Gucharmap 3.12.1 / 3.14 Beta 1

Developer: Homepage / GIT: License / Price: Last Updated: Category: Noah | More programs | Homepage wiki.gnome.org / GPL / $0 August 19th, 2014, 07:33 GMT [view history] ROOT / Programming / Internationalization

Gucharmap is an open source application that provides users with a sophisticated character map application for the well known GNOME desktop environment. It is built around the Unicode Character Database (UCD).

The application allows users to view detailed information about specific characters and letters, such as general character properties and various useful representations. Because it uses the GTK+ toolkit, the program supports beautiful anti-aliased and scalable fonts via Xft, the X11 FreeType interface library.

With this program, users will be able to browse characters by Unicode script or block, find a specific letter or character using any search string (it can search in character details or match the whole word), go to a certain character by using code points, and magnify the active character by right-clicking on it.

You can also quckly switch between fonts using the keyboard or mouse peripherals (you can navigate all the characters only with the right mouse click), view fonts in details at any point size, identify characters copied in the system clipboard or the default X11 selection.

In addition, users will be able to copy single characters or form any group of words (phrases) that can be copied to clipboard, drag and drop characters from the map to another application, as well as to drag a letter into the application to identify it.

Another interesting feature is the ability to view which font is used for rendering a certain character. Also, it integrates well with the GNOME desktop environment, allowing users to sort the view by script or Unicode block, display only glyphs of a font, search, zoom in and out, and snap columns to Power of Two from the panel entry of the application.

Overall, Gucharmap is a great character map application for the GNOME desktop environment. It features support for numerous character encodings and provides users with a quick and painless way to copy strange characters into other apps.

Via: Gucharmap 3.12.1 / 3.14 Beta 1

openmamba GNU/Linux 2.0.12

Developer: Homepage / GIT: License / Price: Last Updated: Category: mambaSoft | More programs | Homepage www.openmamba.org GPL / $0 July 15th, 2014, 08:40 GMT [view history] ROOT / Linux Distributions

openmamba GNU/Linux is an open-source and completely free operating system that has been designed from the ground up to be deployed on notebooks, desktops, servers, as well as single-board computers.

It’s distributed in multiple editions, as Live DVDs

This is the original and first edition of openmamba GNU/Linux. It is available for download as a 32-bit Live DVD ISO image of approximately 3GB in size. The i586 tag on the Live DVD means that it supports only 32-bit applications.

There are three versions of this Live DVD, supporting the English, Italian and Spanish languages. However, openmamba GNU/Linux is distributed in multiple editions that are downloadable from the project’s homepage.

The boot menu is comprehensive, includes many useful options

From the boot menu, the user can start the live system in different modes, with a specific mamba version or screen resolution, as well as in debug mode. It is also possible to perform a system memory diagnostic test.

KDE Plasma never looked so good on openmamba GNU/Linux

The default and only desktop environment of the openmamba GNU/Linux operating system is KDE Plasma Workspaces and Applications. It provides users with a modern, traditional and familiar interface that is extremely easy to use.

Includes a wide-range of open source applications

As the Live DVD has almost 3GB in size, it includes a wide-range of open source applications. Among some of the most popular ones, we can mention the Amarok audio player, Chromium web browser, VLC Media Player, Kaffeine video player, Miro music and video player, DVD Style DVD-Video authoring software, Clementine audio player, Ardour digital audio workstation and Blender 3D modeller.

In addition, the GIMP image editor, digiKam photo management program, showFoto photo viewer and editor, UFRaw RAW image converter, aMule P2P file sharing client, FileZilla file transfer client and Mozilla Firefox web browsers are also included.

Via: openmamba GNU/Linux 2.0.12

Black GNOME Linux 14.10 Build 06-13

Developer: Homepage / GIT: License / Price: Last Updated: Category: Black GNOME Team | More programs | Homepage sourceforge.net GPL / $0 June 13th, 2014, 15:01 GMT ROOT / Linux Distributions

Black GNOME Linux is an open source distribution of Linux based on the latest unstable release of the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu, and built around the controversial GNOME desktop environment.

Distributed as a 64-bit Live DVD

This custom Ubuntu flavor can be downloaded from its official website or using Softpedia’s secure servers (see download link above) as a Live DVD ISO image that has been engineered to support only 64-bit (x86_64) instruction set architectures.

Boot options

The simple to use boot menu will help the user to quickly start the live environment with default options or in safe graphics mode, copy the content of the ISO image to RAM and run the live session from there ejecting the media, as well as to directly start the installer.

In addition, you can start the operating system in text only mode, perform a system memory check, verify the integrity of the bootable medium (only if using a DVD disc), as well as to boot an existing OS from the first disk drive.

Beautified GNOME desktop environment for modern users

Before you can use the GNOME session of this Linux distribution, you must log into the system by pressing Enter on the “Live Session User” button and again on the empty password field, which means that there’s no password for the live user.

