A list of software that worth it
Initiatives
- FreeDesktop is something that should have happened earlier in the Open Source community. It aims at collecting commond needs for a desktop platform, uniting efforts and improving quality. This project rules!
Graphics
There is now some very nice free software to make graphics, apart from the major ones (Gimp, Sodipodi and Blender), here is are the ones I found interesting:
- Enblend allows to make nice panoramas. If you're like me and like to use the panorama function of your digital camera, this tool is vital.
- Resynthetizer allows to create seamless tilable images, plus other cool effects.
- Delineate allows you to convert bitmap graphics to vector graphics. This tool is vital to any graphic designer.
- Metapixel generates interesting photomosaics.
- Wings 3D is a simple yet powerful polygonal modeler written in Erlang. It is very surprising, and is simple enough for 3D modeling beginners.
- POV-Tree is a tree-generator for the Persistence Of Vision raytracer, where some way cool examples can be found here.
Command line
- linuXtree is a fine utility that allows to browse directories directly from the command line.
- Secure RM, always useful whent at work.
Programming languages
I don't have to mention Python here, because everybody knows it. However, here is a list of interesting programming languages:
- Io, minimalistic but very powerful interpreted dynamic untyped OO-protyped language that could be as useful as Python if only it had a suitable module system and more accessible internal API. It's definitely worth playing with.
- Gauche, a simple and fast R5RS Scheme interpreter. I should also mention Chicken, not only because it's funny, but because it is small and compiles Scheme to C.
- Lightweight C++ is an attempt at writing a lighter and cleaner version of C++ that can produce C code. This reminds me of the really cool Tiny C Compiler, which is sadly only oriented toward Intel processors.
Libraries
Here is a list of libraries for the software develop.
- CWXML a very effective XML library that supports binary XML.
- Tecla is a readline alternative, but with a less restrive license and more functionalities. Definitely cool.
- TRE is a lightweight and fast alternative to PCRE.
- Allegro is a really complete library for bitmap game development, which is more specialized than SDL. Definitely a good start for writing oldschool software.
- PSLib is a library that allows to create and output PostScript? documents.
- GraphicsMagick is a library that allows to load, save and modify images in up to 88 formats.
- ICU, an I18N? library, that ensures conversions and formatting according to ISO standard.
Network
Here are some cool network-related projects: