Linux distributions have relied on the venerable Sendmail package since the early days of Slackware. But Sendmail’s rich mail server features aren’t an ideal solution for the typical desktop user whose primary mail support is delivered through a remote ISP. That’s the perfect place for a simpler solution: sSMTP.

Many years ago, before the Internet standardized on Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), applications known as mail transfer agents (MTA) were designed to help process email and determine the best route for message delivery. One of the earliest MTAs, Sendmail, became extremely popular for dealing with the delivery of email across multiple networks. It was the only viable open source mechanism for delivering email at the time Linux was introduced to the world, so it became the default MTA provided on many Linux distributions.

There has always been a division of labor for email processing. MTAs handle delivery of email and mail user agents (MUA) such as GNOME’s Evolution, KDE’s KMail, and Mozilla Thunderbird let users create and manage messages. MUAs have only a very basic concept of how to deliver mail. They don’t need to know how to send a message to its intended recipient; they know only about delivering mail to a specific generally server-based MTA, which is then responsible for routing email to the ultimate recipient.

If you run cron jobs or some automated system that sends you alerts via email, the default method the system uses for sending the message is Sendmail, because it is the default MTA for the built-in Linux mail command (typically /bin/mail). This means you not only have to configure your mail reader to send email to your ISP, but you also need to configure Sendmail to do the same thing.

Unfortunately, Sendmail configuration is a mass of twisty passages that even the most experienced user avoids if at all possible. That means it is not the best tool for the typical desktop user.

Two popular Sendmail MTA alternatives, QMail and Postfix, started off simple, but have become complex systems on their own, with capabilities far beyond the needs of a typical desktop user who seeks to simply route email from his machine to his ISP. Alternatively, you could choose a tool other than /bin/mail to send email through direct use of SMTP, such as elm or pine, but these are full MUA clients that provide lots of options that are overkill for addressing the primary problem of mail delivery to an ISP.

The simplified solution: sSMTP

Instead of finding a complicated replacement for mail, you can replace the complicated Sendmail with a simple alternative: sSMTP. sSMTP simplifies configuring your SMTP options with a small configuration file that allows you to specify items like the name of the remote SMTP server, your authorization (username and password), and the domain for your outbound email in much the way you configure your mail reader.

You can install sSMTP through your distribution’s package manager, or build and install it from source. In the latter case, unpack the source, change into the source directory, and run the command ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ssmtp --enable-ssl --enable-md5auth. Enabling SSL and MD5Auth allows you to communicate with an ISP that requires SMTP login. You can also enable IPv6 support if you need it; see --help for details.

After the configuration is complete, build and install the package using the normal make and sudo make install commands. When you run the install command you will be prompted for a few items. Follow the displayed instructions. Once installation completes you should find a directory called /usr/local/ssmtp with the sSMTP binary under the sbin subdirectory, and the configuration file under the etc/ssmtp subdirectory.

Now you can stop Sendmail and replace it with sSMTP. To stop Sendmail under Linux distributions that use the System V init scripts (and most distributions these days do) you can try the service command:

sudo service sendmail stop

sudo chkconfig –levels 2345 sendmail off

The first command stops the currently running instance of Sendmail, and the second prevents it from starting again on reboots. If your version of Linux does not use the SysVInit package you may need to kill the sendmail process manually with a command like sudo killall sendmail.

To replace Sendmail you can simply copy it to another file, then create a symbolic link from sSMTP to sendmail:

sudo mv /usr/sbin/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail.orig

sudo ln -s /usr/local/ssmtp/sbin/ssmtp /usr/sbin/sendmail

The first command moves the original sendmail out of the way, while the second makes sSMTP the program that gets run when any system command calls sendmail. With this approach, if you run into problems using sSMTP, just remove the symbolic link and move the sendmail copy back to its original name.

Configuration

The configuration file for sSMTP, based on the --prefix option we used with the configure command while building from the source code, is /usr/local/ssmtp/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf. This file has only four common options, plus some hidden options for authentication.

