The active development community is steadily adding new features and extensions such as the superb Yafray rendering engine for generating photo-realistic effects. Blender now also supports dynamic particle generation, advanced UV texture unwrapping methods using LSCM algorithms and much more. Blender natively exports to a multitude of 3D formats such as VRML, Cal3d, AC3D. With the powerful and easily extensible Python plugin support, you can write your own extensions or choose from a range of existing plug-ins.

With the recent user interface overhaul and the release of the 2.3 Blender User's guide, using Blender is easier than ever. Even so, 3D modeling remains a complex computing task, with the result that Blender is an extensive application with a steep learning curve.

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), is a powerful and comprehensive imaging solution, suitable for those wanting to manipulate digital photographs, design and export graphics for the web, convert from one file format to another and even produce complex high-resolution compositions for print. The GIMP features a number of paint tools with sub-pixel sampling for high quality anti-aliased brush strokes, a powerful gradient editor and blend tool, layers and layer masks with over 20 blending modes, support for importing and exporting in a myriad of image formats, unsharp mask, levels and curves tools for enhancement of digital photos and much more! The GIMP is a feature packed program which you may need some time to get to grips with, to help with this process we provide a handful of tutorials for you to follow, as well as the online book, grokking the GIMP, which, while written for GIMP 1.x, still contains invaluable advice and techniques.

Inkscape's main goal is to create a powerful and convenient drawing tool fully compliant with XML, SVG, and CSS standards. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.

Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

The Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. It offers several campaigns, the first of which is 'The Heir to the Throne'. After ages of peace and prosperity the lands of Wesnoth have been overrun by hordes of Orcs and Undead. As the rightful heir to the throne of Wesnoth, you must gather a troupe of loyal adventurers to reclaim your throne. In a sequence of missions you must lead them wisely to help them gain experience and riches. In other campaigns you can play as other races, such as Elves, Dwarves, Orcs or Undead. The characters you can recruit have a range of traits, offering various strategic strengths and weaknesses on different terrains and against different opponents. The selection available will vary in different campaigns. With a network connection you can join friends in campaigns on-line. The Wesnoth project regularly organizes on-line tournaments where the best campaigners can measure their skill

Sokoban YASC (Yet Another Sokoban Clone) is a maddeningly simple game first conceived by Hiroyuki Imabayashi, a Japanese programmer. The word Sokoban means "warehouse keeper." The object of the game is to put all of the crates in your "warehouse" into the designated storage areas. Sounds easy, right? Well, there are a few restrictions:

You are not allowed to pull crates, only push.
You cannot push more than one box at a time.
You cannot pass through a box or wall.
These restrictions -- especially the first one -- turn a seemingly simple task into a delightfully difficult challenge.

Firefox light-weight web browser based on Mozilla technology. It empowers you to browse faster, more safely, and more efficiently. Key features include: Popup Blocking to stop those annoying ads popping up. Tabbed Browsing lets you view multiple web pages in a single window. Open links in the background so that they're ready for viewing when you're ready to read them. Text zooming is a quick way of enlarging or decreasing the text of any web page to make it more readable. You can expand this lightweight core by adding plug-ins that do everything from automatic form completion to blocking Flash animations. There is also a range of themes available to let you alter the look of the browser and you can further customize the toolbars and functionality. The Easy Transition system imports all of your settings, including favorites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer and other browsers, so you can start surfing right away. But possibly the best reason to start using Firefox is its enhanced security. Built with your Security in mind from the start, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity your business. In this age of rampant virus attacks, security conscious web users browse with secure alternative browsers such as Firefox. If you install only one program from this CD (and you browse the web), you should make it Firefox.

Gaim is an instant messenger (IM) client. Use it to chat with others in real time using any supported network, including AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr. Gaim can be simultaneously connected to several networks, so if you have contacts on different networks, you can talk to them all at the same time, from one easy to use program.

Gaim supports many native network features, such as file transfer, away messages, buddy icons, typing notification, and MSN window closing notifications well as many unique features. Buddy Pounce can be used to notify you when a buddy signs on, goes away or returns from idle. There are also plugins available for text replacement, extended message notification, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more. Gaim integrates well with the Windows system tray, allowing you to work with Gaim without requiring the buddy list window to be up at all times.

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

What is RSS?
RSS ("Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary") is a document specification that gives users the power to collect and organize Web-based news and information in a more efficient manner.

Why "Owl"?
The owl is a traditional symbol of wisdom, and a quiet, efficient hunter. You'll find RSSOwl's "big eyes" a big help when scanning the Web's vast array of RSS sources.

Thunderbird is a modern email client with features such as intelligent spam filters, a built-in spell checker, a range of themes and customisable layout. Thunderbird provides IMAP/POP support, HTML e-mail composing, quick search, address book, advanced message filtering, address completion, import tools, and the ability to manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts. With Thunderbird Extensions you can add additional features to help you build a mail client that meets your specific needs. As with Firefox, security is a central theme. Thunderbird provides enterprise and government grade security features such as S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices. The intelligent Thunderbird spam filter analyzes your e-mails to identify those that are most likely to be junk. These can be automatically deleted or diverted to a separate folder. The spam filter is adaptive and also learns from your address book and usage to improve its accuracy.

WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows. Legacy SCP protocol is also supported. Its main function is safe copying of files between a local and a remote computer.

