The OpenCD Project

You may have been heard about Linux, OpenSource and Free Software for a few years but haven't had the inclination to install a whole new and different operating system just to try it out. Now, with the Open CD Project , you could take a small, intermediate step, and try out some of the more popular, mature and stable OpenSource and Free Software. The Open CD comes with 17 programs, html versions of three popular OpenSource texts "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", "Free as in Freedom" and "Open Source Essays" and is a slimmed down version of the Breezy Badger Ubuntu (5.10) LiveCD (more later on what a LiveCD is and how to work with it). And the best part of it all, is that it is all Free, both in cost and Freedom. It will also run on windows as old as Microsoft Windows 98, if you don't happen to have the latest edition of Windows. You can download the cd image, burn a copy, or as many copies as you want. And use as much as you want, or give away to your friends.

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Let me first start off with how to navigate the CD, what's all included The Open CD. Then I will describe where you could obtain your own cd. These descriptions will be brief, but hopefully will give you a good understanding off what everything is. I plan to discuss more in depth all of the programs in follow-up articles.

When you first insert The Open CD in your cdrom, it should start (if you have autostart enabled for your cdrom drive) the K-Meleon browser and bring you to the Main page (pictured right). If the program doesn't start automatically, you could run it from either Windows Explorer (open up Windows Explorer, go to whatever drive is your cdrom is, usually D:\ or E:\, and click on the "OpenCD" start icon) or start it from the run command (Click Start, then Run, then enter "D:\start.exe", the "D:\" may have to be changed to "E:\" or whatever your cdrom drive is).

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The K-Meleon browser is what is used to facilitate in the: navigation of the CD, installation of the programs, descriptions and screenshots of the programs, and location of more information from external web links. The K-meleon browser is based on the Gecko engine, which is used in the Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, and other browsers. If you click on the little "!" icon on the bottom right of the Main page, it will bring you a more detailed description of what the K-Meleon browser is.

After you inserted the Open CD into your computer and are at the Main page (see screenshot), you could navigate around by just clicking on the various links. The About (or About Open Source) page will give a general description about Open Source Software and the Open CD project. It also has the link to "Further Reading", the Open Source text mentioned above. The Ubuntu link describes what Ubuntu is, gives a brief tour (which includes some screenshots), and also how to use the LiveCD. The Resources (or On-line Resources) page includes links various Open Source related websites. These links should open up a your regular browser and take you to the website. You do need internet connectivity to access them.

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The rest of the links on the left side of the browser, Productivity, Design, Internet, Multimedia, Games, and Utilities, will bring you to the various Program pages. All of the Program pages look similar to the OpenOffice.org page on the right. You will have a Description Tab and a Screenshots Tab (which have various screenshots of the program running). You also have on the right side of the browser, and Install icon (which will install the program when clicked), a Web Site icon (which will open up the program website in your usual browser) and a summary of how much disk space you need and the License of the program. All of the programs have a similar browser page.

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Now, a quick description of the programs on the CD. Under Productivity, you have Abiword, MoinMoin, OpenOffice.org, and PDFCreator. Abiword is a light weight, small and very fast word processor. Being light weight, it will run fairly well even on an old 486 computer. MoinMoin is a personal wiki that you are able to install, use and access locally from you own computer. For an example of a wiki, take a look at theWikipedia at www.wikipedia.org . PDFCreator is a pseudo virtual printer. You now have the ability to create pdf documents just by printing out the document, but instead of using your normal printer, you would select the PDFCreator printer.

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Under Design, you have Blender, Gimp, and Nvu. Blender is an advanced 3D modeling program used in make modern animations like the recent movie "Cars" (Blender wasn't used in this movie, but could have been). The Gimp is a image manipulation program (hence it's name "Gnu Image Manipulation Program). It you have seen or used Adobe Photoshop, should get up to speed with The Gimp fairly quickly. Nvu is a webpage creator/editor. It is based on the same Gecko Engine that the K-Meleon and Firefox browser is built on. A lot of the features are very similar to the Firefox browser.

Under Internet, you have Firefox, Thunderbird, and Gaim. Firefox is an alternative browser to Internet Explorer. So far it has a better security record than IE, and has many more features. Thunderbird is an email client. It comes from the same place and people that created Mozilla and Firefox. Gaim is an instant messenger client. It has the ability to all of the major im services, including AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! IRC and many, many others.

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Under Multimedia you have Audacity, Celestia, and Screensavers. Audacity is a sound mixing program that works with all of the major sound formats (to work with mp3, you must install a 3rd party encoder, directions are included). Celestia is Universe simulation program. You could similuate the position and view of various planets, stars and even satellites from any where. Screensavers is just a collection of addition Open Source and fun screensavers. Under Games, Sokaban YASC and B. Wesnoth. Sokaban YASC (Yet Another Sokoban Clone) is a very simple, but addictive game. You have control of a player and you object is to achieve certain goals by pushing blocks around. B. Wesnoth is a turn based strategy game. You could play it alone, or with other on a network.

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Under Utilities, you have 7-Zip and Notepad2. 7-Zip is a compression program that works for both compression/archiving and uncompression. It supports all of the major compression formats, zip, cab, rar, gzip and many, many more (don't let the 7 in the name fool you ;-) ). Notepad2 is a replacement for Notepad that normally comes with Windows. Like Microsoft Notepad, it is small fast and comes with few frills. But it does have some added functionality, like color highlighting and support for other character encoding.

This concludes a brief (or an attempt to be brief) description of parts of the Open CD Project that could be run from Windows.

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The other part of the cd, is the Ubuntu LiveCD. A live cd, is an operating system that could be run completely from a cdrom. It doesn't need to access your hard drive at all. This means when you are done using it, just reboot your computer, and nothing has changed. To use the Ubuntu LiveCD, put the cd into your cdrom, and reboot your computer. You may have to go into your cmos/bios page and make sure your computer tries to boot from your cdrom first. Most computers are set up this way already. If not, please refer to your motherboard or computer manufactor manual.

After you boot into the Ubuntu LiveCD (this may take awhile while it probes for all of your hardware), play around with it as much as you want. You really can't hurt anything, and your compute will be the same when you reboot. You may notice it takes things a little long for programs to start from the LiveCD, this is because it runs directly from your cdrom. If it was installed on your hard drive, it would be much, much faster.

Stay tuned for more in-depth description of the various Windows programs on the CD.

© Steve Bibayoff, 2006

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