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Get Your Open Source Linux Degree! 10 Free Resources

Chase — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:25:19 +0000

One of the many wonderful aspects of Open Source is the fact that the information you need to learn your way around whatever it is you need to learn, is available for free online! For example, if it’s Linux you need to learn than you can guarantee that everything you need to learn can and will be found online free of charge. It’s quite possible that you could be a Linux IT professional making $60-100K per year at a comfortable job by simply going through these various free resources and learning the skills you need to know in the Linux world. To help you do this I have put together a list of 10 free resources for you to “Get your Open Source Linux Degree” and be on your way in the Linux world!

If you know of any other great free resources for this please let me know and leave a comment in the thread. These are 10 resources that I know of that are effective. But if there are better ones out there I would like to replace some of these with them. Thanks.

Magento Version 1.1.3 Release

Chase — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 22:10:35 +0000

Magento has just released a new version of it’s open source e-commerce/shopping cart. The version is 1.1.3 and has fixed a few bugs from version 1.1. Here are a list of those fixed bugs:

Fixed PayPal direct/express/standard errors and shipping calculation when only virtual products are in cart
Fixed internal redirects validation for secure URLs
Fixed saving product with custom options in multiple stores (Bugs #5833 and #6269)
Added HTML escaping in search queries in admin dashboard
Added displaying maximum allowed Dataflow upload file size according to server settings
Fixed Configurable Products stock deduction
Fixed minimal MySQL version checking in installation wizard
Fixed admin order refund – base tax amount was not stored after refund
Fixed single page checkout issues in modern theme
Improvements to the iPhone theme for PayPal and Virtual Products support

Thomas Friedman Keynote Address at MIT

Chase — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:32:58 +0000

If the concept is new to you, or even if you have read it before, I suggest you read the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. It’s such a fantastic book that was written so ahead of it’s time. For me, i’m reading the book for a 3rd time and it’s nice to read it and be reminded of where the Internet economy is and is headed.

Here is a Keynote that author Thomas Friedman gave at MIT on November 28, 2007. It covers of course the many topics that Thomas covers in his book “The World Is Flat”. It serves as a friendly reminder of the power the Internet has in flattening the world. With emphasis of course on Open Source! There are many topics or what Friedman calls “Flatteners”. The most important in my opinion being Open Source Software and Information! Enjoy the video. It’s 48 minutes long. Worth every minute.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcE2ufqtzyk[/youtube]

Open Source by Greg Papadopoulos

Chase — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:11:19 +0000

Greg Papadopoulos of Sun Microsystems stat down and gave a good basic presentation on what Open Source is. For those of you who are not fully aware of what it is, and think that it’s just “Free Software” than I highly recommend you watch the video. Even for the rest of you who are highly aware of what Open Source is go ahead and watch it anyways as a friendly reminder of how you can help!

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=n7g-XS5Q3mc[/youtube]

Open Source Saved Me $100,000

Chase — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:11:55 +0000

My wife and I started a web development company back in June of this past year 2007. In doing so we sought out using open source applications to help us run our business from the beginning to help us save money. Using open source software rather than proprietary software would enable us to keep as low of an overhead as possible. In searching for alternatives to open source software (paid software) that could actually benefit our business and what we are doing, it was striking to find out how much money we could have been spending. I won’t waste my time and explain to you the paid software applications we were interested in purchasing. But rather, I will share with you what open source applications we have been able to use instead saving us an estimated about of $100,000 and counting. I say counting because unfortunately most paid software programs find a way to come out with new versions every year so that you can be charged yet again.

The List Looks Like This

For our website = Drupal Content Management System

For our Documentation = MediaWiki

For our Operating Systems = Fedora Linux Operating System

For our Weblog = WordPress

For our Email Clients = Mozilla Thunderbird

For our Calendars = Mozilla Sunbird

For our Shopping Cart = Zen Cart

For our CRM = Sugar CRM

For our Accounting = GnuCash

For our Social Network = Elgg

For our Web Based Email = Squirrel Mail

For our Helpdesk = Cerberus

For our Document Mgmt. = KnowledgeTree

For our Timeclock = PHP Timeclock

For our office productivity = OpenOffice

The last thing we configured in was our web hosting costs. Because of open source software our Bluehost account is only costing us $6.95/month for 1,500 GB of hosting space and 15 TB of transfer. This alone, because we are a web business is saving us a ton of money!