Features
Graphical user interface
Translated into several languages
Integration with Windows (drag&drop, URL, shortcut icons)
U3 support
All common operations with files
Support for SFTP and SCP protocols over SSH-1 and SSH-2 and plain old FTP protocol
Batch file scripting and command-line interface
Directory synchronization in several semi or fully automatic ways
Integrated text editor
Support for SSH password, keyboard-interactive, public key and Kerberos (GSS) authentication
Integrates with Pageant (PuTTY authentication agent) for full support of public key authentication with SSH
Windows Explorer-like and Norton Commander-like interfaces
Optionally stores session information
Optionally supports standalone operation using a configuration file in place of registry entries, suitable for operation from removable media

Audacity is a sound editing program which can record, playback, and mix sounds or apply effects using a variety of filters. Edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo) and mix multiple tracks together. Save your files in a number of formats, including WAV, Ogg Vorbis and AIFF, or use Audacity's native project format for high performance editing. MP3 support is available using the external LAME MP3 encoder, which is included with CDex, or can be installed from here after installing Audacity. It also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customisable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Bass Boost, Wahwah, and Noise Removal. This full-featured program is fast and stable, and is also available for Linux and MacOS X.

The ReallySlick screensavers are a collection of nifty screensavers written in the open graphics language (OpenGL). They may not be the most useful program ever, but they sure are pretty!

Compatibility These should work well on most computers; if your computer is more than a few years old, they may be somewhat slow (the performance can be improved by fiddling with their settings; also try updating your graphics card drivers). Also, there have been reports that computers using integrated Intel graphics cards have poor performance. This is because Intel disabled OpenGL on some of the cards it produces; there is unfortunately nothing to be done

OpenOffice.org is a full-featured productivity suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, web page editor and presentation program. Notable features in this version are native PDF and Flash export at the click of button and a macro recorder for increased productivity. OpenOffice.org provides you with the ability to create mail merged documents from Outlook or Mozilla address books, spreadsheets, or other data sources and its tightly-integrated modules help to simplify work flow. Documents are stored in a compressed, open-standard XML format to ensure future availability of your data and to reduce file sizes. You can read and write documents in a wide range of formats including Microsoft Office. The word processor component, Writer, is suitable for the production of professional documents, reports, newsletters, and brochures. A powerful spreadsheet module called Calc contains sophisticated tools for calculation, data analysis and visualisation, its built-in charting tools are able to generate customisable 2D and 3D charts. The presentation utility, Impress, uses effects, animation and drawing tools to help you create effective multimedia slide shows to present your the way you want to. Use the Draw component to produce either simple diagrams or complex 3D illustrations and special effects for use in documents and presentations. The Database User Tools give you all the tools you need for day to day database work in a simple spreadsheet-like form. They support dBASE databases for simple applications, or any ODBC or JDBC compliant database for industrial strength database work.

Due to the high cost of commercial office suites, deciding to use OpenOffice.org will typically represent the single largest source of savings on software for organisations or individuals. OpenOffice.org is increasingly becoming an office suite of choice in education, government, and business. We include several tutorials in Flash and PDF format to help you get quickly up to speed. Installation

Click the install icon to the right to start the installation process. You will be asked a series of questions about the components you wish to install and the program location on your computer. The default choices are generally fine. You will also be prompted to select or install a Java Runtime Environment (JRE). This is an optional component which extends the functionality of OpenOffice.org in some areas. A copy can be downloaded from Sun Microsystems. You can also select whether OpenOffice.org should open Microsoft Office documents by default. Once installtion is complete you can install additional spelling dictionaries directly from within OpenOffice.org Writer (File -> Autopilot -> Install new dictionaries ...)

Use PDFCreator to generate PDF documents directly from any Windows program. PDF (Portable Document Format) files are the de facto standard in electronic publishing, because the author can be sure that the document will look as intended on all platforms, regardless of local fonts or lack thereof. PDFs can also be generated with commercial packages, but PDFCreator is by far the easiest and cheapest option (free). Once installed, simply select 'Print' from the File menu of your word processor or drawing program, and select 'PDFCreator Printer' from the list of printers. Click 'Save' and enter a name for your PDF output file. That's it!

Optionally, you may also enter information to identify the document, such as Title, Creation Date and Author. The Options dialogue lets you control the process in more detail. You can set the resolution and compression levels for the various file types, and control how fonts are included. Use the security feature to protect your document with a password. JPEG, PNG, Postscript (PS) and Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) output formats are also supported.

Notepad2 is intended to be a replacement for the Notepad program that is included as part of Windows. Like Notepad, Notepad2 is small, fast, and has few frills. It does, however, add some functionality such as colour syntax highlighting that many people will find useful, especially those that have to edit the odd HTML page or script. You can select the level of zoom and select the editing font. Notepad2 supports Unicode, UTF-8, Unix and Mac text files.

The Notepad2 program is largely based on source code from the Scintilla Text Editor (SciTE), also available on this CD. SciTE also has tabs which facilitates editing of multiple files. It also has further options for configuration, but is not quite as simple to use as Notepad2.

7-Zip is a program for creating or unpacking archived and compressed files. It can unpack 7zip, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB files, or create file archives in those formats. For the standard ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2 - 10 % better than that provided by PKZip or WinZip, and the native 7zip format can provide a 45% reduction in file size from the common zip format. The program is highly configurable, allowing the user to balance the level of compression and speed. The interface is designed to mimic the standard Windows shell, Explorer, and is localized to 40 languages. Though 7-Zip is free of charge, you have the option of "registering" if you would like official technical support for the program.