Today is World Day Against Software Patents

September 24 is World Day Against Software Patents. Why are software patent so bad you ask? They are bad because they are being issued too freely for trivial ideas and then used as a tool by patent trolls for litigation. Instead of encouraging innovation as intended they are stifling innovation. Do you want to have a wish list on your website like everyone else? Too bad, you have to pay Channel Intelligence or worry about getting sued. Software patents let companies bully each other too with FUD like in this case with Microsoft and Linux. I think the threat of software patents to Linux and any developer really was best explained by Bruce Perens: "And you can never finish a patent search. The definitions are so broad, you can't ever be sure a company would or would not assert their patent on what you are doing." On one last note, there is the Open Invention Network which aims to make some of these patents royalty-free.

You can help fix the patent system. See what you can do.

Installing Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 8.04

I've been exploring web app frameworks lately in hopes of starting work on a new site. I first looked at some PHP implementations, namely CodeIgniter and CakePHP. I mostly looked at those thanks to all the cheap and easy hosting available for PHP. I also thought some about a Java framework like Spring or Struts but I mostly write Java these days so I wanted to branch out. What I finally decided on was Ruby on Rails. I have dabbled with Rails a little in the past and have started working on a few real projects recently that are also using Rails so I will be learning it anyway.

So far all my development in Rails has been on Windows. Rails is rather Mac centric and I am a little unsure of the Linux support. I know that the one other project I am working on is deployed on Ubuntu 8.04 server so surely I can develop on it too.

First thing is first. Install ruby:

$ sudo apt-get install ruby

And then ruby doc:

$ sudo apt-get install rdoc

(If you don't install ruby doc, you are going to get an error later when installing ruby gems.)

Now you could at this point install rails and ruby gems using apt-get or synaptic but you don't want to. Rails is currently at version 2.1.1 and ruby gems is version 1.2.0 but the Ubuntu repositories only have versions 2.0.2 and 1.1.1 respectively. If Ubuntu backports had newer versions we would be set but I don't see rails in the mix. Having a package manager built into the OS is not something that Windows and Mac have available to them natively so ruby has gems as a package manager. Unfortunately this can conflict with the OS package manager so that is why we aren't going to install ruby gems or rails with apt-get.

So now you want to download ruby gems here. Extract it (anywhere), fire up a terminal, change to the directory you just extracted and run:

$ sudo ruby setup.rb

If you happen to get the error message: ./lib/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require': no such file to load -- rdoc/rdoc (LoadError) then you skipped over my point to install ruby doc above. Go back and install that and you will be caught up again.

After a minute or so you will have ruby gems installed. To install rails run:

$ sudo /usr/bin/gem1.8 install rails

After a few minutes more, you are ready to start developing with rails. You may also want to consider using Eclipse and Aptana.


Also, if after this when trying to fire up WEBrick you get the error: /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.1.1/lib/initializer.rb:229:in `require_frameworks': no such file to load -- openssl (RuntimeError) You will need to install libopenssl-ruby:

$ sudo apt-get install libopenssl-ruby

You may need to install mysql too even if you are only accessing a remote database so keep that in mind too.

Digg: 50 Proprietary Programs We All Hate--and the OS Alternatives

It's not the price of the software that makes the real difference (although it's a reason to migrate from one software to another for many people); it's the idea that proprietary software comes with boundaries that keep the user experience confined to... well, being the user. Here are 50 commonly used programs that have open source alternatives.

read more | digg story

I pointed out many of the same applications in an earlier post: Cross Platform Applications That Make the Switch from Windows to Linux Easier

Cross Platform Applications That Make the Switch from Windows to Linux Easier

I'll admit that switching from Windows to Linux is not always a painless process. Years of learning the ins and outs of Windows doesn't always transfer to Linux. Fortunately when it comes to the applications you use, the process can become a little easier.

There are numerous cross platform applications that allow you to run the same exact application you may run under Linux in Windows. If you are already comfortable with an application in Windows before switching to Linux, that removes one hurdle for you.

Best of all, most if not all, of these applications are a free download away. Not all of them are Open Source though which I would argue is also a promising thing (not for Free Software advocates though) because it shows commercial support for Linux.

Some of my favorite applications that I have used or use regularly are listed below:

• Firefox - My primary web browser for the last 5 years. Take back the web!
  
• Pidgn - (Formerly Gaim) This is one wonderful all in one IM client. It supports all of these protocols: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo! and Zephyr. I started using this as my only IM client the minute I had to log into AIM and Yahoo! at the same time. I haven't looked back.
  
