Open source tech

Revision as of 11:01, 13 February 2015

tech

linux

• Debian
• Arch Linux rolling release. with many options on installation
• DistroWatch.com information about the different linux distributions.
• UNetbootin Software to create bootable usb linux system. Runs also on windows and mac.
• The Linux Documentation Project

window manager stuff

• Openbox very basic window manager - you can install fancy features yourself
• urukrama's Openbox keybindings
• awesome tiling window manager
• Comparison of Tiling Window Managers - ArchWiki

shell

• terminator terminal emulator with many features, including tabs and split windows

Some useful keys

Ctrl+Shift+O Split terminals Horizontally.
Ctrl+Shift+E Split terminals Vertically.
Ctrl+Shift+Right/Left/Up/Down Move parent dragbar.
Alt+Right/Left/Up/Down Move to different terminals

• tmux terminal multiplexer - for mouse free control of terminal windows
• commandlinefu.com
• zsh the zsh shell. an alternative to bash with some interesting features. some examples of using zsh

with zsh, instead of cd you can use z with part of the name of the path you want to move to, favouring recently and frequently used paths.

• 30 handy bash aliases

web

• vimperator vi style control of firefox/iceweasel web browser. So you can control the web browser without using the mouse.
• Surfraw Shell Users' Revolutionary Front Rage Against the Web - open websites from the commandline

tools, toys, reference

• conky system monitor
• yadr yet another dotfile repo. a bundle of configurations for vim, zsh and git
• aap makes it easy to download, build and install software
• calmar.ws tips and info on linux,vim, vimperator, awesome, other stuff
• refcards.com free quick reference cards
• fcron.free.fr apparently good for running cron jobs on a system not always switched on.
• OpenVZ container based vitualisation for linux.

vi text editor

• vi cheat sheet
• vim tips
• vim mediawiki editing

=file management

• mc Midnight Commander - terminal based file manager (norton commander style)
• xfe X File Explorer - light file manager for x-windows. Can have 2 pane and directory tree. Some norton commmander style keybindings.
• gnome commander File manager for gnome, norton commander style.
• gentoo Light, fast 2 pane file manager
• Baobab gnome disk usage analyser - visual representation of disk usage - great for when ou are trying to free up space
• sshfs mount a remote filesystem via ssh

email software

• mutt - email program. Its not for everyone, it takes a lot of configuring but once you have got it right it can work well and save time.
• Steve losh's mutt guide
• mu (maildir-utils) program for searching email stored in maildir format
• notmuch program for searching email
• mutt sidebar patch for mutt with folders listed in a sidebar
• getting up and running with a sane mutt setup
• realprogrammers.com mutt guide
• How I tamed my mutt – cmdln.org (a sysadmin blog)
• fefe.da Mutt FAQ

graphics

• gimp gui graphics editor (like photoshop)
• inkscape gui vector graphics editor (like corel draw)
• feh a fast and light image viewer

---using feh---
left - previous image
right - next image
up/down - zoom
/ - zoom to fit window 
d - toggle display filenames
Ctrl + delete - delete file
m - menu

• imagemagick powerfull tools for converting, editing and composing images. Good for batch image processing.
• graphicsmagick a fork of imagemagick - apparently more efficient.
• G'MIC GREYC's Magic for Image Computing - an image processing framework. Commandline tools, Gimp plugin and C++ library.

document viewers and ebooks

• MuPDF - a fast, lightweight pdf viewer with some vi style keybindings.
• apvlv - another pdf viewer, vi style.
• calibre - ebook library manager
• FBReader reader for epub etc

• openlibrary.org ebooks
• Project Gutenberg one of the oldest free ebook collections on the net. 46,000 titles.
• internet archive also hosts many books .
• resrc.io list of free programming language resources

backup/archiving

• rsync - a powerful backup/file copying tool. rsync only copies differences in the files, to minimise the amount of data being transfered. This means it responds well to transfers which are interupted and restarted. Commonly used options:

 rsync dir1/ dir2  =note the slash to put contents of dir1 into dir2 (often what u want)
 -a  =archive mode- recursive, preserve times, permissions etc (often what u want)
 -v  =verbose
 --progress  =show progress
 -n  =dry run (dont actually do it, just a practice to see what would happen)
 --delete  =delete files in the destination that were not in the source
 -u  (update) skip files that are newer on the reciver.  this can be run in both directions to syncronise

• Grsync - rsync GUI interface frontend for Linux
• unison file syncroniser. Unlike rsync, unison ensures both filesystems have the newest version of a file. tutorial on setting up unison

diff -qr source destination     # q = brief r=recursive 
comm -3 <(ls ~/dir-new/) <(ls ~/dir)        # compare two directories

Find duplicate files:

find -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate

Find and delete duplicate files:

find -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d |  xargs -I{} -n1 find -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate | cut -f3-100 -d ' ' | tr '\n.' '\t.' | sed 's/\t\t/\n/g' | cut -f2-100 | tr '\t' '\n' | perl -i -pe 's/([ (){}-])/\\$1/g' | perl -i -pe 's/'\/\\'\/g' | xargs -pr rm -v

booklet printing on linux

some tools, for example, for reordering pages of an a4 documents to make an a5 booklet or zine.

pdf2ps                                              # convert a pdf document to postscript      
psbook in.ps out.ps                                 # reorder the pages to make a book,  
psnup -s1 -2 book.ps booklet.ps                     # shrink to 2 pages on each A4 side
ps2pdf in.ps out.pdf                                # convert it back to a pdf

If you dont have a duplex printer probably you want to print the even pages, put them in the paper drawer (the right way around! very confusing!) then print the odd pages

lpr -P myprinter -o page-set=even -#1 infile.pdf    # print the even pages  
lpr -P myprinter -o page-set=odd -#1 infile.pdf     # print the odd pages

encryption

• cryptoparty handbook
• gpg Gnu Privacy Guard. Tool for encrypting files and email.