After a sample build, sSMTP created the following configuration file for me (lines starting with a # symbol are comments):

# /etc/ssmtp.conf — a config file for sSMTP sendmail. #

# The person who gets all mail for userids < 1000

# Make this empty to disable rewriting.

root=postmaster

# The place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required

# no MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com

# The example will fit if you are in domain.com and you mailhub is so named.

mailhub=mail

# Where will the mail seem to come from?

rewriteDomain=graphics-muse.org

# The full hostname

hostname=kepler.graphics-muse.org

Change the root= value to an email address that will receive all system-generated email, such as output from cron jobs that encounter errors or log file analysis. I changed this line to my personal email address.

mailhub= defines the SMTP server to which email should be sent. Set this line to the host you specify in your mail reader for the SMTP server.

hostname= is the name of the mail host that you’d like recipients of your email to see it. Since I want responses to my email to be sent to back to my ISP domain so I can use my mail reader to retrieve it, I set this line to the ISP domain. This is the domain part of all outbound messages; all users on your system will appear to be coming from this domain.

You can use rewriteDomain= to spoof who you say you are. Since I’m already spoofing the server address with the hostname line, I leave this line commented out.

The initial configuration does not include information on how to log in to SMTP servers that require authentication. This information is the same information you must provide in your mail reader in order for it to send email through your ISP. To specify this information, you can add the following lines:

  AuthUser=your username
  AuthPass=your password
  AuthMethod=CRAM-MD5

With this configuration, every time my system sends mail using /bin/mail, sendmail gets called, which is actually sSMTP. sSMTP uses the authentication I provided in the configuration file to log in to my ISP’s SMTP server and deliver my outgoing email.

Example Setup for Gmail

Using SSMTP, it doesn’t matter where you are, mail can be sent out over encrypted SMTP to Google’s gmail servers. After handing it off, Google’s servers do all the routing for you.

Setting everything up is quick and easy. Open up /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf in your favorite editor, and add or update the following lines:

#The following line redirects mail to root to your gmail account

root=myemail@gmail.com

mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587

UseSTARTTLS=yes

UseTLS=yes

AuthUser=myemail@gmail.com

AuthPass=mypassword

That’s it! Now, let’s try testing it:

echo "This is a test message." | mailx -s ‘Test Message’ myemail@gmail.com

You should now be all setup and ready to go!

Caveats

Replacing Sendmail with sSMTP works well for desktop PCs that have only a single user configured. If you have multiple users, you may not want to use sSMTP, since by default all email sent via the mail command will look like it comes from a single user. An additional configuration file, revaliases, allows you to map a local user to a specific From: address on outbound mail and to route that mail through a specific mailhub. Still, there is no way to configure different logins on different mailhubs that use different different authentication credentials. With sSMTP, your outbound mail can only have one remote MTA to which it can connect.

Also, in order for any user on your system to use sSMTP, they will need to have read permissions on the ssmtp.conf file. Placing your ISP login information in a configuration file that is world-readable allows anyone who uses your system to see your email authentication information. This is another reason why use of sSMTP is appropriate only for home users who are the sole users of that system. You can fix this problem through normal user and group permissions and by running sSMTP as a setuid program, but not if you want to make things as simple as possible, as we set out to do.

While sSMTP is a replacement for Sendmail, it is not a complete replacement. One important distinction is that it is not intended to receive mail, as Sendmail does. You need to use a mail reader to retrieve and read email from your ISP.

sSMTP also does not manage mail queues, so it sends outbound email immediately. Although the man page for sSMTP shows support for all the same command-line options that Sendmail supports, sSMTP ignores most of those options.

Finally, the sSMTP implementation enforces a limit on the size of outbound message headers. Try not to write long subject lines or include long lists of recipients. If you need to send something to a large list of recipients, set up an alias instead of manually listing all the recipients on the command line.

sSMTP is exactly as advertised: simple. It requires only minimal effort to set up and little to no long-term maintenance. But it isn’t appropriate for all users. Its greatest value is to the non-technical home user with only one user configured on a machine. To those users, sSMTP can be an easy way to improve messaging management.

