Links

These lists of links are a starting point for exploration into the world of Linux and Open Source Software. I find it very useful. I hope you will too. There are just too many here to make sense adding them all to the Blogroll links on the right side of each page.

I will continue to add links to this page as I find them. If you know of a link that should be here, or one that is here that is no longer valid or broken, please let me know so I can fix it.

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Core Open Source Links

This section contains links to core projects and organizations that create, support, encourage or promote the use of Open Source Software. These the organizations and projects are in the forefront of creating, defending and promoting Free Open Source Software.

Link	Description
Apache Software Foundation	The Apache Software Foundation provides support for the Apache community of open-source software projects.
Electronic Frontier Foundation	When our freedoms in the Internetworked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense. EFF continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights.
Fedora Project	The folks who create, compile and test the Fedora Distributions. This is a very popular but sometimes bleeding edge distribution. If you like to be out there in front, Fedora is for you.
FedoraForum.org	The support community for Fedora distributions.
Free Software Foundation	The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users. As our society grows more dependent on computers, the software we run is of critical importance to securing the future of a free society. Free software is about having control over the technology we use in our homes, schools and businesses, where computers work for our individual and communal benefit, not for proprietary software companies or governments who might seek to restrict and monitor us. The Free Software Foundation is working to secure freedom for computer users by promoting the development and use of free (as in freedom) software and documentation — particularly the GNU/Linux operating system — and by campaigning against threats to computer user freedom like Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).
GNU General Public License (GPL) Frequently Asked Questions	FAQs about the GNU General Public License.
GNU Project	The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. GNU’s kernel isn’t finished, so GNU is used with the kernel Linux. The combination of GNU and Linux is the GNU/Linux operating system, now used by millions.
Linux.com	Partner to the Linux Foundation, with on line documentation, user guides, training and tutorials.
Linux Foundation	The Linux Foundation is the nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms.
Novell	Novell now uses SUSE Linux as the basis for its products.
OASIS	OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society.
Open Source and Industry Alliance	CCIA has, for more than 30 years, been the leading proponent of “open markets, open systems and open networks.” We are an international, nonprofit association of computer and communications industry firms that employ more than 600,000 workers and generate annual revenues in excess of $200 billion. Our open source initiative, the Open Source and Industry Alliance, represents the interests of open-source developers and users around the world.
Open Source For America	New organization, July 22, 2009. Aligned with our commitment to the four principles, our goals are to help effect change in the U.S. Federal government policies and practices to allow the federal government to better utilize free and open source software; Help coordinate the communities collaboration with the Federal government on technology requirements; Raise awareness and create understanding among federal government leaders in the executive and legislative branches about the values and implications of open source software. Case studies are available.
Open Source Initiative	Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open-source community. One of our most important activities is as a standards body, maintaining the Open Source Definition for the good of the community. The Open Source Initiative Approved License trademark and program creates a nexus of trust around which developers, users, corporations and governments can organize open-source cooperation.
Open Source Software Institute	The Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) is a non-profit organization comprised of corporate, government, academic and Open Source Community representatives whose mission is to promote the development and implementation of open-source software solutions within U.S. federal, state and municipal government agencies and academic entities.
Oregon State University Open Source Lab	The Oregon State University Open Source Lab is the home of growing, high-impact open source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, Apache web server, the Drupal content management system and over 50 other leading open source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally. Through custom software development, vendor partnerships and industry events like the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON), the Lab’s staff and students encourage open source adoption in education, government, health care and other sectors.
Red Hat	Red Hat is the packager of the most popular commercial version of Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They are, arguably one of the largest contributors to many different Linux and Open Source projects including the kernel.
Sun Microsystems	Sun is one of the largest contributors to the GNU/Linux operating system. It has made substantial contributions to such key areas as Mozilla, GNOME and X.ORG as well as turning StarOffice over to the community in the form of OpenOffice.org.
Ubuntu	An extremely popular desktop distribution for Linux. Ubuntu is now also expanding into the server arena. They are also an extremely prolific contributor to many Linux and Open Source projects.

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General Links

This section contains links to general information about Open Source Software, such as definitions, news, and on line publications.

Link	Description
Definition of Open Source	Open Source Initiative – The definitive definition of Open Source
Desktoplinux.com	EWeek – News, articles and resources pertaining to Linux on the desktop.
Digital Tipping Point	A documentary film that will explore how the culture of sharing is spilling from the world of Free Open Source Software into the broader global culture.
Fedora Weekly News	A weekly on-line news magazine dedicated to the Fedora distribution. This is the place to check out the future of Linux, especially Red Hat based distributions.
Linux Insider	Linux news and information from around the world.
Linux Journal	The original magazine of the Linux Community.
Linux Online	On line Linux resources.
Linux Planet	A giude to the Linux operating system.
LXer	Linux News.
Slashdot.org	Linux News and oprinions.

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Open Source Projects

This section contains links to specific Open Source projects both private and public.

Link	Description
Alternative Route Project: OSS for Government	State of Washington Open Source bridge engineering tools.

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Hardware and Open Source

This section contains links to hardware companies that support Open Source at least a little.

Link	Description
Hewlett-Packard	Solutions provider, active user, and supporter of the Open Source community. More than 2,500 developers across the company are focused on Linux and open source projects. Over 6,500 service professionals worldwide are involved in the implementation and support of Linux and open source projects. HP has over 200 shipping products with embedded open source software.
IBM	Open Source projects. Resources for open source development and implementation.

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Linux Technical Links — Documentation and Support

This section contains links to various projects and sources for Linux and Open Source documentation and information. It includes some of my favorite Linux technical blogs.

