Free democracy software for linux

Torrentocracy (pronounced like the word democracy) is the combination of RSS, bit torrent, your television and your remote control. In effect, it is what gives any properly motivated person or entity the ability to have their own TV station.

By running torrentocracy on a computer connected to your television, you not only become a viewer of any available content from the internet, but you also become a part of a vast grass roots media distribution network.

This is not about the illegal distribution of media, but rather its about enabling an entirely new way to receive the video which you watch on your TV.

If you ever wondered how and when your computer, the internet and your television would merge into one seemless device with access to anything and everything, then at this very moment the theme song from 2001: A Space Odyssey ("Also Sprach Zarathustra") should be resounding through your head.

Vamos software allows computers to run software directly from the network, without installations. The software is stored on servers and is centrally maintained without the users effort or attention.

rootz is a new no install system that works differently. It mounts complete live systems over the web, and make them available locally. With rootz you can attach your local linux system to various livecds and simply run applications without any installation.

rootz is connected to the desired image (iso or squashfs), and uses rootz:// links to launch applications. The main advantage of this system, is that it uses unchanged official software without any repackaging (as opposed to klik, zero install or autopackage). Moreover, it is a true "on demand" mechanism that does not require full download of the software but fetches only the needed files. rootz can set up multiple isolated chroot environments, so it is possible run stable application side by side with new bleeding edge software.

Installation:

as non-root:
wget http://vamosproject.com/upload/rootz/install -O -| sh

Setup

The syntax is: rootz url.of.iso/.squash mountpoint

Examples:

Vamos client:
sudo mkdir /mnt/vamos
sudo ~/rootz/rootz http://vamosproject.com/upload/vamos-client-1.0b.squashfs /mnt/vamos

From this chroot you can run frozen bubble
Ubunutu Feisty Fawn:
sudo mkdir /mnt/feisty
sudo ~/rootz/rootz http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/releases/feisty/herd-2/feisty-desktop-i386.iso /mnt/feisty

From this chroot you can run gaim
Debian Live with XFCE:
sudo mkdir /mnt/debian-live
sudo ~/rootz/rootz http://live.debian.net/daily-builds/current/i386/debian-live-sid-i386-xfce-desktop.iso /mnt/debian-live

From this chroot you can run thunar
Ubuntu "Ultimate":
sudo mkdir /mnt/ultimate
sudo ~/rootz/rootz http://fly5.pp.fi/ultimate/ubuntu-ultimate1.1.iso /mnt/ultimate

From this chroot you can run Democracy player

Run

You just need to click on those rootz:// links above, and wait... After few runs the page cache will contain common libs and files so applications will run faster.

Another option is to rootz-launcher in the command line interface. With this script you will be able to run non-gui programs.

Example:

~/rootz/rootz-launcher dpkg -l

KatchTV is an "Internet TV" application for KDE. KatchTV makes it easy to subscribe to "TV" channels from all over the internet in the form of podcasts, so that you can browse channels, download shows, and watch them, all from one convenient interface.

KatchTV is very similar to Democracy TV, but focuses on KDE integration, using KHTMLPart and embedded players such as kaffeine. Its much faster, and lighter on resources if you run a KDE desktop without GTK apps.

Installation is easy, as long as your distro has PyKDE, PyQt, and Kaffeine. Just untar to some directory like /usr/local, and run the KatchTV program. You can also make a symlink to that executable from a directory like /usr/local/bin, and KatchTV will work out where to find its files.

Comments welcome; let me know if youve any problems using it.