Each time you right-click on one or several selected files in nautilus, nautilus-actions will look at its configuration to see if a program has been setup for this selection. If so, it will add an item in the menu that allow you to execute the program on the selected files.

The aim of Nautilus-actions is to be very flexible and to adapt to the most common situation.

Nautilus-actions doesn’t provide any config by default except an item to configure your actions. Thus, it offers the capability for other software that manage files to add their configs into the Nautilus-actions GConf entry. This automagically integrates smoothly to Nautilus without any additional code. It is also possible to import a foreign config, downloaded over the Net for example, into Nautilus-actions through NACT, its configuration tool.

INSTALLATION

If we have a Fedora Core machine the installation is easy as usual:

yum install nautilus-actions

and then:

yum install nautilus-open-terminal nautilus-image-converter nautilus-sendto

others *.schemas files are available on the official site of the project.

USAGE

Now we can list some of the most common (and so useful) actions available:

Open in gEdit as root: let’s you open and modify a file in Gedit. This function comes really handy when we have to deal with config’s file around the filesystem. For a correct working we have to make a little change in the visudo file, like:: “username ALL=NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/gedit” and modify the action so that it will be lauched using sudo.

Set picture as wallpaper: to change the desktop appearance on the fly.

Nautilus open terminal : opens a terminal session (as the current user) in the working directory (like Konqueror does, i can add).

Convert Audio: Converts audio files from one format to another. This actions needs to have a previously installed version of audio-convert to work at its best.

Nautilus image resizer: lets you resize and image on the fly. It does also give a new name to the file it generates.

Compress selected files using gzip: compress a file and deletes the original one.

Tag media files with Easytag: enable us to modify the tags of a music file using easytag (that we must have installed on our box, yum install easytag).

Mount ISO et Umount ISO: mount and unmounts ISO files. Pleas notice that we have to put the “miso” file into ~/bin directory and give a chmod 755 ~/bin/miso to enable it.

Run ISO image in QEMU: lauches ISO files as cd using Qemu (which, as before, needs to be already installed on your box, as usual a simple yum install qemu is sufficent).

Install rpms: installs an RPM package.

Install Deb Files: installs a DEB package, for Debian and Ubuntu users.

RESOURCES

website : http://www.grumz.net/
Nautilus Actions : External Resources

Linux comes with various GUI based email client to stay in touch with your friends and family, and share information in newsgroups with other users. The following software is similar to Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail and is used by both home and office user.

Webmail interfaces allow users to access their mail with any standard web browser, from any computer, rather than relying on an e-mail client.

However, e-mail client remains extremely popular in a large corporate environment, small business, home and power users. An e-mail client (also mail user agent (MUA)) is a frontend computer program used to manage e-mail. Mail can be stored on the client, on the server side, or in both places. Standard formats for mailboxes include Maildir and mbox.

The following are top five amazing piece of cross-platform software from various projects to make your life easy with wide variety of plug-ins / add-ons.

#1: Mozilla Thunderbird

It is an e-mail and news cross-platform client software package by Mozilla Foundation. Thunderbird can manage multiple e-mail, newsgroup and RSS accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features like quick search, saved search folders , advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels help manage and find messages. Just like Firefox, the tons of extensions and themes for this client makes it very secure and flexible to to enhance your productivity.

Fig.01: Mozilla Thunderbird

=> Download Mozilla Thunderbird

#2: Claws Mail

Claws Mail is a free, GTK+-based, open source email and news client. It is very light lightweight. Like Firefox , the wide variety of plug-ins for this email client makes it very flexible and secure. Claws Mail runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD, and Solaris.

Fig.02: Claws Mail in Action

=> Download Claws Mail

#3: Spicebird

Spicebird is a collaboration client that provides integrated access to email, contacts, calendaring and instant messaging in a single application. It provides easy access to various web services while retaining all the advantages of a desktop application. It is developed by an Indian company called Synovel. It is a free, open source and cross-platform software.

