Free Software

I'd like to start a list and guide to free and/or open source software. Many of these were originally built for the *nix environment but have been ported over to Windows.

I'll start with a couple of real useful ones off the top of my head.

Firefox: (http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/) A free and secure web browser with many features
OpenOffice: (http://www.openoffice.org/) The free and open source alternative to MS Office
NeoOffice: (http://www.neooffice.org/) Free and open source alternative to Office for Macs
Gimp: (http://www.gimp.org/) Alternative to Photoshop
Gaim: (http://gaim.sourceforge.net/) Instant messenger, connects to all major IMs systems with one program. Think freeware Trillian
cCleaner: (http://www.ccleaner.com/) Freeware history cleaner for Windows, cleans temporary internet files, cookies, and history from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera. Also clears many Window's history entires
NVU: (http://www.nvu.com/) An open source what you see is what you get HTML editor for making webpages includes a built in FTP client
Audacity: (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) A fully featured open source audio editor
Winamp (http://www.winamp.com) - A Great Lightweight but powerful music player, less memory and startup time than Media Player, Skinable, includes Visulizations, and plugin support.

Of course who could forget a completely free Operating system? Do you have an old computer just laying around? Tired of Windows constantly crashing?

Check out Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/), it's free and works right out of the box. OpenOffice, Firefox, Evolution (email), and Gimp are just some of the programs included with the default install.


This list has been posted on various internet forums and blogs. It's been compiled by me (http://www.danielhutter.com/) from both off the top of my head and others suggestions.

As for a great free ripper which we use all the time here at the office

AudioGrabber - uses freeDB for discs, supports practically any audio encoder. Very fast, reliable, and efficient. Normalizes tracks, and much more. Check it out here: http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

I used audio grabber before and it rocks! :cool:

As for a great free ripper which we use all the time here at the office

AudioGrabber - uses freeDB for discs, supports practically any audio encoder. Very fast, reliable, and efficient. Normalizes tracks, and much more. Check it out here: http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

I've heard nothing about good things on AudioGrabber I've never used though.

Just wanted to mention freeDB is having some problems and from reading the service works sometimes and other times it doesn't.

http://www.freedb.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=293

I just updated the orignal post with some new titles.

Don't forget MailWasher (http://www.mailwasher.net).

It's still a free download. :)

MailWasher is very easy to use. It allows you to manage email at your ISP server level without downloading all that stuff to your machine. If a message seems suspect (or just plan useless) you may delete it from the server right there.

Best of all, you can use it to bounce back spam. :)

Hope it helps.

Here is an updated listed in PDF format, many things have been added as suggested here and other forums/blogs: I've been promising people I'd have this ready last week so the descriptions aren't in, I'll update the PDF and descriptons next week.

A decent program to make pdf files in a pinch is http://www.pdffactory.com/

freedb was recently purchased by Magix (I have Magix 10 MP3 Ripper) . . .

So now we can update our VisiTrax again! :walkman:

Picasa

http://picasa.google.com/index.html

I was steered to this little photo finding, and editing toy by a photographer I worked with last month.

It has some "wierdness" to it regarding its learnig curve, but it seems to have a little potency that I was missing. I don't have Photoshop, nor any motivated desire to learn that pig, so this is somewhat filling that gap. The "Basic Corrections" do a decent job of blasting thru some of the advanced filtering and layering stuff that I've seen people with Photoshop do.

It is good software . . . but . . .

The biggest problem with Picasa is it's organizer feature.

Every time you open up the software it searches your hard drive(s) for any new images . . .

And it searches them all out . . . even the ones listed in your internet cookies!

We used to give it out with every camera we sold . . . but the company dropped after thousands upon thousands of customers (over 1200 stores) complained about it.

Maybe the newer versions allow you to turn the search feature off . . . the old one didn't!

Thanks John, I'm pretty sure Picasa allows you to turn off that feature now.

Here is a way to block folders individually: http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=11511&ctx=sibling

Dan looks like a New updated list should be Created

i'll do a even better one as I need to update what I use for all my 400+ Clients that I service, repair etc

so give me some time and I'll get it done

Dan looks like a New updated list should be Created

i'll do a even better one as I need to update what I use for all my 400+ Clients that I service, repair etc

so give me some time and I'll get it done

In between getting my vB boards up and running, I've been trying code some interesting Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.org) hacks to power another site of mine (almostgeek.com.)

Keeping this list updated just keeps getting pushed back. Originally it's goal was to list open source software ported over to Windows to get people wondering what open source is about it. The last edition featured some freeware programs.

I've been thinking of completely rewriting it with keys (L=Linux W=Windows) stuff like that possibly even splitting it off into two seperate docs.

I look forward to seeing what you've got and when I get a few free hours I'll combine and make it look nice.

Hey Dan glad its you not me
- I dont have time to scratch myself these days lol

NVU is a free website design program.

http://www.nvu.com/

Here's one -
Xampp its a bundled installer. It installs MySql, PhP Apache Server,PHP Admin and others everything you need to create a website test bed or an intranet collaboration network. (That's how I try out new feature for my website without going live.) Xammp is available for Windows, Linux Mac and Solaris I believe. Xampp's installation is so stable it will run trouble free on even Windows98SE.

Speaking of websites, Joomla a dynamic website content management system.

For Audio recording and editing Audacity for Windows, Linux and Mac best described at this point in its developement as like Adobe Audition Lite+ more than the basic but not like a full version of Audition. Can work with many audio file types.For non-power users check out Audacity.

For Instant messaging GAIM, it's multi-platform & works with all the major IM protocols

http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/

They create software, but offer their older versions for free instead of trialware or shareware. Ususally, they give the option to purchase the new versions on the way out of the download area for a deep discount, like $10 plus shipping or so. Once you're in their system, they also give you the opportunity to upgrade with the latest versions, prerelease for a discount.

They carry pdf makers, photo editors, desktop publishing, etc.

I find that some of the best free ware is free ware that is also portable. The reason for this is so you don't tie down your system with a lot of pointless files and registry information. If you want to get some of the best free ware on the planet, check out these two sites. Trust me, it will be worth it.

http://www.portablefreeware.com/

http://portableapps.com/

Here's some links to places to search for free software.

http://sourceforge.net/
http://freshmeat.net/
http://osswin.sourceforge.net/

These sites are part of the Open Source "Revolution" in software developing, an entirely new and different model that is scaring the absolute @#$% out of Mr Gates because there is no one he can buy out! More fun, games and renewed antitrust to follow I'm sure!

Find out more about what Open Source is at:
http://www.opensource.org/

ok another site I just found for FREEWARE

http://nedwolf.com/Freeware.htm

let me know what you think

I had open office for a long time and loved it (especially the ability to save in .pdf format). But now, I don't need the entire suite, just a word processor, and because of it's size, and the fact you can't download individual components of it, I switched to a word processing software called Abiword. It looks exactly like Word, and is a very small download (only about 5 mb).

If all you need is a word processor, it is definately worth checking out.

Patrick jsut get cutepdf writer (www.cutepdf.com)
it has the converter and the free software there as well far better than adobe's crap

also use Foxit pdf reader 4meg compared to 70meg for Acrobat reader