Packt Open Source
Packt Open Source books
Packt Open Source books will continue to be built around the “community experience distilled” motto, focussing on taking real advice from the community around projects, and refining and distilling it into easy to follow specialist information.
Through this, the Open Source Royalty Scheme will continue to support open source projects, offering a royalty for the sale of each book to the project on which that book was written.
Believe in Open Source
Open Source Awards
The Open Source Awards is an annual online event held by Packt Publishing to distinguish excellence among Open Source projects. We aim to play our part in the growth of Open Source software and see the annual Award as the ultimate platform for not only appreciating the great things projects have given back to the community but also supporting projects who have future potential to change things for the better.
Open Source Project Royalty Scheme
Packt believes in open source and helping to sustain and support its unique projects and communities. Therefore, when we sell a book written on an open source project, we pay a royalty directly to that project. As a result of purchasing one of our Open Source books, Packt will have given some of the money received to the Open Source project.
In the long term, we see ourselves and yourselves, as customers and readers of our books, as part of the Open Source ecosystem, providing sustainable revenue for the projects we publish on. Our aim at Packt is to establish publishing royalties as an essential part of the service and support business model that sustains open source.
To read up on the projects that are supported by the Packt Open Source Project Royalty Scheme, click the appropriate categories below:
Content Management System (CMS)
Latest Articles
Implementing the data model
by
Kerri Shotts | March 2013 | Open Source
In this article by Kerri Shotts, author of PhoneGap 2.x Mobile Application Development Hotshot, we'll be creating two JavaScript files in the www/models directory named quizQuestion.js and quizQuestions.js.
Read Implementing the data model in fullCreating Virtual Landscapes
by
Richard A. Hawley | March 2013 | Open Source
Tools are everything in game development today. Let me quickly tell you a story. Back in 1983 home computers were simple enough that you could create a virtual city (made of blocks) using nothing much more than pen and paper to scratch out lines of hexadecimal code. The code would then be entered (by hand) over several coffee fuelled evenings and assuming you got every number correct and didn't suffer a tape loading error you could make amazing new worlds. If this sounds primitive and a lot of hard work, well it was. The technological equivalent of scratching out lines of dirt with a plough. Pioneering stuff.
Modern three-dimensional games are several orders of magnitude more complex than Sandy White's 1983 Ant Attack on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. To create lush visuals expected from current games, we rely on a host of tools to generate content at different stages of production. Quite often, terrain is the canvas on which content is painted, if you think about it, while you might play a game and think how great the scenery looks, you're not necessarily looking at the terrain but rather the textures, vegetation, buildings and everything else that artist has constructed around it. Before we dive into using GROME we're going to cover some common caveats that apply to most game engines.
In this article by Richard A. Hawley, author of Grome Terrain Modeling with Ogre3D, UDK, and Unity3D, we're going to look at:
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Describing a world in data
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Texture sizes
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Game world scales
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Starting a new GROME project
BackTrack Forensics
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David De Smet Willie Pritchett | March 2013 | Cookbooks Networking & Telephony Open Source
In this article, we will cover:
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Intrusion detection and log analysis
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Recursive directory encryption/decryption
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Scanning for signs of rootkits
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Recovering data from a problematic source
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Retrieving a Windows password
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Resetting a Windows password
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Looking at the Windows registry entries
Computer forensics involves using various means to analyze, report, and recover information from computers or digital storage media, generally for legal purposes. The outcome in general is to provide the information gathered in such a way that it is useful for the person requesting the information. This includes the recovery of passwords, analyzing computer break-ins or attempts, recovering data from a hard drive after it's been "erased", and so on. In the article by Willie Pritchett and David De Smet authors of BackTrack 5 Cookbook we will examine how BackTrack can be utilized for forensic purposes.
