[HLUG] Open365, signal, rocket chat

[Julian Robbins]

Hi

I've been reading about and testing some interesting new open source
projects that i though i would share. I'm hoping to use some of them soon
and testing one now.

Perhaps others would like to post about apps or projects that we may mot
all have heard about if you think they might be useful for others in the
group.

Open365.io is the most impressive - its a full open source office suite,
chat and online storage for files etc. It even has a video chat too. All
this via a web browser. And it works incredibly well too. The application
uses libreoffice and even offers the gimp via a web browser. There are
android linux and iphone pad apps too. For the file management it uses
Seafile. Basically you can use this to replace Ms Officec365 or Google
Docs. You can use their service or take the cose and install on your own
host perhaps using Docker. Well worth a look at i tbink this could become a
major player.

Next - i was looking for a simpler means to replace sms txts as txts in a
rural atea are a bit unreliable we find you get the txt hours after it was
sent. So i looked for a simple replacement. There are tons of these but i
wanted an open source one that would work easily. I found Signal thats main
feature is its very reliable encryption. Edward Snowden vouches for it so
it must be good. What i like about this is its a drop in replacement for a
messaging app; it takes your existing txts and converts them in its
encrpted format and has no learning curve. Now the Signal messaging
encryption is being used by Facebook messaging as its backed mechanism and
same for Google Hangouts . Well worth a try ..

Lastly for now two Slack similar group messaging applications both open
source via a browser and app. Rocket Chat and Mattermost. Both are similar
on terms of features and would be perhaps something a business would use as
a collaboration tool where they prefer to maintain control of their data
instead of leaving it in the hands of a company and or the US govt.

Both are difficult to install but do have hosted versions.

Most of these applications you can read about in detail in the most recent
Linux Magazine.

Hope this might be useful for someone

Julian