New applications

The development version has additional software, compared to the official release, Gondwana. These applications are newly available in Debian Squeeze or were not selected in Gondwana. We may also have added applications that are not yet packaged in Debian as is the case of TBO. Note that we may also remove applications in the future, for the next official stable release. We have already removed OpenDict in favor of GoldenDict.

New applications are briefly described on this page. A listing of these applications as well as links to their web sites are as follows:

• Multimedia
  • Cheese
  • Jokosher
  • Vmpk
• Work
  • TBO
  • GoldenDict
  • Guido van Robot (GvR)
  • Laby
  • KTurtle
  • Little Wizard
• Games
  • Kigo
  • Gmchess
  • Gtans
  • Pixfrogger
  • BurgerSpace
  • Monsterz
  • Free Alchemist
  • Hex-a-hop
  • Numpty Physics
  • Pixbros
  • Lbreakout2
  • Magicor
  • Biniax2
  • Tworld
• Education
  • Tanglet
  • Marble
  • Raincat
  • Tictactoe-ng

Multimedia

Cheese

Cheese

Cheese is an application for taking pictures and videos from a webcam. It includes fancy graphical effects to make funnier photos and videos :). This is a very simple application in which the user only has to choose effects and click start.

Jokosher

Jokosher

Jokosher is a simple yet powerful multi-track studio: various sounds, music pieces, audio performances can be recorded and mixed into a single audio file. With it you can create and record music, podcasts and more. Jokosher provides a complete application for recording, editing, mixing and exporting audio; and has been specifically designed with usability in mind. The developers behind Jokosher have re-thought audio production at every level, and created something devilishly simple to use. No need to know the music theory: just record and mix!

Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard (VMPK)

Vmpk

Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard, VMPK, is a replacement for vkeybd, the former virtual piano keyboard of DoudouLinux. It does not produce any sound by itself, but is connected to an audio software synthesizer that is shipping within DoudouLinux. You can use the computer keyboard to play music notes as well as the mouse. You can use VMPK to display the notes played from another instrument or MIDI file player (the DoudouLinux media player for instance). To do so, connect the other MIDI port to the input port of VMPK.

VMPK brings the following interesting improvements compared to vkeybd:

• Handles a raw keyboard layout, independent of the user’s language alphabet
• Better translated than vkeybd
• Does not need extra code to be connected to the internal software synthesizer
• Modern source code design

Work

TBO

TBO

TBO is an easy and fun program to draw comics or make your presentations funnier. Users create pages and drawing frames in their pages. TBO provides a library of vector drawings [1] to be used in comic frames. Background images can also be imported.

TBO has two function modes: “page view” and “frame view”. Once your page has frames, you can enter the mode “frame view” by double clicking with the selector tool in the frame to be edited. In the frame view you can draw doodles, bubbles, texts in bubbles, move and resize objects, rotate and clone objects. To return to the page view, press the escape key.

GoldenDict

GoldenDict

GoldenDict is a feature-rich dictionary lookup program. It can lookup definitions as well as translations from various translation dictionaries, locally or on the Internet. The program is able to display texts, images and web links (as well as web pages). It supports multiple dictionary file formats: Babylon, StarDict, Dictd, Lingvo. It also supports online resources such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Vikidia or any other MediaWiki-based sites. It can dictate words using pronunciations from forvo.com, propose corrected spelling and work when users cannot enter special characters such as “ç” or “ß”.

This is a potential replacement for the current DoudouLinux dictionary OpenDict. You are invited to test both and give us your opinion.

Guido Van Robot

Guido Van Robot

Guido van Robot, or GvR for short, is a programming language designed to introduce beginners to the fundamentals of programming. It can be used in classrooms and at home as a way to introduce the basic concepts of programming. A robot represented by a triangle on the screen, moves around in a world made up of streets and avenues, walls and “beepers”, which Guido can collect or set. His actions are completely guided by a program the user has to write.

