Open Source movement is seeing a lot of excitement this week. Hot on the heels of the much anticipated  release of Firefox 3, openSUSE has released their shiny new version openSUSE 11.0 today.

openSUSE 11.0 is in the wild now with almost 200 new features specific to openSUSE, an awesome new installer, a faster package manager, KDE4, Gnome 2.22, Compiz Fusion and much more than I can list here.

I have been running openSUSE 11.0 beta for a week and love every bit of the improvements made. Plus, with KDE4 coming out with a stable release, you could get openSUSE 11.0 with KDE4 out of the box.

As much as I’d love to do a full review of openSUSE 11.0, some of my trusted sources have already done so and much better than I can. So, I am going to point to some excellent resources if you’d like to read up on this new version!

About openSUSE 11.0

openSUSE 11.0 Main page | Release Notes | Product Highlights | Screenshots | Guide to open SUSE 11.0 | openSUSE 11.0 Review

The above links will inform you of all things openSUSE 11.0. I will try to post a follow up post with little tricks and tips if there is enough interest in your comments as I don’t usually talk much about Linux here.

Download openSUSE 11.0

openSUSE 11.0 CD ISOs | openSUSE 11.0 DVD ISOs | openSUSE 11.0 torrents | openSUSE 11.0 deltas

To help avoiding over loading their servers, it is recommended to use the mirrors when possible.

Post 11.0 Installation

Scott Morris of SUSE Blog has put together a nice list of package repositories you can add to YAST.

If you can’t find a more recent package via YAST, openSUSE Build Service might have it.

I found this tutorial referenced by Scott very helpful in setting up my openSUSE with codecs, video drivers and the applications I need.

If you get stuck with anything, there is always the openSUSE forums to get help from.

At the moment I use Linux for my desktop only at work as it well suits the tasks i do. But, with openSUSE 11.0 I am seriously considering making the switch in my home desktop as well. Especially with the release of Wine 1.0 this week, I could run many of my Windows only applications in Linux as well.

What would it take you to make the switch to Linux? (if you already haven’t)

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

Long gone are the days of Napster & Kazaa. There are many options in the fray now for a P2P file sharing program. Limewire has its one following of people who love it and use it. I have used it for a while as well. LimeWire used to be totally free but they offer a PRO version now for $21.95 with features such as optimized search results, turbo-charged downloads and Tech support. Sound familiar? That’s the route taken by a lot of free programs and I don’t blame them.

And you can’t blame me for looking for a totally free alternative, right?

Frostwire is a great alternative for LimeWire and it has so much promising features that I find hard to ignore. It offers a lot of the PRO features of Limewire and even more like iTunes support.

Frostwire Quick Facts

• Completely free & open source (an awesome combination)
• It is a Java Gnutella P2P client
• Offers a clean slick interface with no spyware or adware
• iTunes integration
• Firewall to firewall transfers
• BitTorrent support
• Proxy support & community chat rooms
• Turbo charged maxmum download speeds & network connections
• Works in Windows, Mac, Ubuntu/Debian. RedHat /Fedora and available as a tarball.

I love open source software and Frostwire is a welcome addition to my list of open source software I use in my computer.

Download Frostwire (7.1 MB - Windows)

What do you use for a P2P client? Does it matter to you if it’s open source?

I was just going through my Google Reader starred items and found these gems that I wanted to share with you. Enjoy!

• Caution: Online MD5 Cracker Tool - Ryan of CybetNet News
  MD5 is a popular encoding used widely for encrypting passwords. It is scary to find out that these MD5 encryptions could be hacked. Find out how safe your passwords are.
• Flickr upload tool turns 3.0, goes open-source - Stephen at Webware
  Flickr upload tool is a favorite of many Flickr users and it has gone open source with version 3.0. At the same time, Flickr Pro users can now see statistics about who views their pictures. If you get DSL through Yahoo/AT&T, you’ll get it for free too.
• The ‘TakeTV’ Video Player - RT at UnTwisted Vortex
  RT tells you about this tiny USB drive looking TV player. Read on if you’d like TV on the go.
• Easiest way to type accents - Martin at gHacks
  If you type a lot of accent characters in your writing, you have to check out this free utility which would make your life much easier.
• Top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007 - Gina at Lifehacker
  I love this list of top 10 apps of 2007 which lists a lot of my favorite apps. I am not a Mac user so my number would be something else. Oops did I spoil your surprise?
• PuTTY Tray - Can PuTTY Get Any Snazzier? - My post at Techie Buzz
  If you are a Linux user or even if you just use PuTTY to connect to web host, check this neat improvemnt to PuTTY.

Hope you liked these links and I’ll see you tomorrow!

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I came across an article on TechCrunch about Adobe’s release of free, ad supported online version of Photoshop in six months. A quote from TechCrunch:

One of the risks of trying to find a niche to build a startup is that the big guys can land on your face at any time. That’s why all of these startups are going to be in serious trouble when Adobe releases a free, ad supported online version of Photoshop in six months.

Adobe Photoshop has it’s place in the professional photo editing world. But, its not in mine when the full version costs $650.00. For an amateur photographer as me, the free tools like Picasa does the trick most often. But, if you are a serious photographer and use the advanced features provided by Photoshop, maybe it is time to save some of that money maybe for one of those sweet IS (image stabilization) lens you have been wanting for your camera!

GIMP is just amazing and it is FREE! It has a lot of the advanced features you would find in PhotoShop. Here is an excerpt from their About page:

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. The terms of usage and rules about copying are clearly listed in the GNU General Public License.

It is written and developed on Unix platforms but the it runs on both Windows and Mac OS X.

Download it from here: http://gimp.org/downloads/

I am a big fan of open source software and I will share in future posts more of the free, open source software that I have come to use instead of the paid proprietary software! Hope you enjoy it too..

Sorry Mastercard, but I couldn’t resist doing that in the title!!