Gnu+Linux software

I have put together a list of the essential Gnu+Linux applications that many users prefer to use.

Email clients

• Thunderbird
• Mailspring
• Evolution

 

Media Production

• Lightworks (proprietary video editing software)
• Kdenlive (open-source video editing software)
• Audacity (digital audio editor)
• Ocenaudio (digital audio editor)
• Ardour (digital audio editor)
• DevedeNG (DVD and CD authoring utility)

Office and productivity suites

• OnlyOffice
• OpenOffice
• LibreOffice

Music players 

• Lollypop
• Rhythmbox
• Elisa

Web browsers

• Firefox
• SeaMonkey
• Falkon
• LibreWolf
• Chromium (BSD license)
• Brave (Mozilla Public License)
• Google Chrome (Proprietary)
• Microsoft Edge (Proprietary)

rip an Audio CD

• KAudioCreator
• Sound Juicer
• Asunder
• Ripperx

Video Players

• VLC Media Player
• Dragon Player
• Gnome Videos

CD, DVD and Blu-ray authoring

• K3b (from KDE Burn Baby Burn)
• Brasero CD 
• Xfburn

Media Converters

• HandBrake
• SoundConverter

Screen Recording and Streaming Tools

• Simple screen recorder
• Kazam 
• recordmydesktop
• OBS (Screen Recording and Streaming)
• VokoscreenNG (video or tutorial creator)

Media Server Software

• Kodi
• Plex (Proprietary)

Backup Tools

• Timeshift
• Bacula

Virtualization Apps

• Oracle VM VirtualBox
• QEMU
• VMware Workstation Pro (Proprietary)

Webcam recording software.

• Webcamoid
• Kamoso
• Cheese
• OBS

PDF viewer

• Okular
• evince
• LibreOffice Draw PDF editing
• Master PDF Editor (Proprietary)

Video conferencing

• Zoom (Proprietary)
• Skype (Proprietary)
• Jitsi Meet
• OpenMeetings
• Google Meet (Proprietary)
• Caprine Facebook Messenger

USB Image Writer Tools 

•  Gnome Multi-Writer
•  BalenaEtcher
•  Unetbootin
•  Fedora Media Writer
•  SUSE Studio Imagewriter

Messaging

• Pidgin

Photo editing/enhancing

• Photivo (photo processor.)
• Darktable (alternative to Adobe Lightroom)
• RawTherapee (alternative to Adobe Lightroom)
• Upscaler by Hari Rana (resolution enhancement)
• Gimp (photo editing alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop)

News flash: artificial intelligence will take our jobs.

Let's be real. Industrialization has always taken away jobs. In the early days of the telephone did you know people could not dial another directly? It's true in order to make a call people needed an intermediary—a telephone operator to manually relay their call on a central switchboard connected to subscribers’ wires. For young single women the telephone operator was an excellent career. As more and more people got telephone service, The demand for telephone operators increased. Did you know, In 1910, there were 88,000 female telephone operators in the United States. Within 10 years there were more than 235,000.

In a 1930s attack revolution emerged. No it wasn't the internet or HD televisions. It was a, technology that allowed telephone users simply to dial another phone without the aid of an operator. Guess what the telephone companies did? They took advantage of that new piece of technology and they slash their workforce, and thousands of operators lost their jobs. The truth is machines of some type have made jobs obsolete for thousands of years. The spinning jenny replaced weavers, buttons displaced elevator operators, and the self checkout is replacing cashiers. Machines will replace as many as 2 million more workers in manufacturing alone in the next couple years. 

In theory, technologies like ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence should free humans from dangerous or mundane tasks making companies more productive. ChatGPT can hold conversational text interactions with users by employing AI, and these exchanges can feel as natural as if you're having a conversation with another person. Can this new emerging technology be misused? Of course. Just like TV and Radio could be misused so the US government form the The Federal Communications Commission. We formed the Food and Drug Administration to regulate medical devices, drugs, and our nation's food supply. It is now time for nations around the world to form departments dealing specifically with things like deep learning and artificial intelligence.

Honestly, I don't know what the future holds. I'm no expert in the field of artificial intelligence or deep learning. However, I know this much: history tells us that labor the market is always, I mean always impacted by technology. It is often viewed through the lens of job creation or job destruction. Throughout history there has been a cultural conflict between social groups. Social groups that struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and way of life. Governments should never find itself in the middle of such squabbles. The government does have the responsibility to make sure our food is safe, our drugs are safe, and our technology is safe. When we fail to guide or regulate new emerging technologies bad things will always happen. 

Life without Windows or OS X

Have you tried running Windows 11 or Mac on a 10-year-old system or even older? You will see quickly that it will be a no-go. Most likely no drivers will exist for your old hardware. Plus Windows 11, the current version of Windows, hit the market with certain minimum requirements. Meaning, it was not possible to upgrade pre-2017 PCs. On a Mac, it is even worse, the latest version of macOS Ventura supports at most a mac pro from 2018, and that was a very powerful, expensive device when it released.