Link	Description
Linux Documentation Project	This project is dedicated to creating create and distribute a canonical set of high quality free GNU/Linux documentation.
Linux Forums	A group of technical Linux forums with Linux experts available to answer questions.
LinuxGravity	Linux tutorials, guides, howtos, tips, tricks and hacks.
Linux Printing	Linux Foundation Open Printing.  We have resources to help with printing under free operating systems like GNU/Linux and the BSDs or under commercial UNIX-like systems such as Solaris and Mac OS X. Looking for configuration or driver help? Try our CUPS Quick Start or look for your printer in the OpenPrinting Database. For more detail, try Till’s Tutorial. If all else fails, ask a human in the forums. Researching a printer purchase? Simply browse our database. Looking for software? We host Foomatic, printer driver packages, and some other programs.
LinuxQuestions.org	A place to post Linux questions and receive answers from he community. You can also answer questions from others here to give back to the community.
Red Hat Documentation	All Red Hat documentation and manuals for on-line, download and purchase.
Rick’s Linux Resources	A huge list of Linux links ranging from information for beginners to hardware information, programming and administration topics.

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Linux Users Groups

Linux Users’ Groups (LUGs) provide local support and contacts into the Linux community. Ranging from new users of Linux to kernel programmers, the LUG is the place you can go for information and support.

Link	Description
Linux User Groups	A list of LUGs in North America.
Linux Users Group of Davis	The Linux Users’ Group of Davis is a 501(c)(7) non-profit computer club serving the Sacramento region, consisting of nearly 450 people who share an interested in the Linux® operating system, Free & Open Source software and other related topics — both technical and non-technical. Our goals are to advocate the use of Linux and Open Source, to educate the community on these software alternatives, and to support and provide a social network for local Linux users.

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Studies

This section contains links to studies by various private and governmental organizations pertaining to the use of Open Source Software. These are quite interesting and informative if you are considering the move to FLOSS.

Link	Description
European Commission – Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Survey and Study.	Note that this report was competed in 2002 but it is still quite relevant today.

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Open Source Software

This section contains information about specific Open Source Software packages, programs and programming languages, as well as web sites which are collections of or development centers for Open Source Software.

Link	Description
Freshmeat	The Web’s largest index of Unix and cross-platform software, themes and related “eye-candy”, and Palm OS software. Thousands of applications, which are preferably released under an open source license, are meticulously cataloged in the freshmeat database, and links to new applications are added daily.
FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory	A project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). We catalog useful free software that runs under free operating systems — particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants.
GnuCash	Open Source home and business accounting software. Available on most platforms including Linux and Windows. This is what I use for my accounting needs.
Majordomo	List Serve software.
Mailman	GNU Mailing List Manager with a nice web interface. I use this for my own mailing lists as well as customers.
MySQL	Open Source SQL database. MySQL is the database backend for WordPress which is the software used for this web site.
OpenOffice	The leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
OpenVista	OpenVista is the open-source version of VistA, which is an enterprise grade health care information system developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and deployed at nearly 1,500 facilities worldwide.
Oracle	The first commercial Linux database product, Oracle is the most widely used and the
PHP	PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.
PHPBB Web Forum	phpBB™ is a widely used Open Source forum solution. It has an easy to use administration panel and a user friendly installation process, which allows you to have a forum set up in minutes. It has a large and highly customisable set of key features coupled with a standards compliant interface.
PHP Classes Repository	A repository of PHP classes and other information related to PHP programming.
PHPBuilder	PHP forums and a code library.
PHP: Related Links	PHP related tutorials, articles, example scripts, PHP related tools, jobs, web hosting services, etc.
PostgreSQL	Another Open Source database.
SourceForge	The world’s largest open source software development web site. We provide free services that help people build cool stuff and share it with a global audience. As of February, 2009, more than 230,000 software projects have been registered to use our services by more than 2 million registered users, making SourceForge.net the largest collection of open source tools and applications on the net.
Swishe-E	Simple Web Indexing System for Humans – Enhanced. Swish-e is a fast, flexible, and free open source system for indexing collections of Web pages or other files. Swish-e is ideally suited for collections of a million documents or smaller. Using the GNOME™ libxml2 parser and a collection of filters, Swish-e can index plain text, e-mail, PDF, HTML, XML, Microsoft® Word/PowerPoint/Excel and just about any file that can be converted to XML or HTML text. Swish-e is also often used to supplement databases like the MySQL® DBMS for very fast full-text searching.
Sybase	Another commercial database that runs under Linux. Not Open Source.
Untangle	Easily Protect, Control and Monitor the online activities of all your small business or home computers via a single gateway to the internet. All Open Source, some products are free and some have monthly or yearly subscription fees.
VirtualBox	A powerful x86 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.
vtiger CRM	vtiger CRM provides a complete set of CRM capabilities, such as Sales force automation, Customer support & service, Marketing automation, Inventory management, Activity management, Security management, Calendaring, and E-mail integration.
WordIQ.com	Long list of Open Source Software.

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Organizations That Have Converted to Linux

This section contains links to information about organizations that have converted either partially or completely to Open Source Software.

Organization	Description
California Air Resources Board
Glendale Adventist Medical Center	Glendale Adventist Medical Center, in conjunction with Linux luminaries IBM and Novell, as well as the networkers at NoMachine, have found a way to insert Linux into the lives of its patients. Rather than blank walls and bad TV to stare at, patients in the new West Tower at Glendale Adventist have access to the outside world, via Linux-based thin clients available right in the patient’s room.
LXer – Linux News	This is a massive list of organizations that have converted to Linux some of which may be considerably out of date.
Massachusetts Information Technology Division	The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has mandated Open Source be an option for every IT software purchase and the use of open standards for document and information interchange.