We have to admin that this is the first time we encounter a GNOME setup like the one used in Black GNOME Linux. The panel has been moved to the bottom edge of the screen and includes some very nice tweaks, the GNOME launcher is always visible on the left side of the screen, and you can easily cycle between the four virtual workspaces from a custom panel located on the right side of the screen.

Includes some of the best of breed applications

The distro includes some of the best of breed applications, among which we can mention AbiWord word processor, FileZilla file transfer client, Mozilla Firefox and Midori web browsers, BleachBit system cleaner, LibreOffice office suite, Synaptic Package Manager, Shotwell image viewer and organizer, Rhythmbox music player, and VLC Media Player.

Bottom line

Summing up, Black GNOME Linux is a really nice distribution of Linux that allows users to test the powerful and modern GNOME desktop environment, which has been highly tweaked, on top of the latest upstream Ubuntu release. Keep in mind though, that it is specifically designed for testing purposes only and it should not be installed on production machines.

Via: Black GNOME Linux 14.10 Build 06-13

Cubuntu 14-04-169g

Developer: Homepage / GIT: License / Price: Last Updated: Category: cubuntu | More programs | Homepage sourceforge.net GPL / $0 May 10th, 2014, 17:17 GMT ROOT / Linux Distributions

Cubuntu is an open source Live Linux operating system based on the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu Linux. It is built around the Unity desktop environment and supports only the 64-bit architecture.

Before anything else, we should mention that this project is based on a development version of Ubuntu (14.04 LTS at the moment of writing this article) and it is not suitable for production machines. In addition, the Live CD supports only the French language, which might be an issue for some people.

In addition to Unity, Cubuntu includes the Cinnamon desktop environment, the Openbox window manager, as well as the GNOME Classic desktop environment (with Compiz and Metacity).

It offers a pure Ubuntu experience, as no feature has been removed from the original version. Instead, the distribution includes some of the best Linux applications available, making Cubuntu attractive for users who want more from a Linux operating system.

The default applications are Google Chrome for web browsing, VLC Media Player for multimedia playback, FileZilla for FTP transfers, Geany IDE (Integrated Development Environment), Skype for chat and video communication, and Synaptic Package Manager for installing, removing and updating packages on your system.

Ubuntu Tweak is also there for those of you want to customize various aspects of the distribution, radiotray allows users to listen to online radio stations, and support for Java, Flash and multimedia codecs is provided out-of-the-box.

The boot menu of the Live CD is much more simplistic than the one found in Ubuntu. However, it presents the usual live mode, install mode, memtest (for testing your computer's memory (RAM)), hd (for booting the operating system that is currently installed), and xforcevesa (for booting the live environment in safe graphics mode).

Because it uses the GRUB bootloader, experienced users can easily edit all of the aforementioned boot menu entries by pressing the Tab key on a selection. Even if the Live CD is available in French, the boot menu and the entire installation process is in English.

Unfortunately, there’s no support for choosing a different language during the installation process, and you will end up with a French only Linux operating system. But this can be easily fixed if you install support for other languages through the Synaptic Package Manager application.

Via: Cubuntu 14-04-169g

IPCop Firewall 2.1.4

Developer: Homepage / GIT: License / Price: Last Updated: Category: Rebecca Ward | More programs | Homepage www.ipcop.org GPL / $0 April 8th, 2014, 17:54 GMT [view history] ROOT / Security

IPCop Firewall is an old and well-known, yet actively developed project that provides users with a powerful operating system based on the outstanding capabilities of the Linux kernel. It is designed to protect your home or company from bad packets.

Its name is quite easy to remember and “decipher”: IP (Internet Protocol) Cop (as in Police officer) Firewall (a software or hardware device that blocks unwanted network packets from reaching the internal components of your operating systems).

The system is distributed as installable-only ISO images of under 60MB in size, supporting only 32-bit architectures. The problem is that the latest version of the software is always available as an update package (tgz.gpg), which means that, if this is your first time installing IPCop Firewall, you will need to download both the latest ISO image available at the time of the installation, and the current update package.

The boot medium has no particular options, you just boot the system and install the distribution. However, if you want to access advanced installation options or more information about how to deploy this tool, you can always press the F1 key at the boot prompt.

Installing IPCop Firewall is not a complex task, but it’s done entirely in text mode. First you will need to select the language, keyboard mapping, timezone, and set the date and time. Next, you can choose to install the system on a hard disk drive or a USB stick. The different between deploying IPCop Firewall on HDD or USB is that on the latter it will make several modifications that minimizes the number of disk writes, prolonging its lifetime.

After this, the drive will be automatically erased and partitioned and the entire operating system installed, which will take about 1 minute. When the installation is over, you can restore an old backup, if you have one.

Next, the initial setup will kick in, allowing users to configure ISDN, network cards, and the system’s passwords. Lastly, you should be able to point your web browser at https://192.168.1.1:8443 or https://ipcop:8443 to configure remote access and dialup networking (if available).

Via: IPCop Firewall 2.1.4