OpenSource Blog's

The Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. It offers several large campaigns, and you can play as Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs or Undead.

The characters you can recruit have many different features, letting you choose how to battle across different lands and against different opponents. You can even join friends in online games.

Extra Requirements:GTK+
Version: 1.4.1
Suitability:All

Tux Paint is a free drawing program designed for young children (kids ages 3 and up). It has a simple, easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who helps guide children as they use the program. It provides a blank canvas and a variety of drawing tools to help your child be creative.

Once you've installed Tuxpaint, you may want to download the and install the rubber stamp images package to get access to a whole zoo of creature stamps.
Extra Requirements:none
Version: 0.9.19
Suitability:3-11

Inkscape is an easy to use vector graphics editor. Because Inkscape uses "vector" rather than "raster" graphics editing (which is mostly used by the GIMP), you can always go back later to reposition items and change font sizes, and you won't end up with blocky graphics when you enlarge your images. This makes Inkscape perfect for making logos, web 2.0 style images and create diagrams for reports and projects.

With capabilities similar to Illustrator, Fireworks, Freehand, CorelDraw, and Xara X; Inkscape offers professional tools and features. Inkscape uses Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and can save to multiple vector-based formats, this means you can work on things in Inkscape and then transfer them to other programs at school. The program offers lots of cool tools, including layers, in-built shapes and complicated shading effects. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG, you you can include your images in what ever program you need.

Extra Requirements:none
Version: 0.46
Suitability:All

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is suitable for those wanting to edit digital photographs, design and export graphics for the web, convert images from one file format to another, or even produce complex high-resolution graphics for print. The GIMP features a number of paint and photo editing tools found in other professional image editors, it has support for loading and saving in formats compatible with Adobe Photoshop and Paintshop Pro amongst others, and much much more!

If you install the GIMP Animation Package, you can then use GIMP to create animated GIF images.

The GIMP is a feature-packed program which may seem a little scary at first. We suggest looking at the manual and tutorials available from the Gimp web site.

The GIMP uses the GTK+ library which is also available on the OpenDisc. The GIMP will not work without GTK+, so make sure to install GTK+ before installing the GIMP. Then click top right to get started!

Extra Requirements:GTK+
Version: 2.4.5
Suitability:All

Blender can make advanced 3D graphics allowing you to make models and animations. If you are really good you can even make things as stunning as the latest Hollywood movies! It is the only 3D creation program which allows the artist to model, texture, animate, render, and export the finished product in a package less than 10 MB (plus it's free!). Blender natively exports to a multitude of 3D formats such as VRML, Cal3d, AC3D allowing you to work with other high quality 3D programs.

With a new user interface and the release of the Blender User's guide, using Blender is easier than ever. Even so, 3D modeling remains a very hard computing task, with the result that Blender is a difficult application to get good at. To help you start designing animations and programming games, we've included a tutorial on using Blender.

Extra Requirements:none
Version: 2.45
Suitability:14+

The Firefox web browser empowers you to browse web pages faster, more safely, and more efficiently. Key features include pop-up blocking to stop those annoying ads, tabbed browsing to let you view multiple web pages in a single window, and opening links in the background so that they're ready for viewing when you're ready to read them. The toolbars are fully customizable. Don't like the default order of the buttons? Right click, select "customize" and drag that button where you want it.

You can expand Firefox's functionality using a wide variety of extensions. These offer you the ability to customize your web experience through automatic form completion, flash blocking, in-browser games, or development tools to help you study how web pages are made. There is also a range of themes available to let you alter the look of the browser. The easy transition system imports all of your settings, including favourites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer and other browsers, so you can start surfing right away.

Possibly the best reason to start using Firefox is its enhanced security. Built with your security in mind from the start, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by preventing harmful ActiveX controls, and offers a comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity private. In this age of rampant virus, trojan and phishing attacks, Firefox provides a secure alternative.
Version: 3.0.1

Thunderbird is a modern email client with features such as intelligent spam filters to stop you getting junk mail, a built-in spell checker, a range of themes and customisable layout. Thunderbird provides IMAP/POP support so you can link it with hotmail, gmail, yahoo and many others. It has HTML e-mail composing, quick searchs for old messages, an address book, autoaddress completion, import tools, and the ability to manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts at the same time. You can add a wide variety of extensions to Thunderbird to add additional features or tweak its behaviour to suit your own preferences.