Read BackTrack Forensics in fullInstalling, Removing, and Upgrading Software
by
Arturo Fernandez Montoro | March 2013 | Linux Servers Open Source
In this article by Arturo Fernandez Montoro, author of Linux Mint System Administrator's Beginner's Guide you're going to learn one of the most important and basic tasks done by system administrators. These tasks are related to software, specifically how to install, remove, and keep your operating system up-to-date.
In this article we will cover:
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Installing software
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Removing installed software
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Applying upgrades
Constructing and Evaluating Your Design Solution
by
Andy Kirk | March 2013 | Open Source
The work we have undertaken over the past two articles has helped us to shape and refine our design concept leading to a visual specification that we believe will most effectively deliver against the requirements of our project. This completes our preparation work and we now move away from concepting and towards construction.
In this article by Andy Kirk the author of Data Visualization: a successful design process , we look at the broad variety of options for building our solution and the remaining important tasks to undertake before launching.
We will run through a selection of the most common and useful software applications and programming environments to help you select the most appropriate tool to match your design requirements and technical capabilities.
We will look at some of the key considerations around testing, finishing, and launching a design solution as well as the important matter of evaluating the success of your project post-launch.
Finally, we wrap things up with a discussion about the best ways for you to continue to learn, develop, and refine your data visualization design skills as you seek to master this fascinating and rewarding discipline.
Read Constructing and Evaluating Your Design Solution in fullOur First Project – A Basic Thermometer
by
Andrew K. Dennis | February 2013 | Open Source
In this article by Andrew K. Dennis, the author of Raspberry Pi Home Automation with Arduino we are going to build our first project with the Raspberry Pi and Arduino shield — a thermometer.
You will need the following hardware items for this article:
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Raspberry Pi
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The Raspberry Pi to Arduino shield
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A thermistor
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The breadboard and wires we used to test the LED
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A 10k resistor
From a software standpoint, you will also be introduced to the Geany IDE and the Linux make command. Using these tools, we will write an application that converts the resistance returned from the circuit into three types of temperature, namely Celsius, Kelvin, and Fahrenheit.
Read Our First Project – A Basic Thermometer in fullYii: Adding Users and User Management to Your Site
by
James R. Hamilton III Lauren J. O'Meara | February 2013 | Open Source PHP Web Development
As web developers, we are always looking for new and better tools to help us develop quality websites. Yii caught our eye as a great framework. It is known for performance. In addition to its speed, Yii provides great tools and features to help you get your job done quickly.
In this article by Lauren J. O'Meara and James R. Hamilton III, authors of Yii Rapid Application Development Hotshot, we will add a user table to the application database, and then generate the Yii scaffolding and customize it. We will extend the user management interface to utilize our user table fields.
Your Hotshot Objectives
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Adding a User Object with CRUD
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Making a User Management Interface
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Storing Passwords
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Activating Database User Login
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Enforcing Secure Passwords
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Adding User Functions – Wishlist
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Configuring User Access
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User Specific Menus
Configuring the ChildBrowser plugin
by
Kerri Shotts | February 2013 | Open Source
In this article by Kerri Shotts, the author of Instant PhoneGap Social App Development, we will look into the installation and configuration of the ChildBrowser plugin.
Most PhoneGap plugins aren't terribly hard to install or configure, but they will undoubtedly play a vital role in your app, especially if you need to use a feature that PhoneGap doesn't provide on its own.
In our case, we will look at a plugin called ChildBrowser.
Read Configuring the ChildBrowser plugin in fullNew iPad Features in iOS 6
by
Renee J. Valdez | February 2013 | Open Source
This article created by Renee J. Valdez, author of Instant New iPad Features in iOS 6 How-to offers a break down of the apps that come natively installed on the new iPad.
Read New iPad Features in iOS 6 in fullGetting started with Bacula
by
Eugene Pankov | February 2013 | Open Source
The author of the book Network Backup with Bacula How-To, Eugene Pankov, explains how to set up the simplest Bacula Director and Bacula Storage installations and how the bconsole utility can be used to monitor and interact with daemons through this article.
Read Getting started with Bacula in full