Fig.03: Spicebird in Action (image credit Spicebird project)

=> Download Spicebird

#4: Zimbra Collaboration Suite (Open Source Version)

Zimbra is a client and server platform for messaging and collaboration. The web client integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, VoIP, and online document authoring in a rich browser-based interface. This is more like MS-Exchange and Outlook combo. In other words it is compatible with proprietary clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail, both through proprietary connectors, as well as the open-source Novell Evolution, so that mail, contacts, and calendar items can be synchronised from these to the ZCS server. Zimbra also provides native two-way sync to many mobile devices such as Nokia Eseries, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone with 2.0 software.

Fig.04: Zimbra (credit offical Zimbra website)

=> Download Zimbra Collaboration Suite (Open Source Version)

#5: Sylpheed

Sylpheed is a free, GTK+-based, open source email and news client. It is very light lightweight. Sylpheed runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix-like systems such as Linux, and BSD.

Fig.05: Sylpheed in Action

=> Download sylpheed

Other Email Clients For UNIX Like Operating Systems

1. SeaMonkey – Mozilla SeaMonkey is an all-in-one Internet application suite that includes an Internet browser, email and newsgroup client, HTML editor, IRC chat, and web development tools. It includes a pop-up blocker, junk mail controls, and a tabbed interface.
2. Pine (Alpine) – Alpine is a rewrite of the Pine Message System that adds support for Unicode and other features. Alpine is meant to be suitable for both inexperienced email users and the most demanding of power users.
3. Evolution or Novell Evolution – Evolution provides integrated mail, addressbook and calendaring functionality to users of the GNOME desktop.

Recommendations:

1. Claws Mail – Highly recommended for netbook user due to lightweight usage.
2. Mozilla Thunderbird – The wide variety of add-on for this email client makes it very flexible, secure and easy to use. Highly recommended for desktop and power users.
3. Zimbra Collaboration Suite ~ Open Source Edition or Businesses Editon – Highly recommended for business and corporate users due to its support for a broad range of email clients and mobile devices via "over the air" sync.

The Windows operating system has always been insecure — and I don’t mean as in self-esteem!

The Conficker/Downup/Downadup/Kido computer worm that first surfaced in October 2008 and is believed to activate today (April 1, 2009) only targets the Microsoft Windows operating system.  You heard that right,  it only affects Windows – not MacOS or Linux. Unfortunately, in this situation one out of three is bad – and, as usual with Windows security, its very bad news for the internet as a whole.   So far however, the news is good this morning and hell has not broken loose on the backbone segments of the net.  But the day is young.

I am certainly not an Anarchist nor do I approve of the malicious activities of virus breeding script-kiddies, but it would be helpful if some “minor catastrophe” occurred as a result of Conflicker. If hundreds of businesses stop production because of this worm, the public should think about an alternative operating system platform.  In my humble opinion, Linux (the GNU Operating System) is the best choice for the cost ($0) or MacOS for every other reason.

If this worm proves to be very troublesome, what’ll happen?

Websites like MySpace.com and WhiteHouse.gov are running the Microsoft IIS web server. If these servers are infected, they will go down. Or, they will become spam websites, displaying advertisements and sending out thousands of spam and denial of service emails. 

WhiteHouse.gov is, obviously, a governmental website, and if it becomes a spam website, displaying advertisements and sending out thousands of spam and denial of service emails to other countries, that’s a national threat (well, sorta).  Also, who knows what other servers WhiteHouse.gov might be connected to within their extended computing grid.  Missile systems, Air Force navigation systems, Presidential Teleprompters?  Lets pray Microsoft has nothing to do with those!

Thankfully Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia are all happily running GNU/Linux on their servers. These are among the most popular/stable web sites as well — coincidence?

On the other hand, WhiteHouse.gov is most likely running the Microsoft IIS web server because the person they have in control of the servers, their “Webmaster”, only knows how to use Microsoft Windows.   Therein lies the problem – in the humble opinion of this Webmaster.

