FOSSwire

There are quite a few open source packages for wikis out there. Quite a popular choice is MediaWiki, the same software that runs Wikipedia and its sister sites, along with many other popular wikis out there.

However, today I'm going to focus on something a bit... well, lighter.

DokuWiki is a GPL 2-licensed, PHP-based wiki system. As the name suggests, it is slightly focused towards documentation, although of course can be used for any purpose.

Unlike many wikis, DokuWiki uses no database and instead works with flat files. This approach has advantages and disadvantages compared to using a database to store information. On the positive side, it means you don't have to have any specific hosting requirements, and DokuWiki will run anywhere that PHP will (often ven on low-end shared hosting packages). The downside is that it can be slightly sluggish at times, although it makes good use of a caching system to avoid most slowdowns for when you're not logged in.

Despite this, it has an array of features, including (of course) full version history and revision support, diff-style change comparisons, namespaces, powerful access control lists and more.

Personally, I find Dokuwiki very useful - especially for applications where you don't want or need the complexity of a system like MediaWiki. I use it for a documentation wiki for my small open source scripts on my site, and it works for that purpose well. Admittedly, I haven't tried it out in a situation with lots of users and changes, but if you've got a small site which could use a wiki-based site, I would recommend DokuWiki.

DokuWiki is free under the GPL, runs anywhere PHP does and can be downloaded from the official site.

Everybody likes to know when they have mail. It's become a routine to get up in the morning and check before you go to work or school. Later throughout the day, most people don't check it as often. This is where mail notifiers come in. Linux has many notification applications, and many of them work very well.

Yet another mail notifier has popped into existence known as cGmail. What makes this different from most? Well, it stores your passwords using the GNOME keyring manager instead of in plain text files like most do. It uses the standard notification daemon, which makes it integrate into your desktop visually. It stores its settings in GConf, so you can configure them with Sabayon or manage them in a central area. And finally, it uses DBus to let other applications know when mail has arrived.
Overall, cGmail wins the award for best desktop integration for non-standard apps. If only we had such an award...

cGmail can be configured to use your Gmail account in addition to IMAP and POP3. Another thing I noticed is that you get a nice "ping" sound when you get new mail, which can be turned off it you don't like it. Because it integrates with so many other services on the system already, the interface is really simple and easy to use. The only strange thing I noticed was some weird spacing on some dialogs, but in reality this is not something to stop anyone from using it.

To download, you can get it from their website, as it isn't in most repositories yet:

cGmail

How many times were you sitting in your chair stumped about what colors to use on a website? Or maybe you just want to refresh the look of your desktop with a new color scheme? Perhaps you just need to find the perfect color for that page background.

Whatever you need to do with color, use Agave to do it. In all simplicity, it is a color picker. However, it also generates schemes based on that color and lets you modify the brightness and saturation of the color if it just doesn't feel right.

Got a favorite color you want to save? Just add it to the Favorites list. You can look at that color any time you need some inspiration for a theme. When you find the color you want, just right-click it and Copy to get the hex code.

It's a decent, simple application, and it shows up just in time for a redesign of your site.

Agave can be installed as "agave" in your system's preferred package manager.