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20 Awesome Free OS Downloads

Admin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:45:09 +0000

Here’s a collection of 20 that are worth checking out. There are plenty more, so if you’d like to add your favorites, share them in the comments!

Fedora 10 – One of the few live distros that didn’t have any trouble with the hardware on my MSI Wind netbook. My acid test: can it properly suspend and wake? Yes – and it does it faster than Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. OpenSUSE and Ubuntu both failed to resume properly.

Damn Small Linux – I wouldn’t feel right not listing Damn Small. It’s pretty amazing what you can do with a whole OS that’s not much bigger than most Windows antivirus applications. 50mb gets you Firefox, XMMS, VNCViewer, MS Office Viewer, and much more. It’s also easily extendable through the MyDSL service or by using the apt command.

Linux Mint - While it’s based on Ubuntu, Mint has some features that I think make it a bit more user-friendly. For starters, there are several easy ways to find and install new software including the dead simple Mint Software Portal. Find an app, click the install button, bada bing!

64 Studio – If you’re into digital content creation of any kind – audio, video, or graphics – 64 Studio is a distro worth downloading. It’s packed full of awesome multimedia apps and, contrary to the name, is available for 32-bit platforms as well.

live.linux-gamers.net - One of the big complaints about Linux is “Where are the games?” If you’d like to see some, why not download a live DVD that contains a truckload that you can run without even installing anything? FPS, racing, platformer, you name it – this disc has it covered.

Slax – This has always been one of my favorite light Linux distros. It’s about 200mb and includes plenty of great apps. It includes a really slick boot option as well: to act as a PXE server, allowing other machines on your LAN to boot Slax over the network.

NimbleX – If you’re looking for a lightweight base to run virtual PCs on, check out NimbleX. It’s the smallest distro I’ve seen that comes with Sun’s Virtual Box. You can even customize your ISO on the web site before you download it if you want. Awesome.

Haiku – Inspired by BeOS, Haiku strives to provide an environment that is simple enough for beginners to use, yet powerful enough for more experienced users to enjoy as well. As they say on their web site, Haiku wants to be “free of unnecessary complexities.” There’s also Zeven OS, a Linux distro with BeOS-inspired visuals.

ReactOS – Definitely an ambitious project, ReactOS is trying to produce a free, non-linux environment that is fully compatible with Windows applications and drivers. It’s got a long way to go, but it’s an interesting project to keep your eye on.

Mac-on-stick – Sure, OSX is pretty and functional, but can it fit on a 32mb flash drive? Mac-on-stick is a complete Mac OS 7.0.1 environment that runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, and even Pocket PC. Use it to run old-school apps or classic games like Dark Castle. It’s also part of the Portableapps.Com suite.

OSX86 – No, there’s no link for this one, gang. I’ve included OSX86 (which you can probably find yourself on any major torrent tracker by searching for kalyway) because it’s an amazing example of what an enthusiastic computing community can accomplish. There’s even a customized version floating around that is tailored for the MSI Wind netbook..

NetBSD – If you’re not interested in trying the Hackintosh thing, why not play around with OS X’s foundations? One of the great things about NetBSD is the amazing number of hardware platforms it can run on, including the Playstation 2 and Sega Dreamcast. You may also want to try Jibbed, a lightweight NetBSD livecd spinoff that runs XFCE4.

Open Solaris – The good folks at Sun play a big part in the development of a pretty mean free OS. Open Solaris is incredibly stable and is designed for reliability and network performance. It makes an excellent foundation for NAS devices and servers.

FreeNAS – Speaking of NAS, if you’ve got an old junker around that you’d like to turn into something useful, FreeNAS is a nice option. It’s a barebones distro based on FreeBSD and is designed to turn old hardware into simple network attached storage.

IE Application Compatibility VPC Images – More free stuff from Microsoft? The VPC images include .vhd files of XP and Vista machines that can be run inside Virtual PC to test applications in different Windows OSes with different versions of IE.

VICE – Again not technically an OS, but I’m not sure anyone is really looking to multiboot the Commodore 64 or VIC20 operating systems. The VICE emulator will also run C128, PLUS4, and PET programs.

GeeXboX – Another great use of an outdated machine is to turn it into a media server/HTPC and GeeXboX is an excellent operating system to power it. There’s even an ISO generator that runs on Mac and Windows that you can use to build a customized GeeXboX disc with different themes, languages, network settings, and more.

Untangle – Untangle is a free, open source gateway that is available as both a full-blown OS and a Windows application. The Windows “app” is a nice option if you don’t have the hardware to spare for a standalone gateway machine.