Most simple usage - gpg encryption of a single file:

 gpg -c file   

This prompts for a password and gives file.gpg. To decypt:

 gpg -d file.gpg > file

• Disk encryption article on ArchWiki a good explanation of disk encryption and a comparison of the methods.
• truecrypt

tools for those who have little or no connection to internet

• kiwix wikipedia offline reader - read wikipedia when not connected to internet. The english wikipedia (text only, no images, user pages or discussion pages) compresses to about 8gb! You will need to download this data in 'zim' format, available as a torrent. list of wikipedias
• openstreetmap collaborative mapping project. it is also possible to download openstreetmap (even the whole planet) for offline viewing using a software called navit (which i still havent succussfully used), other software projects are Emerillon and Marble.
• OfflineIMAP software for syncronising imap mailboxes. It is useful for unreliable or slow internet connections or when you want to read email offline.
• hitchwiki.org can also be downloaded to view offline hitchwiki while offline. The database is downloaded in XML format which can be viewed with various kinds of dictionary viewing software.

offline dictionary for linux

goldendict which can work with freedict dictionaries. To add, for example, scottish gaelic to german dictionary (on debian):

apt-get install dict-freedict-gla-deu 

for a list of all dictionaries (on debian):

apt-cache search dict-freedict 

• Ding A very good German-English dictionary lookup program

filesharing

• torrent411 good torrent tracker (french) requires registration and has advertising but some good stuff on there. 'Télécharger'='Download'
• rutracker.org good torrent tracker (russian) also requires registration.
• zeropaid filesharing news and forum
• tracker2.postman.i2p i2p torrent tracker (you must be running i2p to access)
• imule p2p sharing software for i2p (also an i2p eepsite)

audio software

• hydrogen audio forums about audio software etc
• rockbox open source firmware for music players. Very useful if the original firmware wont play certain formats, or has restrictions on copying music off the player. Can run on Sansa clip.
• mpd music player daemon. music playing software designed to be run over a network. If there is a network attached computer connected to an amplifier and running mpd, other computers on the network can control the player by using mpd client software (of which there are many to choose from, i use ncmpcpp). Can run on raspberry pi. Client and daemon can also both be running on the same computer. mpd and ncmcppp guide
• cmus curses based music player software (linux, console based). with playlists, play queue, filtering, vi style search and command mode, dynamic keybinding.
• moc another, simpler, curses based player. moc has two panels, with a similar look to midnight commander. On the left panel is a file browser and the right is a playlist.
• randomplay even simpler console player. plays random tracks.
• DeaDBeeF GUI music player. Lightweight, extendable with plugins, and has tabbed playlists and a design editor similar to foobar2000 (a very good windows music player).
• beets music collection organising tool. useful for tagging and organising a large collection.
• Linux multimedia studio (LMMS) free music production software, with VST compatibility.
• sox command line sound tool. can be used as simple synthesiser, and to convert audio formats.
• Mumble voice chat software. Mumble was originally developed for chat whilst gaming and is now also popular for conferencing etc.
• Mixxx Open source DJ software
• xwax: Digital vinyl on Linux Open source software for DJing using time-coded vinyl (like Serato scratch)

• mps-youtube terminal based youtube player and downloader

to take 30 random mp3s and put them in a directory (i use this to randomly choose some of my music to put onto my mp3 player):

find -name "*.mp3" | sort --random-sort | head -n 30 | xargs -n 1 -i^Cd '\n' cp {} /media/mp3player/randomtunes

audio hardware

• diyaudio.com forums about diy audio hardware projects
• Standuino DIY open source audio hardware
• speakerplans.com designs for speaker enclosures
• horn response - speaker enclosure design software. can use with abaca? audio abacus

other

Many of these links need to be (or already have been) put elsewhere on the wiki

• mighty ohm some open source hardware designs and a soldering guide in many languages
• Desoldering - wikipedia article for learning how to recuperate electronic components.
• Desoldering wikibook
• circuit circle / SCHRÄGERUNDE DIY electronics and circuit bending -workshops, concerts, installations, performances
• Toner refill - wikipedia article on refilling photocopier laser printer toner

• freemusicarchive.org
• internet archive archive of internet sites, also many media files hosted here, you can put media files here too.
• Use google translate from the command line with some extra features.
• Google translate awk program very similar
• open frameworks c++ library for creative projects
• RONJA free technology project for optical point-to-point data links (using visible light). The design has a reported 1.4km range and 10Mbps full duplex data rate.
• modulatedlight.org information and experiments using light for data links, mostly using high power LEDs rather than lasers, as they work better over long distances.
• ttfa.net/12volt
• A Tao of regular expressions notes on using regular expressions (for vi, grep, etc)
• mattmahoney on data compression much info on data compression. PAQ8 text compression, while computationally expensive, could be very useful for low-bandwidth radio data networks.
• pbx
• x25, a kind of packet switched network
• skype like conferencing system software project proposal. see also ZRTP and SRTP
• sdf.org sdf public access unix system
• tin text-based usenet newsreader software
• eternal september Free text only usenet provider (registration required)
• aioe free text only usenet provider (no registration required)
• retroshare secure, decentralised communication and filesharing platform
• nmap network ping scan tool
• wikidata - project to put wikipedia information into a semantic format, linking topics across languages and categories.

non-commercial email providers

please add more

• aktivix (uk)
• immerda (ch)
• systemli.org (de)
• riseup.net (us)
• mtmedia.org (de)