Free Software for the World
The explosive growth of the Internet has been helped in a large part by
the widespread availability of free software and information. It is
now possible to set up a very useful and powerful computer system using
only freely available software. Often, this software has excellent
documentation, with useful help and information that can be obtained
from mailing lists, newsgroups and other websites. Many times, the
authors of the software are quite willing have discussions with users.
They may even add features, eliminate bugs and just generally improve
their software packages based on user feedback. Of course, with the
source code available, adventurous users can modify the software themselves.
Much of the software discussed here is licensed under the
GNU General Public License. Of course, before trying any of the
software, it's always a good idea to read, understand and follow
all the instructions that come with it. Often, reading the files named
README and INSTALL are excellent places to start.
Operating System
One of the most powerful and reliable operating systems available
for PCs today, Linux
stands as a jewel in the crown of free software. A large group of
dedicated programmers from around the world have been working for many
years to develop this operating system. It's a version of
Unix that can run on many different types of hardware, including
Intel PCs (386, 486, Pentium, etc.), Macintoshes (68k and PPC), Sun Sparcs,
Dec Alphas, and others. Various software companies (or groups of users),
such as
Red Hat,
Slackware,
Caldera, and others
package the Linux kernel with many other files into a distribution.
Each company's distribution may have some unique features, but in general
all will should run the same software binaries.
Image Processing
Dealing with images is important to every web site. A common problem
with images is the myriad formats that are currently
available for storing them. As you undoubtedly know, web browsers support
only a few specific formats, such as .gif and .jpg. How can we easily
and quickly convert between all these strange but interesting formats?
Using a free software package called
ImageMagick,
image conversion, manipulation and display. For example, to convert
a TIFF image named foo.tiff into a GIF image named foo.gif:
convert foo.tiff foo.gif
To resize the image named bar.bmp to 512 by 100 pixels and save
it as bar.jpg:
convert -sample 510x100 bar.bmp bar.jpg
ImageMagick makes all image processing chores much easier.
Another cool image editor is
The Gimp. This software package has many features found only in high-
end and expensive products like Adobe Photoshop. From the Gimp website,
"[The Gimp] is an extremely capable piece of software with many capabilities.
It can be used as a simple paint program, a expert quality photo
retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production
image renderer, a image format converter, etc." With its large collection
of plug-ins and a powerful scripting language, this software offers
capabilities not found in any other image processing products.
Database
Keeping track and organizing vast amounts of data is a can be a difficult
and complex task. By using a database, it is possible to easily sort
through and create reports using information. An excellent and powerful
SQL-based relational database called PostgreSQL is available at
PostgreSQL. Of course, there is
a lot of competition in the world of relational databases. It's interesting
to take a look at how they compare.
Text Editing
Where would I be without Emacs? This powerful text
editor is probably the best thing since sliced bread. But, it does take
some getting used to...
Try reading the
FAQ to
get started.
Web Browsers and beyond
On January 22, 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation
announced plans to make the source code for its
Netscape Communicator client software available for
free licensing on the Internet. Incredible! Who knows what great new
features will be added to the web browser with its source code freely
available?
This article has covered only a tiny fraction of the free software that's
available in the world today. You'll also want to look at
Perl,
Python,
Squid, and
Generic
Mapping Tools.
Take a look around and discover great, fully functional software that's
just a few mouse clicks away.
Author: Doug Steinwand
Date: [01/23/98]
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