Guido van Robot is a minimalistic programming language providing just enough syntax to help people learn the concepts of sequencing, conditional branching, looping and procedural abstraction. Its biggest strength is that it permits this learning in an environment that combines the thrill of problem-solving with instant visual feedback.

NB: This application is one of the 4 applications under test to teach children programming.

Laby

Laby

Laby is a small program to learn how to program with ants and spider webs. You have to move an ant robot out of a labyrinth, avoid spider webs, move rocks, etc. First levels are tricky... but easy. You will soon need the help of while loops, of function definitions, and also to acquire good skills at if conditionals. There is no labyrinth from which you cannot escape. Choose your programming language among OCaml, Python, Lua, Ruby, Prolog, C and Java (each one requires that an adequate compiler or interpreter is installed, so not all languages are available in DoudouLinux).

NB: This application is one of the 4 applications under test to teach children programming.

KTurtle

KTurtle

KTurtle is an educational programming environment that aims to make programming as easy and teachable as possible; therefore, it can be used to teach kids the basics of math, geometry and… programming.

The programming language used in KTurtle is loosely based on Logo. KTurtle allows, just like some implementations of Logo, to translate the programming language (the commands, documentation and error messages) into the native language of the programmer. This is one of the many ways KTurtle tries to make learning programming simpler. Other features to help to achieve this goal are: intuitive syntax highlighting, simple error messages, integrated canvas to make drawings on, integrated help function, slow-motion or step execution, and more.

NB: This application is one of the 4 applications under test to teach children programming.

Little Wizard

Little Wizard

Little Wizard is a development environment for children. It is intended to be used by primary school children to learn about the main elements of real computer languages. Using only the mouse, children can explore programming concepts such as variables, expressions, loops, conditions, and logical blocks. Every element of the language is represented by an intuitive icon, making it easy to learn.

NB: This application is one of the 4 applications under test to teach children programming.

Games

Kigo

Kigo

Kigo is the popular Go game, a strategic board game for two players. It is also known as igo (Japanese), weiqi or wei ch’i (Chinese) or baduk (Korean). Go is noted for being rich in strategic complexity despite its simple rules. The game is played by two players who alternately place black and white stones (playing pieces, now usually made of glass or plastic) on the vacant intersections of a grid of 19x19 lines (9x9 or 13x13 for easier games).

Gmchess

Gmchess is a Chinese chess game (Xiangqi) against a human opponent or the computer.

Gtans

Gtans

Gtans is a Tangram game, a Chinese puzzle. The objective is to put seven geometric shapes together to form a given shape. Shapes are animals, objects, people, etc. The set of possible shapes is incredibly rich and split into increasing difficulty order. All the pieces must be used and laid next to one another. The pieces are five triangles, a square and a parallelogram. Sometimes there is more than one solution.

Pixfrogger

Pixfrogger

Pixfrogger is a simple game in which one or several user(s) control a frog. The objective is to cross the street and avoid becoming roadkill by cars and trucks. The frog starts at the bottom of the screen and can only go vertically to top. The game allows 4 players playing simultaneously with the keyboard. A fun game to teach children to be careful while crossing the street!

BurgerSpace

BurgerSpace is a hamburger-smashing video game. The goal is to assembly hamburgers by making the hamburger layers fall from floor to floor. Use the arrow keys to move, the Ctrl key to throw pepper, and P to pause the game and resume it. The Escape key quits the game.

Monsterz

Monsterz is a little arcade puzzle game. The goal is to create rows of similar monsters, either horizontally or vertically. The only allowed move is swapping two adjacent monsters, but only if this creates a row of three or more. When alignments are cleared, pieces are falling from the top of the screen to fill the board again. Chain reactions give you even more points.

Free Alchemist

This game is a variation of the classical Tetris game. Objects appear on the top of the screen and have to fall down to the bottom. The difference is that objects are recombined on the ground instead of disappearing. For example if three bottles of the same color are close to each other, they will be replaced with another bottle of upper level and so on.

