A long time ago, in a land far, far away a battle took place.
OpenCD
OpenCD was a great little project that aimed to freely distribute great and popular free and open source (FOSS) software to the masses (who used Windows).
The ISO file image could be downloaded, burned to CD, and when inserted into a Windows pc, ran a beautiful auto-run menu to guide folks though the alternatives.
It was almost a Martin Luther kind of experience.
The last version came with applications that covered a number of software category needs:
- Design: Blender, The GIMP, Inkscape, NVU, Scribus, Tux Paint.
- Games: Battle for Wesnoth, Enigma, Neverball, Sokoban YASC
- Internet: Azureus, FileZilla, Firefox, Pidgin, HTTrack, RSSOwl, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, TightVNC, WinSCP
- Multimedia: Audacity, Celestia, Really Slick Screensavers, Stellarium
- Productivity: MoinMoin, Notepad2, OpenOffice.org, PDFCreator
- Utilities: 7-zip, Abakt, ClamWin, GTK+, HealthMonitor, Workrave
This CD was quite popular around our shop for a while.
Unfortunately, events conspired to bring the OpenCD project to a grinding halt, probably not at all most critical was the departure of project lead Chris Gray.
OpenDisk
Fortunately for the masses of Windows software slaves, Chris wasn't happy just sitting around, he immediately sprang into action and has now released an new project that better fits his vision, OpenDisk. (Which still runs a pretty nice auto-run menu.)
OpenDisk comes in both Original Recipe and OpenEducationalDisk versions.
The OpenDisk contains the following categorized software installation files:
- Design: Blender (2.44), Dia (0.96.1-7), The GIMP (2.2.17), Inkscape (0.45.1-1), NVU (1.0), Scribus (1.3.3.9), Tux Paint (0.9.17)
- Games: Battle for Wesnoth (1.2.6a), Enigma (1.01), Neverball (1.4.0), Sokoban YASC (1.393)
- Internet: Azureus (2.5.0.4a), FileZilla (2.2.32), Firefox (2.0.0.6), Pidgin (2.1.0), HTTrack (3.41-3), RSSOwl (1.2.3), SeaMonkey (1.1.4), Thunderbird (2.0.0.6), TightVNC (1.3.9), WinSCP (4.0.3)
- Multimedia: Audacity (1.2.6), Celestia (1.4.1), Really Slick Screensavers (0.1), Stellarium (0.9.0), Sumatra PDF (0.7), VLC (0.8.6c)
- Productivity: GnuCash (2.2.1), MoinMoin (1.5.5a-1), Notepad2 (2.0.15), OpenOffice.org (2.2.1), PDFCreator (0.9.3)
- Utilities: 7-zip (4.42), Abakt (0.9.5), ClamWin (0.91.1), GTK+ (2.10.13), HealthMonitor (3.1), TrueCrypt (4.3a), Workrave (1.8.4)
More detailed application descriptions here.
The OpenEducationalDisk version focuses on students 11+ and contains additional software applications (nearly 50 in total) of interest to them:
- Office and Design: Open Office, Dia, Scribus, GanttProject, FreeMind, PDF Creator, Sumatra PDF
- Internet: Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, NVU, RSSOwl
- Art and Graphics: GIMP, GIMP animation, Inkscape, Blender, Tuxpaint
- Multimedia: VLC, Jashaka, Audacity, Infra Recorder
- Science and Mathematics: NASA Worldwind, GraphCalc, Celestia, Stellarium
- Games: TuxTyping 2, The Battle of Wesnoth, Winboard Chess, Qianhong
- Utilities: GTK+, 7zip, Abakt, Clamwin, HealthMonitor, Workrave
- Advanced Internet: Httrack, Tight VNC, Filezilla, Azureus
For more information on project developments, scuttlebutt, and general entertainment, check out Chris Gray’s Weblog.
WorkRave - Neat New Find!
Workrave - (freeware) - I saw this neat little program listed in the CD collections, but hadn't heard about it. So I checked it out. It is pretty clever for over-focused keyboard surfers like myself (at work and at home).
This little utility pops up periodic reminders and timers to take micro-pauses, rest-breaks, and sets daily limits on computer usage (in a friendly way).
The settings for these events can be manually set and configured to adjust to your needs.
Have fun and spread the word!
Grab a hammer and some nails and burn some OpenDisc CD's and go find some doors...umm..on second thought... just hand them out in person to the masses instead.
--Claus
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