Ultimate Deployment Appliance – UDA is a slick VMWare appliance that allows you to easily serve ISO images via a PXE environment. I love it. No more griping about badly scratched Vista or XP install discs, I just boot via the LAN interface instead.

gParted – If you’re using a “questionably legal” solution like Hiren’s Boot CD to manage drive partitions, you should give gParted a try. The interface and functionality is very similar to Partition Magic, and gParted is totally free and open source.

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WordPress 2.7 – 20 Must See Features

Admin — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:02:40 +0000

WordPress is quickly becoming the standard software for the majority of blogs. This fact makes every major release of the software seem like a huge event, but the thing is that this time it is. WordPress 2.7 comes with a huge number of changes, a good chunk of them making some older plugins redundant. This will be a huge upgrade for all blog owners.

The following lists 20 of the biggest changes coming, but all together there have been over 400 changes to the program this time around. Any way you slice it, there is a little bit of something for everyone in this release. Take a look through and you’re sure to find something that appeals to you.

Unfortunately this is only available for the blogs on WordPress.com for now, but it will be released for self-hosted blogs on December 10th.

What are the changes you are most excited about?

Comments

Close Comments On Old Posts – Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to continue letting comments come in on an old post, and it is a favorite trick of spammers anyway. WordPress 2.7 will allow you to close comments on older posts, eliminating the need for yet another plugin.

Comment Paging – Comments broken into pages instead of being a never ending bottom to your post.

Comment Replies From the Admin Section – A feature that has long been needed is the ability to reply to comments from your admin section without having to go to the front end of your blog.

Comment Threading – It’s not just admin comment replies that are getting love, but all comments will now be in a threaded format. Great for those long debates you get into about what “sux” or why someone is a “newb,” at last no one will be confused about to whom you are referring!

XMLRPC Comments API -Support for the XML-RPC protocol which is a simplified API that encodes your comments in XML and transports them via HTTP.

Keyboard Shortcuts For Comments -Once you’re in your comments, you can use the keys j and k to navigate through the comments. Once selected, some of the keys you can use will be “a” to approve, “s” to mark as spam and “d” to delete.

Theme & Plugin Related

One-Click Plugin Installs – Another long time plugin favorite is going the way of the dinosaurs with the introduction of the ability to install plugins from the dashboard.

Plugin Browser – Browsing for plugins, one of the favorite pastimes of many bloggers, will be made easier by being able to do it without ever leaving your WordPress install.

Sticky Posts – There have been numerous WordPress plugins over the years to make a post “sticky” so that it stays as the top post on your front page no matter how many posts you publish after it. The feature has now been built in to the core program.

Updating the Core WordPress – Yet another WordPress plugin finds its way into the core WordPress program. For those users who haven’t used something like Fantastico or Simple Scripts to install their blog, there will now be a more automated way for you to keep up with all of those pesky security updates.

Theme Update API Notices – You will receive updates when your installed themes are updated just like WordPress does now with plugins.

Greater Controls

Batch Editing for Posts – Ever needed to edit the tags for several posts, but couldn’t do it because of the work involved? Batch editing will now allow you to do mass edits of your posts so that you can make as many changes as you want to your blog no matter how old it is.

Column Control – On any management page that shows columns, you will now be able to choose which columns are shown and how.

Ping & Trackback Moderation – With the ever increasing wave of “splogs” trackbacking your blog, there will finally be moderation of them in a more manageable, frame-like format.

QuickPress – Ever wanted to just do a quick post without having to load the entire write page? Now you can directly from the Dashboard page with QuickPress.

Recent Drafts – There will now be a module on your dashboard to get to your most recent drafts so you can quickly get access to your posts that are in progress.

Other Tweaks

Dashboard and Write Rearrangements – There have been significant redesigns to navigation and general layouts of the dashboard and write pages.

PHPXref – Ever go slightly loopy trying to make sense of PHP files? PHPXref will help you by making PHP into easy to digest documents that you can read through. All of this will be hosted on WordPress.org.

Image Size Tweaks – Thumbnail and Medium commands will stay the same, but Large will now be restricted to 1024 pixels, or the constraints of your theme. If you want no restrictions and post insane sized pictures, you will now be able to select “Full Size” which will post your image at its original size. You will also now see the dimensions for each size next to the radio buttons.

Redundant Coding – Theme authors will be happy to see some changes to the wp_page_menu wrapper that will simplify their coding and add conveniences like making “Home” part of the list.

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