And because I'm a nerd, the first thing I did with the lasers was hook them up to QLC+ (sorry, I missed #FreeSoftwareAdvent) and defined a new custom fixture. However, as the laser is unbranded with no model number or writing on it (was very cheap from AliExpress), I don't think the QLC+ project will accept it in their repo. #DMX

@HI_Greens Possibly worth listing the most useful equivalents! Simon Dobson has a good few under his #FreeSoftwareAdvent
Some are rather specialised but a good number are generally useful like #LibreOffice here:
https://mastodon.scot/@simoninireland/115741439244229122

Also hardware: https://libreboot.org/
Explains why you should use a different Bios!

I recently participated in #FreeSoftwareAdvent suggested by @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk , coming up with 25 FOSS packages that I rely on.

Today, I collected those (and 2 extra that I thought about afterwards) into a new article on my Production Log:

"27 Essential FOSS Packages Our Animation Studio Relies On"
https://lunaticsproject.org/2025/12/29/essential-foss-packages/

I changed the order to be slightly more topically organized, although the text for each packages is nearly the same as what I used in my thread.

I'm never quite sure whether Advent should run 24 or 25 days, so if you're of the "24" persuasion, consider today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent a bonus 🙂

Today it's rss2email¹, which is I read my RSS feeds². I prefer to read my RSS via email for a number of reasons:

• I don't need to learn Yet Another Set of Keyboard Bindings because I already know my MUA's key-bindings

• I can use any standards-compliant MUA to read my RSS feeds, whether I have them delivered to my mbox file and read with mail(1), or delivered to my normal mail account and read them via mutt/neomutt/Claws/Thunderbird/whatever

• I have offline access via OfflineIMAP/mbsync and any changes (deleting entries, read-status, flagging, stars, tags, filing, etc) gets synced back up to my server, even across multiple machines

• I have all the filtering power of my MUA

• plenty of utilities also speak IMAP, so I can write scripts to (post-)process my RSS feed too

• sharing an interesting article with friends is as simple as forwarding an email

• my backup process for email also automatically backs up my RSS feeds too

• because it runs from cron(8) on a schedule I establish, I have more control of my distractions (I usually run it around 4am gathering feeds for me to read with breakfast). I found if it ran hourly or even multiple times per day, I'd get sucked into constantly checking to see if anything new/interesting had arrived

• control remains with me on my machine rather than handing my reading habits over to some 3rd party RSS reader-service

And I love RSS because it is a pull rather than a push. If I subscribe to your email newsletter, I have to trust that you'll respect my email address and not share it or lose control of it, and cutting off email subscriptions is sketchy. But with RSS? I just stop polling that feed if I'm done with it and it's gone.

⸻
¹ https://github.com/wking/rss2email

² https://blog.thechases.com/posts/reading-rss-feeds-via-email-on-the-cli/

#freesoftwareadvent

DAY 25 - LINUX
https://static.lwn.net/Distributions/

Arguably the most important free software is Linux. The open source operating system that runs all of the other software. It can run on a desktop, or on smaller devices, even a USB stick.

Linux is the software that runs the computer. Resilient, customizable, supported by a diverse worldwide community and free to download and use. It is the present and the future of computing. Switch to using Linux now. It's the best!

This blog post links to all my #FreeSoftwareAdvent posts which are revolving around tools used in our VFX pipeline.

https://www.comp-fu.com/2025/12/free-software-advent-2025/

Here are the last of my recs for #freesoftwareadvent 2025

DAY 24 - XFCE4-PANEL
https://fandom.ink/@Rozzychan/115776604751319471

DAY 25 - LINUX
https://fandom.ink/@Rozzychan/115780681581021242

And that's all folks. Thanks for playing.

#freesoftwareadvent

DAY 24 - XFCE4-PANEL
https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/start

This is the software for the little panel at the bottom of the screen in my Linux instance. I mention it because I often modify it and it is easily overlooked.

I have different desktops and I show them on this panel so I can switch back and forth. I also add clocks and CPU monitors. I just added silly eyes that stare at my mouse. I just wanted to mention it, because it's always there with me. 😎

#freesoftwareadvent

DAY 23 - PS2PDF

This one was a recommendation.

PS2PDF is a command-line program that converts a postscript file into a pdf file. This program is awesome because some programs make pdf files that are MUCH too big. Using this utility can covert a big file into a much smaller file. PS is the format that goes to the printer, and if you can save it as a ps, then you can convert it.
Actually I saved an image file from GIMP as a pdf it was 38MB but this saved it as 2MB

Free Software that I rely on. One per day.