A life without Windows or macOS means less waste. The vast majority of consumer computers will work flawlessly for 10 to 15 years depending on maintenance, as dust is very problematic for PC components. If a computer owner keeps the machines free from excessive dust and debris, It will maximize the system's longevity.

You might think that old PC sitting in your closet is useless because you can't put Windows 11 on it. As of this posting I am playing games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Metro Exodus on a HP ProDesk 400 G1 MT Intel Core i7 (Haswell) 4770 based system. It is a pre-built entry-level business desktop computer released in 2013. It has 4 cores and 8 threads, and is based on 22 nm manufacturing technology, with a TDP of 84 Watt and a maximum temperature of 72 °C. It supports DDR3 memory. Low end by today's standards, but typical users are not going to push it to its limit. There is no doubt Installing Linux on older computers that have fallen out of support from Apple and Microsoft will help keep them out of recycling centers longer. Not to mention you can avoid buying newer PCs for a bit longer saving you a lot of money in the long run.

Side note: ProDesk 400 G1 MT was upgraded with a new power supply, RAM, and Video Card.

Conclusion

Life without Windows or OS X, means you have privacy. Gnu+Linux ensures the privacy of user’s data while using its distributions or software. This is not true for Windows 11 or macOS Ventura. Most Gnu+Linux distributions will not help governments spy on you.

Life without Windows or OS X, means you don’t have to throw out a perfectly functioning computer just because it doesn’t run as fast as it used to or even because Microsoft has decided to abandon your version of Windows.

Life without Windows or OS X, means freedom to choose. It is true that Gnu+Linux are open-source software; however, "most" Linux distributions usually include some non-free software. It can be in the form of proprietary "blobs" or drivers for running certain types of hardware. If you want to avoid any proprietary blobs or drivers there are Linux distros respects and protects you. They are independently verifiable by security experts and software developers around the world to be totally free of any proprietary mess. It's all about choice.

Life without Windows or OS X, means completely free software applications available at your fingertips. There is something for everyone, including popular software applications from categories like gaming, graphics, programming, video etc.

The Beelink GTR6 overview: Not really a review.

My basic impression is that the Beelink GTR6 is a high-performance mini PC. And when I say high performance it punches well above its weight.

I was able to borrow and test this little unit for a little while. I've been using this computer for a couple days now, running (Nobara Project version 37) Gnu/Linux. It came with Microsoft Windows 11, however I was able to quickly temporarily replace the pre-installed SSD with my own SSD. 

Opening the bottom cover was painless. There is a small fan-heat sink combo I had to remove. It is designed to cool the memory and SSDs. After that fan is removed You will have access to a full-user serviceable area. There are 3 M.2 slots, one NVMe, one SATA one Wi-Fi+ Bluetooth. And last but not least two DDR5-4800 SODIMM slots.

The PC is only 4.96 x 4.44 x 1.65 inches, which is smaller than a lot of consumer Wi-Fi routers. 

-Picture-

The first thing I noticed it had a few features not found on other mini PCs such as lntels NUC (Next Unit of Computing):

Fingerprint reader

Wake on LAN

Quad Display output

4 HDMI port

2.5GB LAN Port

Those editions definitely put it in a league of its own. 

Note: I am using Nobara 37( KDE ) which is based Fedora 37. I am using the Linux 6.1.4 kernel along with the Mesa 22.3.3 open source graphics driver. Your mileage may vary if you are using older linux kernels or mesa open source graphics drivers.

What Beelink GTR6 so powerful? It is the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX SOC. This powerhouse processor 

integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). That puts it on par with things like the i9-12900HK and Apple's M1 Pro. 

The 6900HX integrated GPU Radeon 680M is the game changer. It's based on the RDNA2 architecture and offers 12 CUs (= 768 shaders) at up to 2.4 GHz making it one of the fastest iGPU out there. The Radeon 780M RDNA3 architecture with AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS will be even faster, if you can believe that. 

It has all the latest and greatest technology packed into its little chassis. It supports Wifi 6E (802.11ax) the latest Bluetooth 5.2 (AMD RZ608) technology and one 2.5GB Ethernet Intel (I225-V) port. It comes with 32GB DDR5 RAM expandable up to 64GB, 500GB of m.2 NVMe SSD expandible up to 2TB. Last but not least, this little device has all the ports you need, four HDMI 2.1 ports, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, and a USB Type-C port on the front.

Note:Thunderbolt is not supported because of the AMD CPU.