Through costs of software, and also development costs to build some of these tools, we estimated that our company was able to save $100,000 because of these open source applications. Can you say Wow! I am in no way counting in what these applications have made for us thus far. That would be an entirely different number. This is just money saved. That’s it.

How is this possible? It’s possible because of all the good people out there who believe that open source should exist. What’s surprising to me is that many companies still continue to live in ignorance of these wonderful tools. I want to know how much money you have saved due to open source! Please leave your comment and share with us your numbers. Thanks

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Open Source Email Marketing

Chase — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:13:12 +0000

OpenEMM is an open source industrial enterprise software for email marketing. This is a fantastic tool to use for mass email marketing campaigns due to it’s simple interface and complex features. This software does a lot of things for you. At least from what I can read it does. I have not actually used it myself yet. It’s in my plans to install it on one of my servers sometime in the near future. I personally don’t do a lot of mass email campaigns myself but you may. In that case you will find this very helpful. Read up more on OpenEMM and it’s features by going to the features page. Check it out and let me know what you think.

MindTouch Open Source Wiki

Chase — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:54:46 +0000

MindTouch has what’s called it’s Deki Wiki which is an open source wiki application that is free to download. It’s of course similar to MediaWiki with it’s basic fundamental features, however Deki Wiki appears to be trying to make it’s application a little more user friendly. Or easier to use, however you want to put it.

We have talked about before on this blog about the importance a Wiki can play in the workplace. My personal feelings are that it is essential for every small business owner to have his/her own custom Wiki for the business to document the processes and procedures of the business. Also to allow collaboration of those within the company to help make the business progressively better. I have always used MediaWiki as a solution but i’m looking for a more user friendly solution. That’s why MindTouch and their DekiWiki might be the answer.

Has anyone used OpenBlueLab?

Chase — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:44:51 +0000

I have recently come across OpenBlueLab, an open osurce enterprise resource planner (ERP). I was wondering if anyone has had experience using it? This is the first time I have seen it and have yet to installed it on my server. It appears to be quite the complex system and could handle well for many businesses. You can find their site by going to www.openbluelab.org. Here is what they say about their product…

“Open Blue Lab aims at providing a complete ERP full web portal, open source, based on UML models. Generated through the MDA approach, a Cocoon Reference Implementation is currently available. Others implementations like JSF, Php, Ajax, .Net will be developped according wishes and votes expressed on the mailing lists. “

Any feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks. www.openbluelab.org

10 Best Open Source Applications For Small Business

Chase — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 05:25:40 +0000

I want to share with you my top 10 open source applications for small business. It’s amazing how a business can start up these days with very little cost and still have the best software money can buy. It’s a wonderful tribute to all of the people contributing to various open source applications. Here’s the list…

1. Open Office for a microsoft office replacement

2. Sugar CRM for customer relationship management
3. WordPress for blogging for your business

4. MediaWiki for online documentation

5. PHP Timeclock for the obvious!

6. ActiveCollab for project management

7. Firefox instead of using stupid old IE!

8. Mozilla Thunderbird for email and calendering

9. Drupal for content management websites

10. Joomla for content management websites

There are certaintly many others that I may be missing out on this list. And if there are, please comment back to this post and let me know which ones I am missing out. These list of tools are certain to give any struggling business a boost.

Apache: Open Source Server Software

Chase — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 04:30:43 +0000

Apache has long been the leader in open source server software and is the choice now amongst most server professionals. Apache is at the heart of the open source community and is all about what it has to offer. The web development company that I work for, Square Compass, uses apache for their linux servers. So I can tell you from personal experience that Apache is “da bomb”. And with all of the contributors involved in the apache community, apache is continuing to move leaps and bounds ahead of any proprietary competitors.

Apache has many other open source products other than just a web server. You can view all of their open source projects including the apache web server at httpd.apache.org. You can also download all of the projects at that location as well.