Hex-a-hop

Hex-a-Hop is a hexagonal tile-based puzzle game with one simple goal: destroy all green tiles! There are infinite undos and no time limits – you just have to find a way to destroy all the green tiles and step on a safe tile at the end.

Numpty Physics

Harness gravity with your crayon and set about creating blocks, ramps, levers, pulleys and whatever else you fancy to get the little red thing to the little yellow thing. Just make the red ball touch the yellow star using… anything that comes to your minds since you can draw what you want on screen and the gravity will do the job! Numpty Physics includes a built-in editor so that you may build (and submit) your own levels.

Pixbros

Pixbros is an arcade game quite classical, inspired by several old arcade games. You have to get rid of your enemies to go to the next level. Depending on the hero you’ve chosen, you’ll make them disappear using bubbles, snow balls or a spray. Eating fruits would give you extra abilities.

LBreakout2

This is yet another brick breaking game. LBreakout2 offers a challenge in more than 50 levels with lots of bonuses (gold shower, joker, explosive balls, bonus magnet …), penalties (chaos, darkness, weak balls, penalty magnet …) and special bricks (growing bricks, explosive bricks, regenerative bricks …). If you are hungry for more you can create your own level sets with the integrated level editor. There is also an experimental two player mode available on a local network.

Magicor

Magicor is a puzzle game whose goal is to extinguish fires using blocks of ice. Your character can only make ice blocks at the ground level. Ice blocks are fixed onto walls but not on the ceiling nor on the floor. Removing from an ice bar the block on the wall will make the remaining ice of the bar fall down. Levels may have one or more solutions, but thinking ahead is the key to victory in Magicor.

Biniax2

Biniax2 is original and entertaining game. You move a pair of colors that are changed depending on the other color pairs you are crossing. Your pair is changed only if one color is common with the crossed pair otherwise you cannot pass. You have to choose the good color pair to cross to keep going forward.

Tworld

The player controls the hero Chip, navigating him through his challenges. The goal of each level of the game is to find and reach the exit tile, which takes you to the next level. The exit is frequently (but not always) guarded by a chip socket. To move past the chip socket, Chip must collect a certain number of computer chips. The number of computer chips needed is different in each level. Besides chip sockets, there are also four different kinds of doors. The doors require keys in order to be opened. The doors and keys are color-coded so that you can see which keys will open which doors.

Education

Tanglet

Tanglet

Tanglet is a single player word finding game based on Boggle®. The objective of the game is to list as many words as you can using a set of randomly chosen letters. You can join letters horizontally, vertically, or diagonally in any direction to make a word, as long as the letters are next to each other on the board. However, you can not reuse the same letter cells in a single word. Also, each word must be at least three letters long on a normal board, and four letters on a large board. The game can be timed or not; there are several timer modes that determine how much time you start with, and if you get extra time when you find a word. The game makes a list of the possible words and will show all the words you missed at the end of the game!

Marble

Marble

Marble is a Virtual Globe and World Atlas that you can use to learn more about Earth: you can pan and zoom around and you can look up places and roads. A mouse click on a place label will provide the respective Wikipedia article; Wikipedia photos can be overlaid on the map as well. Of course it is also possible to measure distances between locations or watch the current cloud cover. Marble offers different thematic maps: a classroom-style topographic map, a satellite view, street map, earth at night and temperature or precipitation maps. All maps include a custom map key, so it can also be used as an educational tool for use in class-rooms. For educational purposes you can also change date and time and watch how the starry sky and the twilight zone on the map change. In opposite to other virtual globes Marble also features multiple projections: choose between a Flat Map (“Plate carré”), Mercator or the Globe.

This is a potential replacement for the current DoudouLinux geography tool KGeography. You are invited to test both and give us your opinion.

Raincat

Your goal is simple: guide the fuzzy cat safe and dry to the end of each level. Several accessories are available (or not!) to help the cat not to get wet. There are multiple ways to clear any given level; such flexible solutions hope to provide a more enjoyable game play experience.

Tictactoe

Tictactoe is a simple and very classical game that can be played across the local network with a friend.