What is the coolest Linux program you had never heard of

[sabriah]

A few minutes ago I just stumbled upon a very nice program i had never heard of - Salome, at http://www.salome-platform.org

While it may be premature to judge it without having tested it, I am sure many of you have stumbled upon a program, you just must try out.

But, that's the point. The pure excitement! Getting carried away by the hype.

What is the coolest Linux program you had never heard of before?

[curaga]

Fyre

Awesome wallpaper generator.

[bridgman]

I think the idea is to improve upstream practices so that the chances of blocker bugs appearing at the end are reduced, not lowering the quality bar at the end.

[bridgman]

Oops, wrong thread

[RealNC]

You can delete posts even though you're not allowed to modify them

[bridgman]

You still need to get into the edit/delete page within 1 minute after posting. For edits you also have to submit changes within the same 1 minute window, while deletes can happen after the 1 minute window has passed, but if you haven't pushed the Edit button within one minute after posting I believe you are SOL.

EDIT - in other words I have an edit button visible for this post but not for the one I made a few minutes ago.

[yotambien]

Probably all these are well known, but recently I discovered MeshLab and jReality, which are very cool, although I only need some very basic functionality from them. Also, Mayavi is pure gold. In other order of things, I also recently found Fontmatrix, a very cool font manager.

[sabriah]

Probably all these are well known, but recently I discovered MeshLab and jReality, which are very cool, although I only need some very basic functionality from them. Also, Mayavi is pure gold. In other order of things, I also recently found Fontmatrix, a very cool font manager.

I hadn't seen MeshLab or jReality. Mayavi yes, but not the others. Thanks for the Ffontmatrix tip, also an unexpected goodie! Now I dare to visit http://www.fontaholic.co.uk again...

[Ezra]

The small business market presents a couple challenges to Linux. Small businesses often lack a trained IT staff, and are staffed by users familiar with Microsoft applications. In such an environment, Linux can be a tough sell. However, companies such as Point Clark Networks, developer of ClarkConnect, are striving to bring the security, reliability, and cost advantages of open source to the small business market.

ClarkConnect is available in three editions:

* Professional -- Acts as a gateway or firewall. Includes a number of open source security programs for antivirus, antispam, content filtering, VPN, and other purposes.
* Office -- Includes the security features of the Professional edition along with common open source server applications.
* Home -- Contains the same software as the other two editions, but lacks commercial support.

All three versions use the same underlying source code, but only the home edition is free; the Professional and Office editions are available for $100 and $125 respectively, which includes one month of technical support. Both of the commercial versions can also hook into Point Clark Networks ASP services, about which more in a moment. However, anyone considering either of the commercial versions would be wise to download and test the home version first. You are also free to download and modify the source code.

ClarkConnect uses a text-based version of the Anaconda installer pioneered by Red Hat. The installer keeps the number of questions to a minimum. Installation time will be anywhere from a half hour to an hour depending upon your system's specifications.

You can configure some of the server's network settings directly from the server with the text-only Lynx Web browser. You have to configure its firewall and server software through a Web browser from another computer. ClarkConnect installs a Web server on port 82 to process the PHP scripts it uses for configuration.

To access the Web-based configuration, type http://ipaddressofserver:82 in your browser's location bar. This brings up a password prompt. Log in as root with the password you chose during installation. The first page that greets you is ClarkConnect's Dashboard, which provides an overview of the system's current state, along with statistics on email activity on the server.

[joffe]

Concept Systems command & control systems for seismic surveys - they had SPECTRA at my previous workplace and were in the process of migrating to ORCA.

It is basically a navigation suite that controls the seismic survey ship, and the little controllers on each hydrophone cable (streamer). Everything is linked via GPS positioning and satellite communication. The length of these towed hydrophones reach tens of kilometers and the total size is immense.

My mind was further blown when the same application synced two ships both in speed, position and course while also syncing the seismic air guns on the slave vessel to the streamers' position of the master vessel.

http://www.iongeo.com/Marine_Imaging/Towed_Streamer/Command_and_Control_/

This is the kind of stuff you won't see anywhere else. It's fun when you're shown how things like this actually works.. Even more fun when it all runs on plain old HP and Dell machines running Red Hat.