[Tech] Tech list catch-up (sort-of))

[LM]

> === Software requirements

So this is the area I'm personally most interested in.  Figured I'd
add my two cents and see what others thought on some of this.

>
> Pulling from Abigail's list, these divide fairly nicely into two
> categories:
>
> /==
> *I am currently running:* (productivity)
> Google docs
> GIMP *
> Blue Fish editor (html)
> Firefox
> Chrome (which crashes a lot and needs to get removed)

Would be curious how kompozer and/or Blue Griffon compare to Blue
Fish.  Personally, I use a programming editor for html editing.

>
> *It would be great to have:* (media production)
> 3d  modeling software
> video editing software
> sound editing software
> drawing software

I recently updated Schoolforge's list of 3D software.  You can find it at:
https://schoolforge.net/tags/3D
You can also check related tags like CAD for more suggestions.

Any details on type of video editing?  Tools can vary a lot depending
on video format.  Personally, I'm most interested in video software
that can create DVDs such as DVDStyler ( http://www.dvdstyler.org/en/
).

I have a nice list of sound creation/editing tools if anyone needs it.

> Productivity - these can be added as standard to the Lubuntu machine.
> GIMP may be a bit heavy for the older machines, and I might suggest moving
> it into the media category. If only light image editing needs doing, I can
> suggest gPaint which is more like MS Paint in terms of features and
> lightness.

mtpaint ( http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/ ) makes a nice lighter
alternative to Gimp.  There's also rgbpaint (
http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/rgbpaint.html ) for younger users.

If you want ultra-lightweight (works well on older/slower computer
systems), I like Rendera ( https://github.com/Mortis69/rendera and
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rendera/), grafx2 (
http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/ ) and command line tools like
imagemagick, graphicsmagick, netpbm.

There's also Tuxpaint ( http://www.tuxpaint.org/ ).  Someone's working
on a SDL 2 port for it now.

> *3d modelling* - *Blender* seems to be the preferred software for 3d
> animation. The Free video "Big Buck Bunny" was created using Blender as a
> demo of what it can achieve - plays with the quality of a Pixar short!

Blender seems like a nice program and I've seen some great demos on
it.  I mentioned it to someone in our district who's doing 3D printing
and he said the learning curve was a bit much for his younger
students.  Seemed fine for the older ones though.

> *Sound editing* - for sound /editing/ *Audacity* is a good choice. For
> /music production/ a heftier suite is called for. Perhaps *LMMS*?

I do all my music production with abcmidi and abcm2ps.  Timidity++
with a good selection of soundfonts can convert midi to wave.  You can
then use an audio editor or audio tools to edit add voices, etc.  You
can also use the output of abc2midi to create Karaoke midi files for
children to practice reading (or singing) to the music.

> Audacity is adequate, and has a simpler GUI, which will be better for the
> elementary school kids she is teaching

mhwaveedit seemed to have an easier interface than Audacity, but it
doesn't do as much.  It is more lightweight though.

> My own photographic workflow makes use of digiKam and GIMP (I used to use
> Adobe Lightroom and PhotoShop; I'm finding I don't need them anymore and am
> now free of Apple!)

Rawtherapee ( http://rawtherapee.com/ ) and Dark Table (
http://www.darktable.org/ ) are supposed to have some interesting
features to replace Adobe Lightroom.

> For a full creativity set, I could aslo suggest adding *Scribus* to the
> standard set for desktop publishing & professional layout preparation
> (equivalent proprietary is Adobe InDesign)

Lyx is also a good option.  Have a friend who typeset her 'zines with it.

> *--- A note on creativity/media production distros:*
>
> Whilst Lubuntu will be perfectly fine for most productivity and study
> tasks, you may want to consider a different distro for media.

I think you can use any distribution for anything.  The only thing is,
you may have to build some things from source rather than counting
that it's in an archive somewhere or part of the install.  Since
you're working on a custom install, you can always add it in though.

So, I'm wondering about how open this project would be to building
some applications from source and providing custom versions of certain
programs.  As a programmer, I do a lot of customizing of the programs
I use and I build most of the Open Source programs I work with from
source so that I can make the changes that I want.  I've run across
some really interesting Open Source programs that are only available
as source and some good projects that may no longer be active but
would work fine with a few patches.  Would be nice to be able to share
some of those types of programs with educators/users.