Many users felt however that the Sourceforge website was hard to navigate and looked kinda outdated. Lucky for them that the website was redesigned lately. It is not really clear when the changes went life, neither the blog nor the homepage contain information about the redesign.

The Sourceforge homepage looks very user friendly. A prominent search form, categories, popular projects and other services have been placed cleanly on that page. Changes have also been made to the project pages which make it now easier to download the Open Source software from the Sourceforge website.

The project owners have still all possibilities to change the default homepage to a unique project homepage. Designs have been taken over from the old website. The new website is definitely easier to navigate. Thanks to Yansky for submitting the news. What’s your opinion about the new Sourceforge homepage?

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The Linux distribution can be downloaded directly from its Sourceforge page. It comes as a 438 Megabyte self extracting executable that requires 1.86 Gigabytes on the computer’s hard drive after extraction. Users can then immediately start Ubuntu in Windows by clicking on the run_portable_ubuntu.bat file that is located in the root directory of the software program. Starting portable Ubuntu in Windows will open a command line window which will remain open all the time. This command line window contains information about background processes and the state of the Ubuntu system.

The Ubuntu dock at the top center of the screen will be opened and displayed giving users access to Applications, Places, System and applications like Firefox. Talking about applications. The usual add / remove applications menu can be accessed in portable Ubuntu to install additional applications on the computer system.

One could think that running an operating system inside another operating system would surely demand lots of system resources. This is surprisingly not the case. Running Ubuntu portable requires less than 50 Megabytes of computer memory that are occupied by its processes.

Main question however is why someone would use Ubuntu portable instead of the other options outlined above. One of the main reasons is that it is the least complicated to use. It cannot get easier than extracting and running the Linux distribution. Even Live CDs might require changing the boot sequence from hard drive to CD in order to run the distribution that way.

The portable application gives access to many Ubuntu applications and features which can be a great way of taking a look at the options the distribution offers.

It comes close to the Linux user experience but does not provide it fully. There is still the Windows Taskbar, icons and wallpapers that make the system look much more like a Windows system than a Linux system. Interested users can download it right at the developer’s website at Sourceforge.

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The djvu viewer can be integrated in Windows Explorer and associates itself with the djvu file format automatically. The interface opens multiple djvu files in tabs and provides an advanced feature set including different page layouts, user-created bookmarks and annotations.

Additional features include the ability to search the loaded documents, text copying, dictionary support so that words can be translated right in the software’s interface and adjustable thumbnail sizes.

The djvu viewer supports hyperlinks, page export into bmp format, page zooming, adjustment of visual parameters like brightness and contrast and various display modes including a black & white and color mode.

The software developer is providing access to a version for Apple’s Macintosh computers as well which is named Mac Dj View, basically the same djvu viewer but for Macs. International users can change the interface language from English to various other languages including Russian, Chinese Simplified or French.

Win Dvju Viewer is an Open Source software program which means that the source code is provided by the software developer as well.

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If you take a look at the categories you will notice several unusual ones, for instance Most Likely to Change the World or Most Likely to Get Users Sued. That’s the spirit, you will not find the usual boring categories in that list. Each of the twelve categories contains a list of Open-Source applications that can be voted for. Interested users can also skip the voting process and head right to the project’s website to download any interesting sounding application.

There are some “serious” categories as well, like Best Project for the Enterprise, Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins and Best Tool or Utility for Developers. I’m still a bit puzzled why Launchy made it into the category Most Likely To Get Users Sued.

You need an Open ID or a Sourceforge account to vote for the best software in each category. I for one will head straight to the download sites to download anything of interest from the list.

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