Day 25:

K3B

My head-canon is that it stands for "KDE Burn Baby Burn". I may have heard that somewhere, but not sure. 🤔

In any case, it's my favorite software for ripping and burning optical media: CD, DVD, Blu-Ray. Or you can just create the ISO image.

This is the final stop for me for authoring a DVD release.

And it's the final stop for my list.

Wishing you a Happy Holiday!

#FreeSoftwareAdvent #K3B #DiscBurner #Multimedia

As #FreeSoftwareAdvent wraps up (GET IT?), my thanks to everyone that joined in. I'm going to loot the hashtag over the holiday break for ideas!

For today, let's talk #tmux

https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki

Doing system-modifying tasks in a ssh session can be dicey. One network hiccup, and suddenly your session is disconnected! Fire up tmux before and instead of your session dying and potentially killing what you were working on, tmux will keep it open, patiently waiting for you to re-connect!

#freesoftwareadvent Day 24: Linux Mint. Everyday since the first COVID confinement. Three continents. A job. a book. A business. For work. For fun. To collaborate. To work with the kids. I'm very, very thankful for their work and for such an amazing operating system.

And here's my wrap up of my list of #freesoftwareadvent entries.

https://www.treblig.org/daveG/advent2025.html

(Although I did wonder about ending on the old 'tree' program, but I can't remember actually ever really using it https://oldmanprogrammer.net/source.php?dir=projects/tree 🎄 )

You all deserve a break; so for my last #freesoftwareadvent I suggest the game
'Frozen bubble':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Bubble

#FreeSoftwareAdvent Day 24: sqlite

In the spirit of saving the best until last... sqlite is almost certainly the single most deployed software package of all time, underpinning pretty much all cellphone apps and many websites: everywhere that needs persistent data that's more structured than a simple file. Along with Linux, probably the crowning glory of free software -- all the more so because only programmers even know it exists.

https://sqlite.org/index.html

Today in #FreeSoftwareAdvent it's pandoc(1).

I author most of my prose in raw HTML (something I've done since the 90s, stemming from my appreciation of WordPerfect's "Reveal Codes" functionality), or occasionally I'll use Markdown. It's nice to just hand the file off to pandoc and get some other format (PDF, Word, RTF, plaintext, whatever).

Is the output flashy? Not really. Is it what I would get if I hand-crafted the desired output document? No. But does it let me lazily do conversions with basically zero effort? Yep!

#FreeSoftwareAdvent finale 2025! Without these free and open source projects our pipeline couldn't exist at all:

Python, the VFX world's favourite programming language. And of course... Linux itself 🥳

Happy Holidays!

#FreeSoftwareAdvent day 24: Ubuntu Mate

I've saved the biggest until last. I've been using Ubuntu on the desktop since 2004 with 4.10. I'd been using various distributions, and hadn't really settled on any, then a member of Cumbria LUG mentioned Ubuntu. I tried it, found that it just worked, and I've been using it ever since.

My first experiences with Linux were using fvwm, then I switched to KDE, but Ubuntu defaulted to Gnome, and I soon got used to that. I never really got on with Gnome 3 though, so I was pleased to discover the Mate desktop, especially as there's an official Ubuntu flavour.

https://ubuntu-mate.org/

Today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent is a tool I've barely scratched the surface of.

https://www.audacityteam.org/

#Audacity is a great audio editor package! I don't really edit audio, but sometimes I want to trim a file, or break one up into smaller files. Audacity can do so much, this is like lighting a cigarette with a flame-thrower. But that's the nice thing. I can just use it for 1% of its capability and if I need more, it's probably right there. Somewhere.

Free Software that I rely on. One per day.

Day 24:

Firefox

I've been using Mozilla-based browsers since Netscape, and I still do.

And a LOT of my time is spent using the browser, whether socializing on the Fediverse or managing my server.

Despite the current kerfuffle over Mozilla incorporating opt-out AI features that no one wants, I think they are still the best option. Perhaps I'll have to tinker with my settings, or perhaps I'll use one of the several available forks -- but it'll still be Mozilla underneath.

Also, I think it is critical to retain an ecosystem of multiple browsers, rather than a single approved one. We saw the dangers of that with Internet Explorer, and we see it now with Chromium dependencies.

https://www.firefox.com
https://www.mozilla.org
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/

#FreeSoftwareAdvent #FireFox #Mozilla #WebBrowser