Operating System

• Ubuntu Linux 6.06 LTS, Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too!

http://www.ubuntu.com

Ubuntu 6.10 also comes with an easy setup for thin client management which also includes support local usb devices and printers. This would be an ideal setup for cash strapped SMEs? that have old computers (such as those running Win98). A minimal investment in the server would improve the computing environment by a lot for these users. - kaeru

• KNOPPIX is a bootable Live system on CD or DVD, consisting of a representative collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a productive Linux system for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it (over 8GB on the DVD "Maxi" edition).

http://www.knoppix.com

• SLAX is fast and beautiful Linux operating system which fits on small (3.14") CD-ROM disc. It runs directly from the CD (or USB) without installing. The Live CD described here is based on the Slackware Linux distribution and uses Unification File System (also known as unionfs), allowing read-only filesystem to behave as a writable one, saving all changes to memory.

http://www.slax.org

• Damn Small Linux (DSL) was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD. It was at first just a personal tool/toy. But over time Damn Small Linux grew into a community project with hundreds of development hours put into refinements including a fully automated remote and local application installation system and a very versatile backup and restore system which may be used with any writable media including a hard drive, a floppy drive, or a USB device.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Accounting

• SQL-Ledger is a double entry accounting system. Accounting data is stored in a SQL database server, for the display any text or GUI browser can be used. The entire system is linked through a chart of accounts. Each item in inventory is linked to income, expense, inventory and tax accounts. When items are sold and purchased the accounts are automatically updated.

http://www.sql-ledger.com/

• GnuCash? is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX. Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash? allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports.

http://www.gnucash.org/

• Turbo CASH makes fully-featured open source accounting software a reality. Here you can download a 53 megabyte self-extracting .EXE file which will install the full TurboCASH? .7 programme onto your computer.

http://www.turbocash.co.za/

Point of Sales

• L'anePOS is a point-of-sale (cash register) and backoffice program for retail businesses and restaurants written in Perl on Linux/Unix. It uses PostgreSQL? for backend storage. http://l-ane.net/

Customer Management

• SugarCRM? is rethinking how technology can help companies manage customer relationships. Sugar, the market leading commercial open source CRM application, delivers a feature-rich set of business processes that enhance marketing effectiveness, drive sales performance, improve customer satisfaction and provide executive insight into business performance. Supported by deep collaboration and administration capabilities that adapt to how your company operates, Sugar is delighting customers of all sizes across a broad range of industries.

http://www.sugarcrm.com

• vTiger is an easy-to-use and scaleable open source bulletin board system that enables you to easily create, manage, and promote your online community.

http://www.vtiger.com

All in one Email/Calendaring/ Groupware

• Hula is a mail and calendar server with a friendly web-interface designed for a great user experience.

http://www.hula-project.org/Hula_Project

• Citadel is a complete and feature-rich open source groupware platform. Users love Citadel because it's software that helps them work, play, stay in touch... without calling attention to itself. System administrators love Citadel because it installs in minutes without the need to manually integrate all the different components together.

http://citadel.org

Content Management Systems

• Plone is an open-source content management system built on top of the Python application server Zope and its accompanying Zope Content Management Framework. Plone is free software and is designed to be extensible. It can be used as an intranet or extranet server, document publishing system, and groupware tool for collaboration between separately located entities.

http://plone.org

• OpenCms? is a professional level Open Source Website Content Management System. OpenCms? helps to create and manage complex websites easily without knowledge of html. An integrated WYSIWYG editor with a user interface similar to well known office applications helps the user creating the contents, while a sophisticated template engine enforces a site-wide corporate layout. As true Open Source software, OpenCms? is completely free of licensing costs.

http://www.opencms.org/opencms/en/

• BitWeaver? is an application framework for content management. It is a fully functional web application and CMS, and is used to power every page on this site. It is truly open source, community driven, object oriented, and written in PHP. We use Smarty Templates and ADOdb? to support many databases including Postgres, Firebird, Oracle, and MySQL?.

http://www.bitweaver.org

• Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable

http://www.joomla.org

• Drupal is software that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to set up scores of different kinds of web sites. Drupal is open source software licensed under the GPL, and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.

http://www.drupal.org

• CMS Made Simple provides a fast and easy way to create a web site and manage its contents. Use it to make a home page for your family -- or your multinational corporation! To get a site up with CMS Made Simple is just that, simple. For those with more advanced ambitions there are plenty of addons to download. And there is an excellent community always at your service. It's very easy to add content and addons wherever you want them to appear on the site. Design your website in whatever way or style you want and just load it into CMSMS to get it in the air. Easy as that!

