My Favorite Free Software
I was just commenting to a friend how much really good, solid, free software is available out there in the webosphere and decided to compile a list. I know it's probably only a drop in the bucket so feel free to add your comments.
Disclaimer: Always be careful when obtaining software online. You never know what nastiness some apps contain. One pretty safe place to find free software are open source repositories like sourceforge.net and freshmeat.net. Remember, if the program is open source, the source code is available to the public and is less likely to contain dangerous code. The list below is comprised of software which I have found to be very safe and of good reputation. Many of the below items I actually use in a corporate enterprise environment.
These are in no particular order:
1. Linux. No comments really needed. I've been using Gentoo for about four years now and am very, very happy with the way it performs. For those not wanting the complexity of Gentoo, there's also Ubuntu and countless other distributions of Linux out there. While learning Linux may place you on a very steep learning curve, it's very much worth it. Try obtaining a Knoppix CD or some other kind of Live CD and you can get your feet wet with Linux without putting the data on your hard drive at risk.
2. Open Office- For those who can't afford to pay over $200 for Microsoft Office, Open Office is a very nice alternative. There may be bells and whistles you get with MS Office that you do not get with Open Office. I've never really looked into it. What I do know is that Open Office does everything I need for word processing and spreadsheets. It will even read and write to the MS Office format. Available for both Windows and Linux.
3. Abiword- Abiword is a very nice standalone word processor. While I've never really used it that much I will say that it loads fast (seems very "light") and has pretty much the same features of the Open Office Writer and MS Word. Available for both Linux and Windows
4. TrueCrypt- This is a very handy tool for creating and mounting encrypted volumes and drives. It even allows you to create a hidden volume within the encrypted volume. Available for both Windows and Linux.
5. Blender - An excellent, professional-grade 3D graphics program. It will even do animation. It's pretty complicated but I find it addictive. Available for both Windows and Linux
6. Freemind - A free mind mapping utility. Available for both Windows and Linux
7. 7-Zip - A very nice compression/archiving program. Has better compression than the native XP compression utility and works with many different formats (.zip, bz2, tar, etc). Available for Windows.
8. WinDirStat - This little utility scans a hard drive and maps out space usage by file type. It's extremely helpful in finding out what files are taking up all that space on your hard drive and where they are located. Available for Windows.
9. Firefox - This probably should have been a bit higher on the list (but I did say they were in no particular order). Firefox is, in my humble opinion, the best web browser available. I could mention the tabbed browsing and the many plugins available, but more importantly it is much more stable and secure than Internet Explorer. The Firefox team is much quicker to address security issues than Microsoft. Oh, and did I mention that Firefox is faster than IE? Another popular alternative is Opera.
10. Google Earth - what can I say? Google may be turning into another MS-like giant, but they have cool stuff. Google Earth allows you to display the earth using satellite maps and overlay road maps onto the satellite images. For some areas it will even show 3-D terrain and buildings (which is more cool than useful.) Available for Windows and Linux.
11. Picasa - Another Google product. This is probably the best image organizing software out there. It even scans your system for new photos and images. Really sleek. Available for Windows
12. GIMP - A graphical manipulation program rivaling such giants as Adobe Photoshop. This application has been available for Linux for a long time but was recently ported to Windows. I used to use Adobe, and quite frankly I'm not sure what it had that GIMP lacks.
15. Keepass - For those of us who tire of juggling multiple, complex passwords but refuse to sacrifice the security, this little application allows you to categorize all your local, network, or web passwords. The file is encrypted and is itself password protected. Keepass will even generate passwords for you. Available for Windows
I will add more if I think of any. :-)
Disclaimer: Always be careful when obtaining software online. You never know what nastiness some apps contain. One pretty safe place to find free software are open source repositories like sourceforge.net and freshmeat.net. Remember, if the program is open source, the source code is available to the public and is less likely to contain dangerous code. The list below is comprised of software which I have found to be very safe and of good reputation. Many of the below items I actually use in a corporate enterprise environment.
These are in no particular order:
1. Linux. No comments really needed. I've been using Gentoo for about four years now and am very, very happy with the way it performs. For those not wanting the complexity of Gentoo, there's also Ubuntu and countless other distributions of Linux out there. While learning Linux may place you on a very steep learning curve, it's very much worth it. Try obtaining a Knoppix CD or some other kind of Live CD and you can get your feet wet with Linux without putting the data on your hard drive at risk.
2. Open Office- For those who can't afford to pay over $200 for Microsoft Office, Open Office is a very nice alternative. There may be bells and whistles you get with MS Office that you do not get with Open Office. I've never really looked into it. What I do know is that Open Office does everything I need for word processing and spreadsheets. It will even read and write to the MS Office format. Available for both Windows and Linux.
3. Abiword- Abiword is a very nice standalone word processor. While I've never really used it that much I will say that it loads fast (seems very "light") and has pretty much the same features of the Open Office Writer and MS Word. Available for both Linux and Windows
4. TrueCrypt- This is a very handy tool for creating and mounting encrypted volumes and drives. It even allows you to create a hidden volume within the encrypted volume. Available for both Windows and Linux.
5. Blender - An excellent, professional-grade 3D graphics program. It will even do animation. It's pretty complicated but I find it addictive. Available for both Windows and Linux
6. Freemind - A free mind mapping utility. Available for both Windows and Linux
7. 7-Zip - A very nice compression/archiving program. Has better compression than the native XP compression utility and works with many different formats (.zip, bz2, tar, etc). Available for Windows.
8. WinDirStat - This little utility scans a hard drive and maps out space usage by file type. It's extremely helpful in finding out what files are taking up all that space on your hard drive and where they are located. Available for Windows.
9. Firefox - This probably should have been a bit higher on the list (but I did say they were in no particular order). Firefox is, in my humble opinion, the best web browser available. I could mention the tabbed browsing and the many plugins available, but more importantly it is much more stable and secure than Internet Explorer. The Firefox team is much quicker to address security issues than Microsoft. Oh, and did I mention that Firefox is faster than IE? Another popular alternative is Opera.
10. Google Earth - what can I say? Google may be turning into another MS-like giant, but they have cool stuff. Google Earth allows you to display the earth using satellite maps and overlay road maps onto the satellite images. For some areas it will even show 3-D terrain and buildings (which is more cool than useful.) Available for Windows and Linux.
11. Picasa - Another Google product. This is probably the best image organizing software out there. It even scans your system for new photos and images. Really sleek. Available for Windows
12. GIMP - A graphical manipulation program rivaling such giants as Adobe Photoshop. This application has been available for Linux for a long time but was recently ported to Windows. I used to use Adobe, and quite frankly I'm not sure what it had that GIMP lacks.
15. Keepass - For those of us who tire of juggling multiple, complex passwords but refuse to sacrifice the security, this little application allows you to categorize all your local, network, or web passwords. The file is encrypted and is itself password protected. Keepass will even generate passwords for you. Available for Windows
I will add more if I think of any. :-)
posted by David at 10:04 AM
1 Comments:
http://gaim.sf.net
GAIM. All-in-one instant messenger. It does it all.
http://www.miranda-im.org
Miranda. A close second in your instant messaging clients.
http://www.silverex.org
Silverex' custom Windows build for the X-chat IRC client, for those Windows users who like to IRC but don't have mIRC.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com
Foxit Reader. Adobe is huge and bloated and has a tendency to crash. Try this.
And then there's a whole bunch of developer and sysadmin stuff that wouldn't really be useful to a wide audience.
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