After a recent post on a forum, extolling the virtues of a number of  free Open Source program, I made mention that they were always the same problems being mentioned – OpenOffice, ClamWin, Audacity, etc. SourceForge alone holds over 150,000 Open Source projects, let alone those at Google Code, etc.

So, I was set a challenge – find some Open Source software that most people won’t have come across.

Ok, that was the plan. Now, the limitations (self set). Nothing too technical, nor niche. No games (otherwise I could just easily provide 10 of them). Oh, and they have to be Windows applications – no Linux, Mac, PHP scripts, etc.

I thought plunging into my Firefox bookmarks would yeald 10 but, sadly, most were either games or too technical for this list. Or I’ve covered them elsewhere in my blog. So, a number I’ve had to scourer SourceForge for (oh, I wish their search facility was better). And some goodies I’ve come up with too – I’m sure there’s scope for further list in the future but, in the meantime, here’s my 10 (in no particular order)…

TV-Browser
A desktop based EPG. It’s German in origin but includes UK channels. I’ve only had a brief play with it so far, but I’ve been impressed.

MP3Gain
This is something I’ve been using for years. Now, adding gain to MP3s (i.e. bringing them all up to a similar volume) is something built into many media players and burning products. However, MP3Gain is a standalone product designed to do this one task. And well.

DVDStyler
DVDStyler is a DVD authoring program for the creation of professional-looking DVDs. It allows not only burning of video files on DVD that can be played practically on any standalone DVD player, but also creation of own-designed DVD menus.

Arora
Yes, it’s another browser! Based on WebKit (like Chrome and Safari), it’s fast and available on a number of platforms. However, the fact that is has recently “elbowed out” Konqueror as the browser of choice in Kubuntu, has made news.

MuseScore
An excellent WYSIWYG musical score editor. It’s packed full of features, including importing of data and has a built in sequencer and synth.

SmillaEnlarger
Another simple idea, done well. SmillaEnlarger will magnify images in high quality. Useful for “blowing up” part of a photo. And it will go on a USB key as well.

AxCrypt
A file encryption tool that integrates directly into Windows Explorer. Simply right click on a file and you can quickly and easily encrypt it, with password protection (or without, for simple sending via email).

WindowsPager
If you’ve used Linux any time recently, you’ll probably have come across its virtual desktop environment, where you can easily switch between multiple desktops via an icon in the toolbar. Well, WindowsPager provides a similar facility. It’s not perfect, however, and I spotted a problem with Command Prompt windows, but it’s worth a try – as with most of these products, it’s still being worked on.

Synkron
Synkron is a relatively powerful folder synchronisation tool. How you use it, well, is up to you – for something as simple as synchronising a USB key to your PC, or as a quick backup tool.

Hugin
I said I’ve avoid anything too technical and, well, this isn’t. It’s just powerful. But if you’re a keen photographer, you’ll love this. It’s a photo stitcher (which can allow you, for example, to make panoramic images) which is a bit more manual that many (but, hence, it’s power).

I’ve written a number of times on this topic, but thought I’d bring it all up to date and draw all the various disparate posts together.

I use Kubuntu, not as my main OS, but for web development testing, which means I need a broad cross-section of Linux browsers. Therefore I run Kubuntu for it’s KDE interface (and, hence, Konqueror). I do this under VirtualBox – the virtual machine that I’ve found to be the best.

So, here’s my def. guide to creating a web development build of Kubuntu (for the layman, but assuming you can find your way around an OS and VirtualBox a bit). Ok, here goes…

Installing Kubuntu

1. Download the Kubuntu ISO (I’m using the 32-bit addition) and save on your computer.
2. IF you’ve not already creating a guest machine on VirtualBox, do so. I find an 8GB hard drive, 256MB base memory and 12MB graphics memory is sufficient. I also enable the 3D acceleration and VT-x/AMD-v options.
3. Attach the previously saved ISO as a mounted CD and boot. This will run through the installation – install this onto the previous created virtual hard drive.
4. Reboot after the install.

Ok, now you have Kubuntu. Start it up again and we’ll configure it.

Automatic Login

1. Go into System Settings.
2. Click on the Advanced Tab and select “Login Manager”
3. Click on the Convenience tab.
4. Click on Enable Auto-login and select the user from the drop-down list.
5. Apply these changes

This has set Kubuntu to automatically log you in each time – a handy time-saver.

Switch off Screen Saver

1. Go into System Settings
2. Click on Desktop
3. Click on the Screen Saver option
4. Untick “Start automatically”
5. Apply these changes

Update Build

The next thing I do is to go into the Adept Manager and install any pending updates. This ensures your build is as up-to-date as possible.

Now restart the system.

Installing Linux Additions

Linux Additions is software which improves the interactivity between your host machine and your guest machine – in my case, between Windows XP and Kubuntu.

1. Start Kubuntu. At the top of the VirtualBox window, select Devices and then click on “Install Guest Additions”
2. Open up Konsole and run the following…
   sudo aptitude install build-essential linux headers-`uname -r`
3. Once complete, run the following commands…
   cd /media/cdrom
sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
4. Once complete you’ll be prompted to restart the system, which you should do.