As with Mozilla Firefox, security is a central theme. Thunderbird provides business and government level security features such as S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices. The intelligent Thunderbird spam filter analyses your e-mails to identify those that are most likely to be junk. These can be automatically deleted or diverted to a separate folder. The spam filter is adaptive and also learns from your address book and usage to improve its accuracy.

Extra Requirements:none
Version: 2.0.0.12
Suitability:11+

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way of finding out what is new on websites without having to check them yourself. Software that collects data from RSS sites (such as the BBC) are called RSS readers or "aggregators." RSSOwl is one of these. RSSOwl lets you gather, organize, update, and store information from any RSS capable site, easy to use interface, save selected information in various formats for offline viewing and sharing, and much more.

Find some interesting blog entries and news websites, bookmark them in RSSOwl, and you'll always have up-to-date information available on your computer without having to keep checking those websites.

Extra Requirements:none
Version: 1.2.4
Suitability:All

Pidgin is an Internet Messaging (chat) client that enables you to chat with other people across the internet. Examples include AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Google talk and Jabber. Pidgin can talk to all of these at the same time, so if you have contacts on different networks, you can talk to them all from one easy to use program.

Pidgin uses the GTK+ library which is also available on this CD. Pidgin will not work without GTK+, so make sure to install GTK+ before installing Pidgin.

Pidgin supports many features, such as file transfer, away messages, buddy icons, typing notification, and MSN window closing notifications well as many unique features. Buddy Pounce can be used to notify you when a buddy signs on, goes away or returns from idle. There are also plugins available for text replacement, extended message notification, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more. Pidgin integrates well with the Windows system tray, allowing you to work with Pidgin without requiring the buddy list window to be up at all times.

Pidgin uses the GTK+ library which is also available on this CD. Pidgin will not work without GTK+, so make sure to install GTK+ before installing Pidgin.

Extra Requirements:GTK+
Version: 2.4.1
Suitability:All

KompoZer is the open source world's answer to Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Microsoft Front Page. It is a fully featured What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) web page editor, enabling you to create professional web pages without having to devote months to learning HTML. KompoZer includes an integrated FTP site manager to upload your websites to your webspace, a style sheet editor, tabbed workspaces, and all the features you've come to expect from a fully-featured web page editor. Because KompoZer is built on top of the award-winning Gecko rendering engine that also powers the Firefox web browser, every moment is a live preview: what you see is truly what you get.

Extra Requirements:none
Version: 0.7.10
Suitability:All

PDFs are a very common type of file for sending text and pictures to people. Sumatra PDF lets you read them easily, with a simple design that allows fast browsing and even faster loading times. It also remembers the last page of every PDF you read, so you can resume reading at any time in the future.

Extra Requirements:none
Version: 0.8
Suitability:All

Use PDFCreator to generate PDF documents directly from any Windows program. PDF (Portable Document Format) files are the standard documents used in electronic publishing, because you can be sure that a PDF will look the same on all computers. PDFs are becoming even more important in schools and universities with some courses only allowing you to hand in work in PDF format. PDFs can also be generated with commercial packages, but PDFCreator is by far the easiest and cheapest option (free). Once installed, simply select 'Print' from the File menu of your word processor or drawing program, and select 'PDFCreator Printer' from the list of printers. Click 'Save' and enter a name for your PDF output file. That's it!

Optionally, you may also enter information to identify the document, such as Title, Creation Date and Author. The Options dialogue lets you control the process in more detail. You can set the resolution and compression levels for the various file types, and control how fonts are included. Use the security feature to protect your document with a password. JPEG, PNG, Postscript (PS) and Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) output formats are also supported.

For the advanced user, PDFCreator is highly customizable, and offers a wide variety of options regarding document encoding, compression levels, and automated document conversion.

Extra Requirements:none
Version: 0.9.5
Suitability:11+

Dia is diagram software, it allows you to draws all sorts of technical drawings including flowcharts and circuit diagrams.

