

The Debian GNU/Linux Cookbook

A personal introduction to installation of Debian Gnu/Linux by Graham Williams. "This cookbook provides an overview of installing Debian GNU/Linux on a number of machines, specifically the Dell Latitude CPi D300XT laptop, but also with information relating to installaitons on other hardware."

Basic Xterminal Setup and Configuration

Setting a computer up as an X-Terminal (i.e.a machine which handles only the graphics, but actually does the work on another -- presumeably more powerful -- machine). This might be a good way to use several older laptops as terminals to a larger central computer, for example (which is precisely why it interested me, for example. Remember -- Linux is a multi-user system from the ground up, so this sort of arrangement can be very robust.

PC Computer Drivers, Links & manuals

The bad news is, this is a Windows-centric website. However, it does have a lot of basic hardware information you might find useful.

Linux on Laptops

Very extensive portal. "This is an index of information and documentation of interest to those who now use or are considering using the Linux operating system on a notebook or laptop computer." The centerpiece is a database of brand-named laptops with specific models and accounts submitted by people running Linux on them. An invaluable resource if you are trying to do this yourself. Choose a laptop that's already been tested and benefit from others' experience, or share your own results with others.

Software

Linux Software Encyclopedia

Large alphabetic database of programs. But the search no longer works and it's not being maintained. If someone has rescued this data, I'd like to learn about it.

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

The ALSA sound system is more full-featured than previous Linux sound driver systems, and is a completely community driven project. This is what we use on multimedia machines at Anansi Spaceworks.

Scientific Applications on Linux (SAL)

Linux is a fairly popular research platform. You'll finf lots of software that runs on it. Beware though, this site is not for open source software only -- there's a lot of proprietary stuff listed. The site does make this very clear in the listings with icons, though, which is useful.

Linux for Astronomy

A semi-commercial distribution of Astronomy programs for Linux. Many (but not all) of the included programs are open source.

LinuxForKids

Yes there is software for your kids on Linux, including lots of educational and just-for-fun stuff (though frankly the "educational" stuff often turns out to be the most fun -- so long as you don't tell 'em sshhh!).

XFree86(TM): Home Page

A very pragmatic site -- not flashy or exciting, but you'll probably need to use it at some point. These are the people responsible for the X Windows system that is indispensible for modern Linux desktops.

XCircuit drawing program home page

Xcircuit is a very simple application, and it doesn't necessarily follow all the GUI vector-editing design guidelines that you're used to, but it is simple, practical, and fun to use once you get started with it. It also produces concise and readable postscript, which is a subtle advantage you may come to appreciate. Actually, I notice he's got a much later version up than I have -- so my comments may be out of date.

gEDA Homepage

"The gEDA project is working on producing a full GPL'd suite of Electronic Design Automation tools. These tools are used for electrical circuit design, schematic capture, simulation, prototyping, and production." Obviously, any open-source CAD/CAE tools are high on our need list for our Narya Project. This is a project addressing the specific needs for Electronics.

YaEDA

As the name implies "yet another" Electronic Design Automation tool. This one is based on the Qt GUI library (same as KDE uses).

ZOPE

Zope is the "Z Object Publishing Environment". It's what we use to create and maintain this site. It is based on a pure Object-Oriented approach to site design, allows extensive code and data re-use, direct editing through an HTTP interface, and is highly extensible. It is implemented almost entirely in Python and is, of course, fully open source. I highly recommend it.

"lignumCAD is a tool for designing furniture"
An interesting 2D/3D CAD project, but very immature ("version 0.2"). I got this from the FreeDraft site, which is officially "dead", BTW.

PHP-Nuke

Fairly heavy competitor for Zope, based on PHP which is an older and better established web programming language. I have not fully checked it out, but obviously we opted for Zope instead.

Squishdot: The Open Source Discussion Forum Software for Zope

A forum software for Zope. I wasn't that impressed with it, which is why I started working on Narya, but it has a number of advantages, including that it works now, which mine doesn't yet.

Multilingual Unicode TrueType fonts in the Internet

Wow, it's still there (2003-7/9). This is a useful portal for finding downloadable unicode fonts on the web. These are not (I think) open-source "Free" fonts, but merely downloadable for free. There are not a lot of resources on the web on this subject, so this is a really handy page.

Welcome to NEdit.org

Nedit is a Free editor (now GPL, by the way) for Linux/X-Windows that follows more of the Windows/Macintosh mold of GUI-centric editor design than the baroque Vi/Emacs stuff that Linux old-timers are used to. Unfortunately, I am an "old-timer", so I use gVim (a variant of "Vi"), because I learned the commands so long ago they no longer seem arcane to me. But I can definitely see Nedit's appeal to folks who are used to the "way of the mouse", so I recommend that you check it out and see if it's for you.

