Workrave is a free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 software application intended to prevent computer users from developing or aggravating occupational disease

Occupational disease

An occupational disease is any chronic ailment that occurs as a result of work or occupational activity. It is an aspect of occupational safety and health. An occupational disease is typically identified when it is shown that it is more prevalent in a given body of workers than in the general...

s such as carpal tunnel syndrome

Carpal tunnel syndrome

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is an entrapment idiopathic median neuropathy, causing paresthesia, pain, and other symptoms in the distribution of the median nerve due to its compression at the wrist in the carpal tunnel. The pathophysiology is not completely understood but can be considered compression...

, repetitive strain injuries

Repetitive strain injury

Repetitive strain injury is an injury of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems that may be caused by...

, or myopia

Myopia

Myopia , "shortsightedness" ) is a refractive defect of the eye in which collimated light produces image focus in front of the retina under conditions of accommodation. In simpler terms, myopia is a condition of the eye where the light that comes in does not directly focus on the retina but in...

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The software periodically locks the screen while an animated character, “Miss Workrave”, walks the user through various stretching exercises, and urges them to take a coffee break

Coffee Break

Coffee Break is an online book on the NCBI Bookshelf created and maintained by staff at NCBI, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. The book consists of small chapters which are each written about a different topic in the world of Biomedicine. There are currently 32 chapters, and it was...

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The program is cross-platform

Cross-platform

In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...

, and dependent on the GTK+

GTK+

GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...

 graphical widget toolkit

Widget toolkit

In computing, a widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces...

, and also on other GNOME

GNOME

GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

 libraries on Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

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External links

• Workrave official site
• "Operating Your Body at Peak Performance", a Linux Journal column about xwrits, RSIBreak, and Workrave
• "How Open Source Saved My Neck", a An InternetNews.com column by Sean Michael Kerner about Workrave