GTR6 is not really for everybody especially at a price of nearly $800 USD, which does not even a include keyboard mouse or monitor. I'm not saying that's a negative in any way. It's just a fact. There are many mini PCs out there that are a quarter of the price which translates to a quarter of the performance but in reality that's what the vast majority of people really need. In other words, the GTR6 is overkill for vast majority of computer users.

Final thoughts.

Again this was not really a review more of a overview in progress. 

It will come windows 11 pre-installed but it is very possible for people install Linux distributions of their choice such as openSUSE, Arch Linux and Ubuntu easily all by themselves. 

Ryzen 9 6900HX SOC allows the Beelink GTR6 to offer unprecedented multitasking and multimedia capabilities. The integrated 680M graphics, based on the RDNA 2 architecture gives it a powerful one-two punch. The now built-in hardware support for ray tracing has provided a significant performance boost over the last generation of Vega 8.

It can easily deal with light office work such as BRL-CAD, ONLYOFFICE, and Blender, can be used with Kdenlive video editing or Gimp photo editing, 4K video playback, gaming and virtualization. 

When it comes to gaming, the Beelink GTR6 is capable of playing triple-A proton-powered titles, such as OverWatch 2, Song of Iron, Mayhem Brawler and Cyberpunk 2077. However, with Cyberpunk you will need to drop quality levels to low at 1080p to hit the magic number of 30-40 frames per second. 

With the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS starting to hit the marketplace. We could probably start seeing deep discounts on many PCs and laptops with a Ryzen 9 6900HX. 7000HSs 780 integrated graphics will put it in good company with Apples M1 Pro (10-CPU 16-GPU) iGPU.

Using the printer in Linux distribution.

As I have posted before All of these programs are being ran in Nobara Project version 37 running on a borrowed, Beelink GTR6.

System specs:

 

Soc:Ryzen 9 6900H 3.3-4.9GHz 8C/16T L2 4MB L3 16MB

Graphics Model: Integrated AMD Radeon 680M

Graphics Core Count: 12

Graphics Frequency: 2400 MHz

Graphics Architecture: RDNA2

SSD:500GB NVMe 

RAM:DDR5: 32GB 4800Mhz DDR5 (2 x DDR5

As I have posted before All of these programs are being ran in Nobara Project version 37 running on a borrowed, Beelink GTR6.

System specs:

Soc:Ryzen 9 6900H 3.3-4.9GHz 8C/16T L2 4MB L3 16MB

Graphics Model: Integrated AMD Radeon 680M

Graphics Core Count: 12

Graphics Frequency: 2400 MHz

Graphics Architecture: RDNA2

SSD:500GB NVMe 

RAM:DDR5: 32GB 4800Mhz DDR5 (2 x DDR5

Note:Gnu/Linux drivers are not provided on the printer installation discs packaged with new printers.

For HP printers, install Hewlett-Packard's Linux Imaging and Printing (HPLIP) project. HP Linux Imaging and Printing is an open-source initiative to bring the latest HP (Hewlett-Packard) printer drivers to GNU/Linux operating systems. The software has a pretty active development team working behind it, releasing maintenance builds at least once a month.

Many Linux distros have the HPLIP software pre-installed. However, if it is not installed or you need to upgrade to a newer HPLIP version to support your HP printer, go to your distros software manager and search, HPLIP.

In my test I used the HP Smart Tank 7301 Inkjet Printer, All-in-One Supertank, Print/Copy/Scan (28B70A) and the HP and the HP Photosmart 7520 Wireless e-All-In-One Printer - Copy/Fax/Print/Scan (CZ045A)

Note: Most common printer models are supported on Gnu/Linux. The Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) provides drivers for most printers, which allows them to work on Linux distros. Many Canon, Brother, & Epsom are fully supported.

Both the HP Smart Tank 7301 and Photosmart 7520 worked flawlessly. You can print to the full ability of the printer, including color, full resolution, etc. Adding a network printer Nobara Project version 37 is nearly as simple as is adding a local printer.

Photo editing/enhancing 2023

Digital photos are an important part of all of our lives, and photo editing/enhancing software is essential in today's world. From ad displays to social media channels and and posters, images need special software to customize them.

For photographers, The open source world provides some of  comprehensive image manipulation applications out there. Best of all, virtually all of them are free and open-source software. That means no, subscriptions, no restrictions no licensing fees. No matter what you decide to do with them you're in full control. 

As I have posted before All of these programs are being ran in Nobara Project version 37 running on a borrowed, Beelink GTR6.