SoX: Sound eXchange

Handy file-format conversion for sampled audio ("voice") files.

mozilla.org

The definitive browser. Yep. This is it. It used to be marketed as Netscape, but has since shown its true colors as the Monster replacement for Mosaic. Seriously, this is the most full-featured web-browser I know of, on any platform. I don't use it though, because it's slow!

Galeon

This is the browser I use. It is based on the same Gecko engine that Mozilla is, but it runs consistently faster on my system. I think this is because it uses the GTK+ GUI library. It has most of the important web browser features of Mozilla, but no support for Mail or News or other network uses.

Linux For School

Debian Linux based distribution for Norwegian schools. Might be a useful basis for other educational distributions?

Organizations and communities

GNU's Not Unix! - the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Richard Stallman's Free Software Society is where the whole concept of (and especially the name) "Free Software" got started.

EFF Homepage - the Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is fundamentally concerned with the legal and social ramifications of the introduction of new computer technologies on our society. Given that lawmakers (along with much of the rest of the world that is not directly involved with the development of computer and information technologies) are frequently behind the times with regard to new events, their function is critical. Top concerns include: privacy (especially as regards commercial and government database use), unsolicited commercial email ("spam"), inappropriate copyright and patent laws, and freedom-of-speech concerns on the World Wide Web.

Debian GNU/Linux -- The Universal Operating System

Debian is the largest distribution of Linux, one of the most popularly installed worldwide (this is hard to measure though, because most are installed from downloads), and the only one that is All the Way Open. It is a 100% volunteer, community-driven operation. It is therefore the basis for all of our operations on Linux.

SourceForge: Welcome

A useful web resource for open-source developers. Source Forge maintains mailing lists, project management tools, CVS servers, bug tracking tools, and so on for anyone who wants to start a free software project. The only real requirement for establishing a project is that it is in fact a free software project.

companies

www.oreilly.com -- computer books, conferences, software, online publishing

For old-hands at Unix and Linux, O'Reilly books are a staple. Nowadays, though, you might want to save a few trees and try out their online subscription service: Safari Books.

Programming Languages

The Algae Programming Language

"Algae is a programming language for numerical analysis. We wrote it because we needed a fast and versatile tool, capable of handling large systems. Algae has been applied to interesting problems in aerospace and related fields for more than a decade."

Catalog of Free Compilers and Interpreteers: introduction

Very handy list of references to Free programming languages and compilers. "This list is primarily aimed at developers rather than researchers, and consists mainly of citations for production quality systems."

Linux AI; Alife Mini-Howto

The official howto on doing Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life development on Linux. This is a good place to start looking if you want to find some good tools for an AI project.

Programming Tutorials

A collection of tutorials for various languages, currently includes: Delphi, Ada, Algol, Assembler, C++, C, Fortran, Forth, Modula-2, Pascal, HTML, Java, Javascript, Perl, SQL, Visual Basic, Prolog, Lisp, and Smalltalk.

MathML

An explanation of Math Markup Language (MathML), an XML-based standard for representing mathematical equations. Simpler and more universal than TeX, it provides a fairly natural, HTML-like language.

brickOS at sourceforge

"brickOS is an alternative operating system for the Lego Mindstorms RCX Controller."

Starship Python

Python community site maintained by Zope Corporation. Includes developer community contributions.

Neural Integrator

Promising neural networks package -- if it ever gets released, anyway. The "downloads" are unfortunately not related to this package. 'Cause he has "work" to do. As if that was an excuse!

CodeCraft - The C++ Programming Newsletter

"CodeCraft is a weekly newsletter of tips and advice for anyone learning to program in C or C++ in a Unix or Linux environment."

Public Domain Python Code from Steve Holden

Interesting Python programming examples.

Python interface to gdchart

Python API for GDChart -- a business-graphics charting program.

Studying mud technology

Information and papers on Multi-User Dungeons (or "Domains" depending on who you ask).

Learning Autoconf and Automake

The Autotools are the definitive way to release open-source packages written in C or C++ (and may be used for some other languages as well). If you've ever done the "configure, make, make install dance", then you've benefitted from the autotools -- this page describes how to package your own software with them.

DevShed - Writing CGI Programs in Python

An article on doing CGI in Python, now unfortunately buried in advertisements. You might want to start at the Python Homepage instead, but I'll have to look for a good CGI tutorial.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0

Official World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) page on XML 1.0.

Other

Fun