Free Software to Look Forward to

  • WordPress 2.5 is out! This one makes me overly excited because it comes with a built-in gallery!!! FINALLY! And with multi-file upload!! I was just playing with it and It looks like it will suit my purposes just fine. I guess I will continue avoiding the Flickrs and other such community-based photo sites, for now. I’ll probably have to update my theme a little, however… and see if there’s a way to set a maximum photo size.
  • OpenOffice.org 2.4 is out and comes with quite a lot of improvements, including OpenGL transitions (perdy) and performance gains. OpenOffice.org 3.0 looks like it will be quite a massive release, aiming to sing and dance. Also see here (Thanks, Andrew).
  • Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron, is nearly out. Less than a month away! It comes with the recently released GNOME 2.22, Firefox 3.0b4, PulseAudio, and a bunch of other goodies, like using the excellent Transmission as the default Bitorrent client. I’m also really looking forward to the World Clock Applet – then I won’t have to think about Japan’s and Brazil’s timezones ever again. 🙂 Beta’s available now.

Stuff that looks good, but I have no experience with…

  • Pencil – Open source, cross-platform 2D drawing/animation application.
  • Hotwire – Smart shell.
  • GNOME Do – Like quicksilver from OSX.
  • ReInteract – Super python console.
  • Faces Project Management – PM is something that’s lacking on Linux.
  • Tracks GTD – If you’re willing to install it on a RoR supported server to help get things done.

Finally

I’ve been meaning to mention this incredibly well designed (because it’s simple) program to edit subtitles (for those totally legal foreign videos you’re downloading/transcribing): gaupol. Very slick.

3 comments

  1. Why not just install and try them out instead?

    WordPress 2.5 – Huge improvements on UI. The autocomplete for tags is useful. Some plugins broke though. Crazy they put out a RC the day before the official release becomes available.

    Pencil – You need to be really patient to use it.

    Ubuntu Hardy – I have been using this one for a while. It’s nice they added the old drivers back and even my purplechicken can use it. Noticeably faster on bootup and shutdown.

    GNOME Do – It’s *not* like Quicksilver, but it’s close to the Quicksilver clones, which is enough for basic app launching.

    Let’s see if I can install Tracks on dreamhost. I tried dozens of GTD apps, and none of them works as good as the good old kGTD script (deprecated).

  2. Why not just install and try them out instead?

    Hotwire and GNOME-DO I’ve used earlier versions, but too briefly to comment on. The others… well, that would take more time than I want to spend on trying out new software, right now. This post resulted as part of an effort to do some Spring cleaning on my computer.

    Man, this is a cold Spring.

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