System specs:

Soc:Ryzen 9 6900H 3.3-4.9GHz 8C/16T L2 4MB L3 16MB

Graphics Model: Integrated AMD Radeon 680M

Graphics Core Count: 12

Graphics Frequency: 2400 MHz

Graphics Architecture: RDNA2

SSD:500GB NVMe 

RAM:DDR5: 32GB 4800Mhz DDR5 (2 x DDR5

Enhance, increase resolution quality and restore most old photo/image: Upscaler by Hari Rana

Upscaler can enhance photos up to 8x their actual size. Upscaler leverages the power of current CPUs and GPUs. Upscaler by Hari Rana can add resolution where it did not exist before. It really is a great tool for those who are simply looking to restore a scanned 100 year old photos, Upscaler could be what you're looking for.

Photo management.

DigiKam is a digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX that enables photographers to manage, edit, enhance, organize, tag, and share photographs under Linux systems.

Photo editing program

An alternative to Adobe Photoshop: the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

Gimp is the top open-source photo editing alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop. Now keep in mind Gimp is not Photoshop. GIMP has fewer tools compared to Photoshop. It contains limited third-party plugins compare to photoshop. That can actually be a good thing because Photoshop has many tools that you will never use. This takes up space and makes the learning process much more confusing. So, GIMP is much easier to use for non-professionals. Restore old photos, change background, enhance and manipulate images, or simply create your own masterpiece from scratch, anything is possible! It is capable of the simplest edits to the most advance, so you will be required to read the included manual on disc to learn how to make the most of its many features. GIMP's performance also can’t compare with the category leader. Still, if you’re looking for Photoshop-like capabilities but don’t want to pay a dime, GIMP is worth exploring.

Photivo

Photivo is a free and open-source (GPL3) photo processor. It handles your RAW files and your bitmap files (TIFF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, and many more) in a non-destructive 16-bit processing pipe with gimp workflow integration batch mode.

Alternative to Adobe Lightroom

Darktable is dedicated to enhancing photos using the same workflow you'd use when developing and processing film. For users new to dark room concepts, this can be a shift in how specific looks or effects are achieved. However, once you get used to dynamic adjustment filters and presets, Darktable will make it shockingly easy (and fun!) for you to sort through hundreds of photos to find and enhance the best of the best. Darktable is a must-have for any digital photographer

RawTherapee: Lightroom Alternative

RawTherapee claim to fame is It is able to process photographs creating raw images by many digital cameras. Like many other open source programs it is cross-platform, with versions for Microsoft Windows, macOS and of course Gnu/Linux. RawTherapee involves the concept of "non-destructive editing", which is verysimilar to that of some other raw conversion software. 

Screen Calibration: DisplayCal

Datacolor Spyder X Elite

The Datacolor SpyderX Pro is a professional-grade color calibration solution that can help a photographer achieve accurate colors on your computer monitor. It uses a lens-based color engine to measure your monitor's color gamut and brightness, and then uses this information to generate a calibration profile that will help your monitor produce more accurate colors.

I know all that sounds like fancy jargon. However if you are serious about photography and image editing, it is very important that the monitor displays colors accurately and with the correct brightness, tone and intensity. Something like The Datacolor SpyderX Pro can help tremendously. It is easy to use, and it comes with a variety of features that make it a great choice for serious photographers and designers.

Conclusion.

Let's be clear...Professional design software like Photoshop typically it is not made to install on Linux systems. However if you are a newbie into photo editing, I feel it is always better to start with free photo editing software. They allow you to experiment and learn before you spend hundreds of dollars. Plus you are always free to alter the those programs when you need to. You legally own your work and will always have access to your work. No licenses, no subscriptions.

OnlyOffice: alternative to Microsoft Office

As I have posted before All of these programs are being ran in Nobara Project version 37 running on a borrowed, Beelink GTR6. 

System specs:

Soc:Ryzen 9 6900H 3.3-4.9GHz 8C/16T L2 4MB L3 16MB

Graphics Model: Integrated AMD Radeon 680M

Graphics Core Count: 12

Graphics Frequency: 2400 MHz

Graphics Architecture: RDNA2

SSD:500GB NVMe 

RAM:DDR5: 32GB 4800Mhz DDR5 (2 x DDR5

For those that need an alternative to Microsoft Office. 

As we all know MS office it's not available natively on Gnu/Linux. Not to worry there are a few alternatives that will do everything you need to do. For example: OnlyOffice both looks like MS Office and matches many features. Where Microsoft Office includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, ONLYOFFICE is a little bit different, it includes Document, Spreadsheet and Presentation editors. 

Document

ONLYOFFICE’s document editor is a fully-featured word processor like, Word.

Spreadsheet

ONLYOFFICE spreadsheet is very similar to Excel. If you Excel you will be able to find your way around the ONLYOFFICE spreadsheet easily.

Presentation

ONLYOFFICE’s presentation is very similar to PowerPoint. It has the same text formatting options. Inset objects into your slides, including images, autoshapes, charts, tables, graph etc. 

Note: ONLYOFFICE has a very high compatibility with MS office. Highly compatible with .docx, .xlsx, .pptx as well as with .odf.