Once the system has restarted you’ll notice that you’ll be able to cleanly interact with the Kubuntu system via your mouse, without having to click in the window and use a “hot key” to return back to Windows. It will also give you extra video facilities which leads onto…

Improving Screen Size

I don’t know if it’s the same with your build but up until the point I installed the Linux Additions, Kubuntu was displaying in a 800×600 pixel window. However, now it’s gone to 1152×864, which is a lot better. Personally, I’m going to change it, so here’s how to do it…

1. Go into System Settings
2. Click on Display
3. By default the Size and Orientation option should be selected
4. You should see an option to set the size – change this via the drop-down
5. Apply these changes

The screen then proceeded to corrupt and I had to reboot the Kubuntu session to get it back – this worked however and my resolution is as I set it.

Installing Browsers

Kubuntu comes with Konqueror. The two further browsers I wish to install are Firefox and Opera.

First of all, Firefox…

1. Go into Adept Installer
2. Search for & install Firefox

A simple one that! Now for Opera…

1. Browse to http://www.opera.com/download/ and download the latest version to your desktop (it should be a .deb file)
2. Right click and select “Open With” followed by “GDebi Package Installer”

And that should be it. All done. However, each update to Kubuntu normally brings along changes to the above (e.g. with 8.10 I lost the ability to easily specify my monitor and video card hardware).

The plan now is to keep this post up-to-date (I’ll add appropriate comments to highlight where changes are made). In time I’m going to add a selection of FAQ pages to the site, and I’m sure this will become one of them.

Good luck and if you have any problems, please drop me a comment.

So, I started up my copy of Kubuntu, running under VirtualBox. For ages it’s been saying that there are no updates available for it, which is odd, so I ran it manually. This time I found a version update available – updating to 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). So I ran it.

Now, in the past when I’ve tried to do updates of the OS it’s failed. This time it worked. Until I rebooted. Then the GUI failed and everything was command line <sigh>

Rather than try and fix this I thought it best simply to do another install. I downloaded the latest 8.10 ISO, but grabbed the 64-bit version instead. The latest version of VirtualBox will allow you to run 64-bit guests on a 32-bit host.

However, I do seem to keep getting a “Incomplete language support” error box. Running the requested installation doesn’t seem to fix it. Or generally do anything. On top of that I seem to have got in an infinite loop of installing updates – they appear to download and install but are then pending again. Hmmm. I also built the 32-bit version at the same time (as you do) and that too had the same issues.

On the plus side, KDE is looking nice, with desktop gadgets (which I turned off) and lots of neat graphical touches. Although I am, for one, not a fan of “style over substance”, whether it’s Linux or the latest Apple product. If Linux is going to make it to the populace, it’s going to have to do better than this.

In fact, in the end I stopped using the 64-bit version and moved over to the 32-bit copy I had. I’m not going to blame Kubuntu in this case – it was slow and buggy, but I suspect this is down to the Beta nature of the 64-bit support in VirtualBox. Oh well, it was definately worth a try.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, VirtualBox is my favourite of all the virtualisation tools out there. I use it to run Kubuntu on my Windows XP machine, for web development purposes.

Anyway, I have just the one “guest” machine, Kubuntu, so it seems a bit tedious to have to start VirtualPC each time. Nautrally, there is another way – a command line shortcut.

Cutting to the chase, I’m assuming you know how to create a shortcut. I’ll also assume you’re using the latest version of VirtualBox, since it was rebranded under the Sun banner. Right, here’s the shortcut…

"C:\Program Files\Sun\xVM VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" startvm xxx

Where xxx is the name of your virtual guest.

And that’s it really. Oh, and if you want to make it pretty, I even found a Kubuntu icon to make that shortcut look even more appropriate.

There’s a facility with VirtualBox to install “Guest Additions” – various utilities for a particular OS that will enhance it’s capabilities to work with VirtualBox. Most of the other virtualisation software has its own equivalent.

However, I’ve struggled to get it work until I came across an article in PcPro (October 2007) about how to do just that. It’s for Ubuntu but works just as well for Kubuntu.

First of all mount the Guest Additions disk. Now run the following…

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux headers-`uname -r`

When that’s done you’re supposed to change to the CD rom and run the following…

sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

For some reason I can’t get to the CD Rom via the terminal program (well I could, but it said there was nothing on it). Instead I found, by more luck than judgement, that I was able to install it at root via clicking on the CD Rom icon.

Anyway it worked. Amongst other things I can now resize my Kubuntu window up to the full 1280×1024 of my monitor. I’ve also got seamless mouse use – no more using a special key to move in and out of the virtual window, back to the host. All very handy.

Lastly, the same article gave details of a useful command line program provided with VirtualBox for making clones of your virtual hard drives. The command iis in the VirtualBox folder and is…

VBoxManage clonevdi {source disk} {output file}

The source disk is the full path to where you have the virtual drive stored.