Open Source

Generally, “open source” refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design. Open-source code is typically a collaborative effort where programmers improve upon the source code and share the changes within the community so that other members can help improve it further. Open source software is free. Some organizations have capitalized off of providing support and modification services for open source software such as RedHat, Inc.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

February 24, 2015 by Andy Voelker
Categories: Operating Systems

redhat_logo

Availability: Faculty/Staff
Comparable:  CentOS Linux, Ubuntu Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a Linux distribution developed by Red Hat and targeted toward the commercial market.  It is often abbreviated to RHEL, although this is not an official designation.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is frequently used to power high security, high availability, and large scale servers across the enterprise and the internet.  Red Hat systems are also frequently used as a platform for large database systems like Oracle and ERP systems like Banner.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is built from open source software, but the Red Hat Enterprise distribution is built with support comments that are licensed with a subscription cost.  For a free open source alternative that is identical minus the support, look at CentOS.

Tags: linux

Handbrake

February 19, 2015 by Andy Voelker
Categories: Multimedia

handbrake

Availability: Free Download
Comparable: Quicktime

HandBrake is a tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.  It is free and open source and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Handbrake offers a variety of device presets to convert media to suit your device needs.  For instance, if you had a very large video file you wanted to scale down for viewing on a phone without taking up too much space, you could use an easy filter to convert the media for that specific situation.  Handbrake can also convert DVDs to video files, encode chapter markers, subtitles, and menus.

Tags: multimedia

TexMaker

November 24, 2014 by Andy Voelker
Categories: Math & Programming
Availability: Labs  |  Free Download
Comparable: 

Texmaker is a cross-platform open source LaTeX editor with an integrated PDF viewer. Texmaker is entirely a Qt app.

The editor includes full unicode support, inline spell checking, auto-completion, code folding and rectangular block selection. Regular expressions are also supported for the find-and-replace actions.  Texmaker includes wizards for the following tasks:

  • Generate a new document or a letter or a tabular environment.
  • Create tables, tabulars, figure environments, and so forth.
  • Export a LaTeX document via TeX4ht (HTML or ODT format).

Some of the LaTeX tags and mathematical symbols can be inserted in just one click and users can define an unlimited number of snippets with keyboard triggers.  Texmaker automatically locates errors and warnings detected in the log file after a compilation.  The integrated PDF viewer supports continuous, rotation and presentation mode. Direct and reverse synchronization between source TeX files and the resulting PDF file is supported via the SyncTeX support.  The Asymptote graphics language is also fully supported by Texmaker (for both editing and compilation).

TexMaker has replaced Kile in CLAS computer labs.

Tags: LaTeX