OStatic

Today marks the final installment in our series that takes a look at educational versions of popular Linux distributions ideal for students returning to class in the next few weeks. We've already talked about Edubuntu and openSUSE Education, so today let's take a look at Debian Jr.

While many distros provide educational software for students all the way up to college-age, Debian Jr.'s age-specfic apps top out around the 12-year old mark. According to the project's Web site, Our goal is to make Debian an OS that children of all ages will want to use. Our initial focus will be on producing something for children up to age 8. Once we have accomplished this, our next target age range is 7 to 12. By the time children reach their teens, they should be comfortable with using Debian without any special modifications.

While the native screenshot applications found in most Linux distributions are fine for quick screengrabs, you need something heftier if you plan to highlight, annotate, resize or otherwise tinker with images. Shutter is a great little open source app that lets you take quick snapshots of your computer screen and dress them up all sorts of ways.

Use Shutter to take a timed or instant screenshot of your entire desktop, a single window, or a particular area of your screen. You can even dispatch it onto the Internet to take a snapshot of a Web site and bring you back the results.

While the native screenshot applications found in most Linux distributions are fine for quick screengrabs, you need something heftier if you plan to highlight, annotate, resize or otherwise tinker with images. Shutter is a great little open source app that lets you take quick snapshots of your computer screen and dress them up all sorts of ways.

Use Shutter to take a timed or instant screenshot of your entire desktop, a single window, or a particular area of your screen. You can even dispatch it onto the Internet to take a snapshot of a Web site and bring you back the results.

Microsoft Project is pretty handy project management software but it's not right for everyone. Some have philosophical objections to it, while others simply just can't afford it. Fortunately, there's an open source alternative to Project that has all the features but none of the restrictions or costs.

Open Workbench does pretty much everything you'd expect good project management software to do. Use it to plan all the details of multiple projects, then delegate tasks and track their completion. The calendar feature keeps everyone on the team aware of meetings and deadlines, and the scheduler automatically manages the tasks of projects and subprojects.

This week, I've been going over some options students have for setting up a computer with educational software and applications. Monday, I gave readers an overview of Edubuntu, an education edition of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu. Today, let's take a look at openSUSE Education, a community-driven project backed by Novell.

The openSUSE Education Project is an effort to support schools using Linux and to provide an openSUSE-based Live DVD that can be used to set up a quick educational environment without installing any software. The KIWI-LTSP server supports up to five users from the Live DVD. The Live DVD is also installable, so classrooms that are switching to Linux on a full-time basis can use the Life (Linux for Education) DVD to do a permanent install.

Social networking is so hot right now that many companies have given up trying to block workers from using it and are instead embracing it as a way to keep employees connected. Smart businesses even encourage it as a way to foster collaboration among teams, something that's been addressed often here at OStatic. On top of that, many companies are using social media to interact with customers as part of a larger marketing strategy. In short, there's a whole lot of social networking going on these days.

One issue that's beginning to crop up, however, is a lack of sufficient ways to tie together all the email and contact information people collect as they swing from network to network. You might connect with your boss and his assistant on LinkedIn, your best customers on Facebook, and your development team in a Google Group. That's a lot of contact info to keep track of and searching through an assortment of lists to find the person you're trying to reach is a huge time-sink. If you're dealing with that particular headache on a regular basis, then you're going to love Open-Xchange's the newest version of its open source groupware.

It's no secret that open source community members have big hearts when it comes to giving. From beard-shaving for Tasmanian devils to raising funds that put computers in the hands of impoverished children, charity seems to know no bounds.

Longtime users of the popular open source text editor Vim may already be aware of the charitable generosity of its creator Bram Moolenaar. For those who aren't, it just may persuade someone -- even a diehard Emacs fan -- to give up his or her current editor of choice.

What's not to like about Google Apps? It has a ton of features, it's incredibly easy to collaborate with other people, and it's free. Well, how about the fact that your data is only as accessible as Google decides to make it? If you're looking for the usefulness of a Web-based collection of office apps but want complete control over your data, OpenGoo might be just the answer you're looking for.

Back-to-school time is right around the corner and computers are on the top of most students' lists of things they want or need in time for the first day of class. Of course, there's no reason to drop a ton of cash on expensive software when open source versions work just as well or better. In fact, unlike commercial operating systems from Microsoft or Apple, some Linux distributions have entire versions or application bundles dedicated just to users in educational settings.

This week, I'm going to take a look at three of the most popular open source software bundles created just for student and classroom use. First up, Ubuntu Education Edition, better known as Edubuntu.

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past year, you know that microblogging is all the rage. Web sites like Twitter, Identi.ca, and Laconica are incredibly popular for exchanging snippets of information, chatting with others, and quickly sharing links to interesting online content. It's really a pain to jump from site to site to read your friends updates or provide your own, so here are five microblogging extensions for Firefox to help you out.

ShortenURL - Microbloggers don't want to waste precious characters on long URLs so it's customary to shorten links you display in status updates. Pasting a Web site location into URL shortening service homepage is so last week now that you can do it right from your browser's toolbar. ShortenURL makes quick work of this repetitive task by letting you crop Web addresses right from the toolbar. It supports over 100 URL shortening services already but if that's not enough, you can request more.