March 31, 2009 (Computerworld) When big companies release new software, they launch it with lots of hoopla: press tours, technical conferences, free T-shirts. Open-source projects, even the well-known ones, generally release their major new versions with a lot less fanfare. The FOSS (free and open-source software) community is often too busy coding and testing to bother with marketing, even when the new "point release" of the software is really remarkable.

And there are plenty of remarkable open-source applications on the way this year. Quite a few projects are quietly (or not so quietly) working on major releases or significant upgrades that they aim to make available sometime during 2009. I’ve rounded up 25 of the most notable here.

There are browsers and operating systems, mobile platforms, development tools, productivity applications, IT administration tools, collaboration software and a few hard-to-classify items. Some of these you’ve heard of; others may be relatively obscure but should give you the wriggly "Oooh, cool!" sense of discovery.

You’re sure to feel that one or two really important upcoming releases are missing. (You try paring the list down to a couple dozen candidates!) But the FOSS community spirit can serve here too. Please add your nominations for can’t-miss open-source releases of 2009 to the article comments, including links to the project sites, and we’ll all benefit.

Browsers and operating systems

Ten years ago, who’d have thought there could still be so much innovation in Web browsers in 2009? Microsoft Corp. may intend to keep up the pace with Internet Explorer 8, but the FOSS options are at least as compelling.

Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox 3.5 promises a native parser for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), a data exchange format frequently used in Web apps, and several features to enhance rich media Web content, including support for the HTML 5 video element and the Ogg Vorbis and Theora open audio and video codecs.

And then there’s whatever Google Inc. is planning for its Chrome browser, based on the open-source WebKit engine. The company is playing it close to the vest, but we do know Mac and Linux versions of the browser are in development.

Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope.
Click to view larger image.

Linux fans have much to look forward to, too. Following the release of Ubuntu 9.04, the "Jaunty Jackalope," in April, the Ubuntu team is planning for Ubuntu 9.10, the "Karmic Koala," to see the light of day in October 2009. Among the promised new features are integration with the Amazon EC2 APIs, so users can set up their own cloud using entirely open tools, and a kernel mode setting for a smooth and flicker-free start-up. The Ubuntu Netbook Edition will get the latest technology from the mobile Internet project Moblin, including better screen support.

Every other Linux distribution is sure to get better, too, along with associated operating system components. For example, openSUSE 11.2, scheduled for November, should include KDE 4.3, GNOME 2.28, Linux kernel 2.6.30 (or higher), a Web-based YaST interface and netbook support.

Red Hat Fedora 11 is slated for release by this summer, with several updates. The project’s goals include making Fedora boot and shut down faster (you’d be at the log-in screen in 20 seconds), changing supported architectures and default installed kernels, and improving support for fingerprint readers.

Mobile software

It’s easy to keep our eyes focused on the proprietary technologies behind the iPhone and BlackBerry, but the FOSS community elves have been hammering out their own mobile innovations.

Android is Google’s software stack for mobile devices, including an operating system, middleware and key applications. The current beta version of the Android SDK, released in early 2009, has tools and APIs for programmers to begin developing applications on the Android platform in Java.

Current focus is on support for input methods, such as devices other than physical keyboards. Later this year, Android should get support for displays beyond HVGA. Nobody is talking dates yet, but the entire mobile community is watching.

The T-Mobile G1, the first Android-powered device. Click to view larger image.

Maemo is a Linux-based software platform built by an open-source community (with Nokia as its principal sponsor and contributor) to support mobile devices, particularly tablets like Nokia’s N810 Internet Tablet. The Maemo 5 Alpha SDK, introduced in March, has a new UI framework and APIs so developers can build location-aware applications that control vibrations and respond to changes in device orientation. Maemo 5 is also expected to have OMAP3 support, cellular data connectivity and high-definition camera support.

The new Wikipedia Mobile.
Click to view larger image.