• OpenOffice - A great open source office suite. Stop spending so much money on MS Word and just download the hefty 120-140MB installer. OO also helped lead the charge for the new Open Document Format (ODF) which will allow office documents to work for anyone, not just those paying the Microsoft Tax. I imagine I will blog more on ODF sooner or later since it and the OOXML specification are still battling it out.
  
• Thunderbird - A good email client brought to you from the same people who brought you Firefox. I have to be honest and say it is not my favorite email client but it is still solid. Once you get to Linux you might want to try Evolution which is more Outlook like (and may have a Win32 version too!).
  
• Filezilla - A decent and full featured GUI FTP client. I don't like the latest UI updates that are part of version 3.0 but you get used to stuff like that. It does what you need without the need for a command line.
  
• Gimp - The "Photoshop Killer" it is not but still a great replacement for many. I am working on learning it since I do use Photoshop quite a bit.
  
• Azureus - My old favorite Bittorrent client. It is super feature rich. It is also a resource hog in my opinion. I've opted for uTorrent on Windows and Deluge in Linux. All 3 are similar though. Maybe now that I have more RAM I will give it a go again.
  
• Google Desktop - Yep, Google ported their desktop search tool to Linux. There are other Linux specific desktop search applications but that is not the point of this post.
  
• Wireshark - (formerly Ethereal) An awesome packet sniffer. You may never need this but when you do, it is there for you on both OSes.
  
• Google Earth - This is just fun to play with! Especially for a Geocacher like me.
  
• Picasa - Great photo management application. And to get it working, they made changes to Wine that were given back the the community. Open Source at its finest.
• Abiword - A word processor that handles MS Word documents well and is lightweight and fast.
  
• TightVNC - Remote desktop access. I use this mostly on Windows.
  
• Eclipse - The new heavyweight (in a good and bad way) of IDEs. It is designed to be an IDE for any and everything you can imagine thanks to a plug-in architecture.
• Second Life - An online 3d virtual world game. I don't use it much but it is fun that it works.
  

And others I am less familiar with like:

• Opera - Another web good browser. I only use it sporadically now. Back in the day when I had a 486 I ran it because all the other browsers were so slow. I mostly use it on my Wii these days.
  
• VLC - Good all purpose media player. I used it to watch DVDs in Linux and haven't used the Windows version before.
  
• Audacity - Sound recording and editing software.
  
• Inkscape - Scalable Vector Grapics (SVG) editor like Illustrator or Corel Draw.
  
• Password Gorilla - Password Manager
  
• RSS Owl - RSS Feed Reader
  
• Nvu - Web authoring like DreamWeaver or FrontPage
  
• Xchat - IRC chat program
  
• Mame - Play old video games with this emulator. I've only used the Windows version of this and that was many years ago.
  
• POPFile - Filter out all that annoying SPAM and sort other types of email too! I've run this in Windows for years but never Linux. It is written in Perl so I know it will run in Linux.
  

Also, as web applications are growing in use, all you need is a browser in any OS for many applications. Webmail, Google Docs, Bloglines, online calendars, etc all look and work the same (mostly!) on any compatible browser regardless of operating system. My eventual switch to Linux, among other advantages, is why I made the switch from POP email to a webmail provider.

There are of course other cross platform applications like Apache, Tomcat and MySQL but Linux is and has been rock solid as a server for a long time so I'm not really thinking about those applications. Just sticking to the desktop here.

What applications did I miss that you use? I know there are more. I thought of a few new ones just from proof reading this post.

Some Linux Software Application Links

I don't have a lot to talk about today. I haven't had much time to play around or work on anything new today. I do have a few interesting Linux software links I've found off Digg recently to share. I haven't actually checked out the software yet but plan to check out some of it in the future.

• Opensource Applications for Design and Development - There are a lot of applications listed here. Some I know are good, many I have not heard of. Some are pretty lame but the list is of 50 (or supposed to be, I didn't actually count them). I think the one I will play with first is Pixelize. I love mosaics! The last time I played with mosaic software was a Java application called JImage Mosaic.
• Top 10 free Linux 3D games - I don't play many games but the screen shots of these look pretty sweet. I have played Tux Racer before and it was pretty fun. I look forward to trying out the America’s Army game. Update: America's Army is currently at version 2.8.2 but the latest Linux version is 2.5 and is no longer being supported (bummer!). You can still download the America's Army Linux Torrent I think.
  

Those links of "Linux Software" also reminded me of a site I found a while back. The site, open source software alternatives (osalt.com) helps users to find replacements for the commercial software they used to use on Windows. Looking for an iTunes replacement or something like mIRC?

Then there is the site "The table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux." Despite it only being a single page, it is a gem. Looking at it again, it is much better than osalt.com.

What other sites do you know about that show Windows -> Linux software alternatives? Leave them for me in the comments!