Hello fellow freebie lovers! In this lens, I plan to spotlight some of the best free and open source software you won't have to buy. The truth is, you can find an free/open alternative to most every pripretary application out there. Once you're done looking here, you can also go to Free Software Magazine or search SourceForge to find even more freebies.
I also have a webpage that lists more freebie-goodness.Â
I hope you'll enjoy this lens, and I welcome any comments or suggestions you may have for additions or expansions. Simply email devlinks at gmail dot com.
Best of free/open software
These open source projects are the cream of the crop. I've selected them from my own personal experiences.
- Firefox Web Browser
- This is the ultimate freebie, the Firefox web browser. Firefox goes beyond your ordinary browser, with more security, thousands of extensions, dozens of themes and short release cycles. Firefox is a community and a platform. Firefox is available for Windows, Linux and Macs.
- OpenOffice.org Office Suite
- The OpenOffice.org (commonly called OOo) office suite includes a word processor, a presentation program, and spreadsheet program, a database front-end program (think MS Access) and much more. OOo can also open and save Microsoft Office and WordPerfect Office file formats, and uses OpenDocument formats by default. OOo is full featured, and can handle most everyone's needs.
Available for Windows, Linux and Macs. - GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)
- From the website, GIMP is for "photo retouching, image composition and image authoring" but it can also be used as a image format converter and a converter for SVG images. GIMP is available for Windows, Linux and Mac and can be found pre-installed on many Linux distributions.
- Inkscape Vector Drawing Program
- From the website:
"Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format."
Inkscape is available for Windows, Linux and Macs. - Scribus Desktop Publisher
- Scribus is an open source desktop publisher for designing newsletters, mailings and even full magazines. Scribus is available for Windows, Linux and Macs.
- ClamWin AnitVirus
- From the website:
"ClamWin is a Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
and 2003. It provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine."
ClamWin is for Windows only. - Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system
- From the website:
"Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features."
Tor is available for Windows, Linux and Macs. - Ubuntu Desktop Linux
- The ultimate free software, Linux! The latest version of Ubuntu makes this super-easy with a Windows-ish look and feel, and well as some features to allow you to import some of your Windows data when you switch or dual-boot. Great stuff all round!
Plus, Ubuntu runs a lot of the above freebies too, some by default!
Why is free/open software better?
I'll show you why.
Free software is fast becoming the standard in quality software. It's now possible for anyone to find a quality, free replacement for almost any proprietary program. In many cases, the free program is better than its proprietary counterpart.You may not realize it, but there's probably a free software replacement for every software program you own: from your word processor to your photo editor to the actual operating system.
Some of the major benefits of free software are that it is free from cost, has no in-built banner ads and has no spyware in the installer. However, when you see the word "free" in relation to free software, you can be sure it's "free" as in "freedom". This is due to the biggest benefit of free software: that it has no restrictive licenses.
Other benefits of free software may not be as immediately apparent. Since free software usually has a larger user base, there are more people reporting bugs on different systems, and depending on whether the source code is available, there may be many developers not involved with the project fixing problems as they see them.
Also, free software usually has more add-ons and templates created for it. You can usually find forums and communities for free software, as well as contributed FAQs and documentation.
Another benefit of free software is you can install it on as many computers as you want, and you can be sure your friends and colleagues will be able to get access to that same program.
For a complete overview, read my full article on Free Software Magazine's website: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/focus-switching_end_users
I hope you'll enjoy free software!
Robin Monks
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These are books I own and enjoy