For all the delights of Wikipedia, its mobile offering is … underwhelming. Fortunately, Wikipedia Mobile is under active development. The new version (written in Merb) will give you access to Wikipedia on modern 3G mobile devices, such as the iPhone and Android phones, and also will have tailored versions. It’s in alpha testing now and should be released sometime this year.

Also worth watching:

• Openmoko, which produced the Neo FreeRunner GSM mobile phone in mid-2008 as a starting point for developers and product designers to build open mobile appliances with integrated communications. Its FreeRunner mobile hardware platform, which includes the Debian and FDOM distributions, the Qt application and UI framework and the Android software stack, lets developers alter the fully operable mobile phone design for their own purposes.

Programming tools and languages

Open-source developers understandably invest a lot of effort in improving the tools they use to write better software, whether it’s a programming language, development platform or content management system. This category could have filled up an entire article by itself, but here are a few of the highlights.

In December 2008, the communities behind the Web development frameworks Merb and Rails agreed to merge rather than maintaining parallel development tracks. They intend to preserve the flexible configuration and advanced features appreciated by Merb users, along with the rapid productivity and ease of use that has given Rails so much attention from developers.

The new project, to be called Rails 3, will incorporate some key Merb features and concepts, including its agnosticism about object-relational models, JavaScript libraries and template languages. Rails 3 will also be more modular, letting developers opt in or out of specific components. It’ll have significant performance improvements and will gain a defined public API.

According to the Rails blog, the "overly optimistic" date for the Rails 3 beta is for the Rails Conference in early May, but it’ll be worth paying attention to whenever it arrives.

The Dojo Toolkit is a one-stop shop for developers creating dynamic Web applications, especially for those who don’t want to become gods of DHTML and JavaScript. Dojo 1.3, now in RC1 and expected to be final very soon, has a collection of fast and concise DOM manipulation APIs, a more configurable NodeList class, a brand-new lightning-fast CSS Selector query engine, and new widgets and components.

The Dojo Toolkit. Click to view larger image.

Moonlight is an open-source implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight, a browser plug-in for streaming video and Internet apps. The result of a technical collaboration between Microsoft and Novell Inc. and related to the open-source .Net implementation Mono Project, Moonlight is primarily for Linux and other Unix/X11-based operating systems.

The Moonlight community has access to Microsoft’s test suites for Silverlight and distributes a media pack for Linux users with licensed media codecs for video and audio. Moonlight 1.0 was just released in February, and work is already under way on Version 2, to keep it in sync with Silverlight.

Watching the presidential inauguration via Moonlight. Click to view larger image.

(You might also keep an eye on Moonshine, a Firefox browser plug-in and desktop player that encapsulates any WMV or WMA content into a Silverlight container.)

In fact, it’s worth calling attention to Microsoft’s active open-source involvement simply because so few imagined that Microsoft would ever show up at the party. Among the successes is IronPython, a Python implementation designed to run on .Net and Mono; Version 2 was released in February. Now that that’s done, the team can turn its attention to an IronPython version to support Python 3.0. While the team is vague about a release date ("after 2.x is out the door," according to a spokesperson), it will likely arrive sometime this year.

Microsoft also created IronRuby, a Ruby implementation for .Net, and the Dynamic Language Runtime, a set of shared services for implementing dynamic languages on .Net. All three projects are distributed under the terms of the Microsoft Public License.

Also worth watching:

• The MariaDB project, a community-developed branch of the MySQL database using the Maria storage engine; the brainchild of Michael "Monty" Widenius, founder of MySQL AB and Monty Program AB.
• CodeIgniter 2.0, a PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant tool kit to create full-featured Web applications. (While Version 2.0 hasn’t exactly been announced, you can pre-order a book about it on Amazon. Hmmm.)
• Eclipse Galileo, a coordinated release of different Eclipse projects, due to ship at the end of June 2009.

Business apps

Most of the preceding projects are of interest mainly to geeks (and we mean that in a nice way). Increasingly, though, businesses are adopting open-source software for productivity use and line-of-business applications.

