15 popular open source applications for macOS

A real open source enthusiast will be always looking for open source alternatives in any platforms. It is not that difficult to get a free software for any platform. The Prism Break portal has a list of free software that can be used to save yourself from the notorious Prims surveillance program.

The macOS operating system is often considered as a platform for paid software only. However, there are hundreds of free applications available for the macOS as well.

Mr. Don Watkins has shared a list of free applications that he uses with macOS.

I use open source tools whenever and wherever I can. I returned to college a while ago to earn a master's degree in educational leadership. Even though I switched from my favorite Linux laptop to a MacBook Pro (since I wasn't sure Linux would be accepted on campus), I decided I would keep using my favorite tools, even on MacOS, as much as I could.

Fortunately, it was easy, and no professor ever questioned what software I used. Even so, I couldn't keep a secret.

I knew some of my classmates would eventually assume leadership positions in school districts, so I shared information about the open source applications described below with many of my MacOS or Windows-using classmates. After all, open source software is really about freedom and goodwill. I also wanted them to know that it would be easy to provide their students with world-class applications at little cost. Most of them were surprised and amazed because, as we all know, open source software doesn't have a marketing team except users like you and me.

The list published by Watkins includes LibreOffice, Handbrake, Firefox, Audacity, VLC, OpenShot ..etc.

You can read the original article and learn more on the listed in applications in OpenSource.com portal. 

Atom Code Editor 1.20 released with improved Git integration

Github has announced release of Atom 1.20, latest stable release of full featured, open source text cum code editor. This release brings various improvements including better support for Git integration, modified find and replace module and language-php package has been updated with various bug fixes.

Improved find and replace functionality in Atom 1.20 (Credit : Atom Website)

The diff view in Git integration has been improved to show multiple diff views simultaneously. You can also compose commit messages in main window if you don't like the tradition way of doing it.

When searching for particular keywords, you can also configure to show context lines, say n lines before and before actual keyword and modify their display inline when looking at the results.

Other highlights in atom 1.20 includes:

• Dozens of fixes for PHP grammar support were made in the language-php package.
• CSS autocomplete now supports PostCSS.
• Support has been added to bracket-matcher for code embedded in strings.
• We’ve added an API for observing dock visibility.

For more information, see release announcement published in Atom website.

Newly released Qt Creator 4.1.0 featuers Flat light & Dark themes

The Qt project has announced release of Qt Creator 4.1.0, latest stable release of cross platform supported, full featured IDE (Integrated Development Environment) with Qt design and development tools.

Qt Creator 4.1.0 comes with a lot refinements and new features. These features includes new flat light and flat dark themes which are extension of flat theme introduced in Qt Creator 4.0. The code editor now offers better code completion and facilitate easy code correction. In addition to bug fixes on C++ static analysis, the Clang compiler is used to fix many other issues. Also, Qt Quick Designer and QML profiler tools have made crucial performance improvements.

The main highlights of Qt Creator 4.1.0 can be summarized as follows:

• Flat Light and Flat Dark themes, complementing the Flat theme which was added in 4.0
• Text Editors now behave much better with regards to automatically inserting and skipping characters.
• Aside from fixing bugs in the code model and static analyzer integration, we also updated our binary packages to use Clang 3.8.1, which also fixes many issues, especially with MSVC.
• Both Qt Quick Designer and QML Profiler received many performance improvements.
• Many bugs were fixed for supporting CMake projects, and the workflow further improved.

For more information see release announcement published in Qt project blog.

KDevelop 5.0.0 released with better support for C/C++, Python, PHP, JS and QML

The KDevelop project has announced availability of KDevelop 5.0.0, latest stable release of full featured, extensible, cross platform supported, open source IDE(Integrated Development Environment) that mainly focus on support for  the C++, Python, PHP and JavaScript/QML programming languages.

KDevelop 5.0.0 is a result of 2 years of development effort after previous stable release, KDevelop 4.7.x and within this two years the project has made a lot achievements. These achievements includes better support for C/C++, Python, PHP and QML/JS languages. Also, the project code has refractored thoroughly to make it more maintainable and extensible.

Credit : KDevelop Website

The most important highlight of KDevelop 5.0.0 is improved support for C/C++ languages. The project has replaced custom C/C++ code analysis engine with clang.

• Even the most complex C++ code constructs are now parsed and highlighted correctly and reliably. In the end there's a compiler in the background -- KDevelop will complain exactly if it wouldn't compile.
• Diagnostics are a lot more accurate and reliable.  For example, KDevelop can now detect whether or not there is an overload of a function available with the parameters you are passing in.
• For many problems (e.g. misspelled variable names, missing parentheses, missing semicolon, ...), we get suggestions on how to correct the problem from clang, and offer the user a shortcut key (Alt+1) to apply the fix automatically.
• There is now a C parsing mode, which enables the analysis engine to correctly parse C code.
• In contrast to the C++ support, the Python support has not undergone any significant refactoring, but has instead seen further stabilization and polishing. The same is true for the PHP and QML/JS language support components.
• KDevelop 5 has of course been ported to KDE Frameworks 5 and Qt 5. This will for the first time enable us to offer an experimental version of KDevelop for Microsoft Windows in the near future, in addition to support for Linux.  Additionally, we offer experimental stand-alone Linux binaries, which make it much easier for you to try KDevelop 5 before upgrading your system-wide installation.

For more information on KDevelop 5.0.0, you can refer release announcement and a blog post made Kevin, which gives a detailed explanation of new features in this release.

OpenShot Video Editor 2.0 Beta 4 Released

The OpenShot team announced availability of OpenShot 2.0 Beta 4, latest development release of upcoming OpenShot 2.0 stable release. OpenShot is a non-linear open source video editor that can be used to captures your videos, photos, and music files to create your dream film using different transitions effects, subtitles, ..etc

OpenShot 2.0 Beta 4 has made a lot progress comparing to previous beta release. It comes with improved stability, better performance and new features. Also, OpenShot team has made crucial improvements to the OpenShot infrastructures including build servers and website.

From release announcement:

There were 2 really big issues with the previous beta releases: some Mac computers could not launch OpenShot due to incompatibilities between the CPU and certain libraries (compiled with brew), and random crashes with Windows during preview/playback. Both of these issues have been fixed, and a big thanks for all the testers who helped me with each experimental revision. I could write an entire update on these 2 points alone, they both took a huge amount of time to troubleshoot, and are reasonably well documented on Github.

Read complete release announcement in OpenShot website.

Shashlik : A tool to run Android apps natively on Linux

In these days, android is most popular mobile platform. There are hundreds of millions of devices powered by Android across the world and is a fastest growing platform.

It is estimated that Google Play store, most established software provider for Android platform has more than 1.43 million apps. It is always an interesting question is, how to make use of this rich app store in traditional desktop environments.

There are desktop platforms such as Android x86 project, Remix OS, Phoenix OS which are extension of Android to desktop platform. If you install these platforms in your desktop system, you can run several apps on it.

Flappy Bird game on Netrunner Linux - Application of Shashlik

The Shashlik project, is an attempt to support android apps on existing GNU/Linux installation.

In their official website, they describe their goal as

The goal of Shashlik is to provide a way to run Android applications on a standard Linux desktop as easily and simply as possible.

Behind the platform, Shashlik is nothing but a stripped version of Android. This will be booted in existing host session and run daemons and activity manager to work things properly. OpenGL and graphics will be rendered on the host to ensure fast performance.

A brief guide line for installation of Shashlik can be found in official website.

Android Spotify App running on Netrunner Linux

Android Flappy Bird running on Netrunner Linux