Technical diagrams are needed when doing work such as electronics and cooking. You may also have need to use a flow chart to show how you plan out how to solve a problem. For example what would you do to bake a cake? Dia can help you solve all these problems on a computer where you can correct mistakes and save your work. You can also place your diagrams into other programs like Writer or Word.

Use Dia to solve technology class problems and plan out how you are going to do things!
Make sure you have installed the GTK+ Runtime Library already on your computer, clicking on the link below will tell you. Once you have installed that, click the install icon to the right to start the installation.

Extra Requirements:GTK+
Version: 0.96.1
Suitability:All

FreeMind is a mind mapping program which lets you collect your ideas in an easy to understand way with text, colours and pictures.

A mind map is a drawing used to show words, ideas, tasks or other things. Everything is written around a word or idea in the middle. This word or idea is the main topic of the mind map, and the things around it are linked to the main idea. It is used to store and order ideas, and is very useful for study, ordering your things, solving problems, planning, and making choices. FreeMind lets you do all this on your computer and is really good for planning essays or projects.

Use FreeMind to plan your school work or even make your birthday present list!
Make sure you have the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed, A copy can be downloaded from Sun Microsystems. Once you have done this, click on the install icon top right.

Extra Requirements:Java Runtime Environment
Version: 0.9.0 -BETA version
Suitability:All

GanttProject is a useful tool to help you plan your projects like a professional. A gantt chart is a quick and easy way to plan large projects by splitting them into lots of little tasks and seeing how all the tasks work with each other. You can give some time to each little task and keep track of how you are doing until you complete the entire project. GanttProject allows you to plan your projects to the smallest detail all on a computer so you can save, change and print everything you do. You can even work with commercial software like Microsoft Project as GanttProject can open files made with it and GanttProject has many of the features that Microsoft Project does.
Use GanttProject to plan your projects or even your jobs to do at home!

Extra Requirements:Java Runtime Environment
Version: 2.0.6
Suitability:11+

Scribus is a professional desktop publishing application with a selection of "press-ready" templates. Scribus includes powerful tools for making professional documents like those you would see on the shelf of a newspaper shop.

Scribus supports thousands of languages including right to left text such as Arabic and Hebrew. Scribus supports professional formats so you can open documents from other programs and save to programs like Word and Publisher. Examples of Scribus uses include writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and even books.

Scribus depends on the GDI+ library which is included in Windows XP. If your version of Windows does not include this library, it can be downloaded from here. Click on the install logo top right to get started.

Extra Requirements:GDI+ library
Version: 1.3.9
Suitability:11+

Do you want the ability to run Microsoft Office documents at home for free? OpenOffice lets you open and save to Microsoft formats, and offers a range of programs with similar features to those found in Microsoft Office.

OpenOffice.org is a full-featured office suite including:

* Writer - word processor and web page editor
* Calc - spreadsheet package
* Impress - Presentation software
* Draw - Design program
* Base - Database
* Math - Mathematical equation writer

The word processor, Writer, is suitable for making professional documents, reports, newsletters and brochures. A powerful spreadsheet called Calc contains complex tools for calculation, data analysis and visualisation, its built-in charting tools are able to make customisable 2D and 3D charts. The presentation utility, Impress, uses effects, animation and drawing tools to help you create great multimedia slide shows to present the way you want to. Use the Draw component to produce either simple diagrams or complex 3D pictures and special effects for use in documents and presentations. The database tool, Base, give you all the tools you need for day to day database work in a simple spreadsheet-like form.

OpenOffice.org is becoming the office suite of choice in education, government, and business. The OpenOffice.org website contains tutorials, manuals and many other tools to help you create professional documents.
Click the install icon to the right to start the installation process. You will be asked a series of questions about the components you wish to install and the program location on your computer. The default choices are generally fine. You will also be prompted to select or install a Java Runtime Environment (JRE). This is an optional component which extends the functionality of OpenOffice.org in some areas. A copy can be downloaded from Sun Microsystems. You can also select whether OpenOffice.org should open Microsoft Office documents by default.

Extra Requirements:Java Runtime Environment (optional)
Version: 2.4.0
Suitability:All