Primary among these is the open-source "replacement" for Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org 3.1, expected imminently, is currently available as a "developer snapshot." It promises grammar checking, anti-aliased drawings, improved charting and better outline features.

That’s on top of the new features from Version 3.0 (released in October 2008), including compatibility with ODF 1.2 and OOXML and native Mac OS X support.

The OpenOffice.org 3.1 developer preview. Click to view larger image.

But business-quality open source isn’t limited to traditional desktop apps or enterprise software. Kaltura is an open-source platform for creating and viewing video applications. It’s aimed at Web publishers, integrators and application developers. Kaltura currently has extensions for several platforms, including content management (such as Drupal), blogging (WordPress) and collaboration (MediaWiki).

Kaltura’s Drupal plug-in.
Click to view larger image.

In the second quarter of 2009, Kaltura’s Community Edition will be launched under the GNU General Public License, allowing any Web site to build its own YouTube-like video portal, fully independent of Kaltura. Optional enterprise support includes streaming and hosting, ad serving and content syndication.

Dimdim claims to be the first open-source Web meeting company; its software has been downloaded nearly half a million times. Among its existing features are unlimited use, multiparty video and audio conferencing.

A Dimdim Web meeting.
Click to view larger image.

Dimdim has big plans for 2009 (though it didn’t get more specific than that on timing), including a commercial version. The Dimdim open-source platform will become a full webinar product, allowing meetings of more than 1,000 participants, which will make it attractive to anyone who needs to conduct general meetings or training sessions.

Also worth watching:

• LedgerSMB, a fork of the SQL-Ledger accounting package aimed at small businesses. Its rapidly approaching 1.3 release promises better contact handling and security that integrates with a company’s network security infrastructure, such as Kerberos.
• The Lucid Desktop (formerly the Psych Desktop), a Web desktop (maybe a Web operating system) that integrates with the Web, existing desktop technologies and mobile devices, acting as a portable, online workspace to store files, play media and manage your office documents. Version 1.0, still in beta, is overdue, but it shouldn’t be long now.

IT administration tools

Some categories of open-source software are of interest mainly to a niche set of users, such as network administrators or Web developers. That’s fine; it just means that these tools are correctly tuned for their audience, and everyone else can turn to the next page. Or as Abraham Lincoln said, "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."

For IT administrators, the most exciting release this year may be Samba 4.0, which is supposed to have active directory support, an internal Kerberos server and full NTFS semantics for sharing back ends. You might have heard all that before, as Samba has been stalled for a while, but the development team is actively working on it now, and there’s a new build as of late February.

You can certainly expect action in the configuration management space — tools that help system administrators get more work done, faster and more consistently. Among them is Reductive Labs Inc.’s Puppet 1.0, due to be released sometime in 2009.

Puppet 1.0. Click to view larger image.

Reductive Labs intends to fully rewrite Puppet’s networking functionality, as well as optimize modeling, language enhancements and reporting. Preliminary testing shows the server will be about three times faster with a memory footprint that’s a third of its current size, says a project spokesperson.

In April, Zenoss Inc. will release Version 2.4 of Zenoss Core, its open-source monitoring and systems management suite, with a new dynamic Web-based user interface and with agent-less Linux and Unix command-line collection via SSH to improve system-level monitoring. The group will also launch a Zenoss community collaboration platform, Zenoss.net, for users to submit and share network monitoring and management best practices and Zenoss extensions.

Zenoss Core. Click to view larger image.

These aren’t the only new and improved tools for IT admins. Longtime Unix configuration tool Cfengine, which bills itself as "autonomous engineering for the data center," is now in Version 3.0 and backed by a commercial support company; an enterprise edition is planned for this year.

Also worth watching:

• Enomaly Inc.’s Elastic Computing Platform, a programmable virtual cloud infrastructure. Version 2, now in alpha, includes a Web services API, automated VM deployment with Elastic Valet and multiserver support.
• OpenQRM, a suite of data center management tools that may excite people dealing with configuration management and other administrative tasks in the cloud. As an example of the work under way, Version 4.4 (just out) includes remote control for the cloud using a SOAP Web service.