http://www.cmsmadesimple.org

Ecommerce Solutions

• VirtueMart? is an Open Source E-Commerce solution to be used together with a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla! (but also works with Mambo). Joomla and VirtueMart? are written in PHP and made for easy use in a PHP / MySQL? environment.

http://www.virtuemart.com

• osCommerce is the king of open source shopping carts. It is an online shop e-commerce solution that offers a wide range of out-of-the-box features that allows online stores to be setup fairly quickly with ease, and is available for free as an Open Source based solution released under the GNU General Public License.It is the engine behind thousands of online stores around the world. osCommerce is easy to setup and maintain, but also makes it possible for store administrators to present their stores to their customers with their own unique requirements.There is a large and active community where members help one another out and participate in development issues reflecting upon the current state of the project. osCommerce is a feature- packed system which can scale from a few products to thousands of products. Additional modules can be added to the basic store, offering additional features.

http://www.oscommerce.com

• ZenCart? is based on osCommerce but has now developed into a completely different beast. It's easy to use, navigating through your merchandise is simple, and the program provides several "Spotlight" lists in addition to the traditional category to product links.Once a product is added to the shopping cart, secure checkout is a simple 3-step process. After providing the billing information, your customer chooses the shipping method. (multiple shipping methods, including real-time internet shipping quotes are built-in). There is support for lots of payments gateways so you should have no problem taking payments.

http://www.zencart.com

• phpShop, another of the staple open source cart systems out there is phpShop. This system is feature-rich and allows you to get up and running quickly. With many of the features of the osCommerce-based carts it has its own flavor which is easy to use and allows you to set up your store in no time.if you run the Mambo content management system, you may wish to check out http://www.mambo-phpshop.net which allows you to integrate phpShop with this CMS.

http://www.phpshop.org

• myMarket is a basic php-based ecommerce system. Not as well supported as the ones above but worthwhile for a basic store.

http://mymarket.sourceforge.net/

• FishCart?, in use since January 1998, is a proven Open Source e-commerce system for products, services, online payment and online donation management. Written in PHP4, FishCart? has been tested on Windows NT, Linux, and various Unix platforms. FishCart? presently supports the MySQL?, PostgreSQL?, Solid, Oracle and MSSQL.

http://fishcart.org/

• Symphero provides a complete set of tools for deploying an e-commerce system and integrating it with your existing business process and inventory control systems. The key modules include XML, content and database management, statistics, search, and legacy integration.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensymphero/

• Alfresco is the leading open source alternative for enterprise content management. It couples the innovation of open source with the stability of a true enterprise-class platform. The open source model allows Alfresco to use best-of-breed open source technologies and contributions from the open source community to get higher quality software produced more quickly at much lower cost.

Our goal is to not only provide an open source offering but to surpass commercial offerings such as Documentum or Microsoft SharePoint? in terms of features, functionality and benefits to the user community. http://www.alfresco.com/

Database Management

• www.PostgreSQL?. <http://www.postgresql.com/>
• www.mySQL.com <http://www.mysql.com/>

Simple Internet Sharing/Firewall/ Wireless AP

• Monowall
• Internet Sharing http://tldp.org/HOWTO/IP-Masquerade-HOWTO/
• Linux IPTables? http://www.netfilter.org
• Coyote Linux http://www.coyotelinux.com
• IPCop? Firewall
• SmoothWall? Express
• Linux LiveCD? Router (and others like these)
• Guarddog
• firestarter http://www.fs-security.com/

Utilities

gLabels (sticky label printer for mailouts etc)

HR

• eHRMS (manage leave applications etc.)
• hrms
• orangehrm http://sourceforge.net/projects/orangehrm/ http://orangehrm.blogspot.com/
• SugarCRM? (HR Module) http://www.sugarcrm.com
• VtigerCRM? http://www.vtigercrm.com
• OpenBravoERP? http://www.openbravo.com

Tutorials

• Guides to using OpenOffice? (especially spreadsheets)
• Guide to using Desktop
• Lots off goodies: http://www.w3.org/
• PHP: http://www.php.net/
• ROR: http://www.rubyonrails.org/docs
• MySQL?: http://mysql.org/doc/
• Cheat Sheets: http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/
• http://www.linux-tutorial.info/

Suggested links

• http://osswin.sourceforge.net
• http://tldp.org

Migration Tutorial