Music goes beyond the sum of all notes and lyrics. There’s also the presentation layer, and when you are working on a desktop, a Linux one in particular, the digital component of how the music is delivered unto you does count. You want to enjoy your songs with style. As simple as it sounds, nailing…
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The idea that Free Software has no decent design programs, and that it is impossible to produce quality art without proprietary apps is one of those myths that refuses to die. For quite some time now, OCSmag has been on a mission to prove otherwise. In this latest series we talk to three artists who…
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Storytelling is the cultural cornerstone of human civilization. If I were even more pedantic than I already am, I would tell you about cave paintings, the epics of Gilgamesh, or the minstrels that travelled through medieval Europe. Instead let me tell you about teenage angst and manga comics.
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So here’s the news: Microsoft is forcing game developers and game developing companies through the hoop of their app store, encroaching on their revenue and putting itself in the way of dealing directly with the customers. Why am I not in the least bit surprised?
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Our colleague Bruce has a book coming out! It’s called Designing with LibreOffice. It tackles the subject of how to make documents look good and professional, while taking advantage of all the design features LibreOffice has to offer. So I got together with Bruce and we talked about his book, LibreOffice, design, and the eternal…
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Blender is best known for being a feature-rich, 3D editing and rendering application and a huge open source success story. What is less known is that Blender does regular video-editing too, and that the tools it provides are first class and corporate grade. For the final part of our trilogy, we tackle the video-editing challenge…
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You must see Glass Half, a superb and very, very funny animated short about to art critics with extreme opposite world views. Directed by Beorn Leonard and produced by Ton Roosendaal, Blender’s original founder and chairman of the Blender Foundation, the film is reminiscent in tone of Pixar’s shorts, with the key difference that all…
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What is the role of programmers in software development? The question is never far away in free and open source software (FOSS). Last month, however, the issues surrounding the question were emphasized by Robert C. Martin’s attempt to write a programmer’s oath that states best practices and the resulting discussion.
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Not too long ago, free fonts were either low-quality or utilitarian, designed to substitute for common proprietary fonts like Times Roman or Helvetica. Today, however, a small but growing number of free-licensed fonts can match the best proprietary fonts.
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In a recent post Steve Burge reflects on how Free Software has managed to spread into tech companies in a big way, but then, those same tech companies have built walled gardens, cutting their clients off from all that freedom goodness.
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Synfig, our favourite 2D animation suite, is looking for donations to keep development rolling.
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Vi Hart, the immensely entertaining mathematician/piano player and vlogger, has put out a video that, in classic Hartish fashion, explains the cause and the issues behind the attack on Net Neutrality in terms everybody can understand and without actually dumbing down the matter.
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