Content management and collaboration tools

Don’t you hate it when perfectly good descriptive terms become buzzwords? That’s been the case for "collaboration tools" and "content management" and maybe (just maybe) "knowledge management." These are useful categories, but the terms are so mushy that the products become hard to describe.

We humans are pretty good at creating meta-tools for organizing, sharing and presenting data … and that’s what this category is about.

Several open-source development frameworks and content management systems are in between major versions. Django 1.0 shipped recently and Plone 4 probably won’t arrive this year, though each has incremental upgrades planned. (For example, Plone 3.3, currently in beta and due in the next few months, brings better support for multisites, better locking support and iCalendar support for events.)

Nevertheless, content management fans will find plenty to keep themselves occupied.

MindTouch Deki is an open-source application for enterprise collaboration that sports a wiki-like interface. It allows users to organize raw data into actionable information and ensures that it’s dynamically updated from disparate, disconnected data sources.

Slated to be released in early 2009, MindTouch Deki Lyons will expose more ways to interact with the core Deki application by coupling Deki’s traditional mashup strengths with new tools for developers, such as the ability to trigger actions based on activity inside Deki or use a built-in local storage mechanism.

A MindTouch Deki Lyons mashup.
Click to view larger image.

Foswiki is enterprise-ready wiki software that’s a fork of TWiki (which has apparently moved its attention toward commercial products), initiated by former developers and users of the TWiki project. They just released Version 1.0 in January and are under way on 1.1, aiming to improve usability as well as interaction with updates in skins and plug-ins. Version 2.0, also planned for this year, will give attention to performance and scalability.

WordPress has grown to be more than a blogging system, with all sorts of plug-ins to extend its functionality. Version 2.7 just shipped, and Version 2.8 is under way with its top priorities widget management, theme browser/installer and performance upgrades. Beyond that, WordPress 3.0 is scheduled for August.

Other really cool stuff

Among the neatest things about open source is that its philosophy of collaboration isn’t limited to strict "applications." Here are a few examples of work under way that may make a difference beyond ones and zeroes.

A Talking Book Device in a Ghana classroom. Click to view larger image.

Literacy Bridge created the Talking Book Device, an open-source digital audio player and recorder specifically designed for people living in poverty. Over the short term, Talking Book Devices will serve as mechanisms for the rapid and free distribution of essential, accurate information via device-to-device sharing. Over the long term, say its organizers, Talking Books facilitate literacy learning.

A pilot project was launched in Ghana early in 2009, enabling undergraduate students at MIT and other volunteers to collect information regarding device functionality and durability.

Literacy Bridge isn’t the only company extending open source to the hardware realm. For instance, SparkFun Electronics is also providing "open-source schematics" for its microcontrollers, such as the LilyPad wearable technology — the next iteration of the "wearable computer." Since these boards are meant for hobbyist experimentation, the definition of "wearable technology" is left up to you. It’s released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license, so you can download all the engineering files and hack on the hardware to your heart’s delight.

EveryBlock is a microlocal news Web site funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It has a distinctive approach to local news: You enter an address in one of 11 U.S. cities to see the news immediately near you. In June, the EveryBlock team will open source its publishing system, so that any news organization, government or citizen can create an EveryBlock-ish site for its own town.

Whew. That’s quite a pile of cool open-source software (and hardware!) to look for in the coming year. Nonetheless, there’s a good chance that you’re thinking how unfathomable it is that I left out your favorite project, which is apt to change the face of computing. Groovy — it’s time to share it with the world. In the article comments, tell us about the open-source release you’re most looking forward to seeing this year, and why it’s such a big deal.

Esther Schindler has been writing about technology since 1992. She has a tropism for techie topics that make other people’s eyes glaze over — particularly software development, operating systems and open source.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, a Computerworld columnist, provided extra reporting on this article.