Open Source
Software that keeps unsaturated.com running

These are the open source applications I use on a daily basis. The accolades have already been written, so I won’t belabor that point. I give them all a thumbs-up review. These are the core applications I use here on unsaturated.com. Although I haven’t personally contributed to their development, I think spreading the word is the next best thing.

  • SpamAssassin is spam filtering software that transformed how I look at e-mail. I don’t have a feeling of dread when I check my inbox. I know the chaff has been deleted or moved to a folder where it doesn’t get in my face. I wrote a very detailed how-to on installing SpamAssassin, which is one of the most popular posts on my site. Unfortunately, Dreamhost changed their network architecture in 2008 which made custom usage painfully awkward. The changes were too cumbersome so my mail is now hosted on Google.

  • WordPress is what I use to manage my site’s content. The templates are easy to create and plug-ins are plentiful. Everything is organized by static pages, dynamic posts, and categories. It was enough to meet my requirements and most importantly, not get in my way.

  • Gallery is what I use to manage my digital photos and movies. It brings order to my ever expanding collection. Security has always been a high priority for the Gallery team, which is reassuring. The plug-in list continues to expand.

  • GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is my default graphics editor. I decided to try it one day and was pleasantly surprised. It does everything I need, is plug-in friendly, and has a great base of users for support.

  • phpMyAdmin is without question the best web-based app for managing a MySQL database. This is a great complement to Wordpress, Gallery, and many other web-based apps that rely on database storage.

  • SQuirrel SQL Client allows you to access almost any relational database via a common user interface. That includes MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, and many more. There’s a variety of features that make repetitive tasks faster and database management, in general, much easier.

  • Inkscape does for vector graphics what the GIMP does for raster graphics. I used it to update my earth logo and find its feature set very competitive with commercial applications.