some favourite open source applications

Date: 01 Jan, 2000
Posted by: admin
In: linux, open source & software

Favourite Open Source Applications

This is a quick list of some of my favourite applications, originally written in 2007. They are either free gratis or free libre or both; many are open source.

If you don’t know what that means then all you do need to know is that you can safely use these without worrying about the police knocking on your door. Big companies like Microsoft do prosecute the little guys that illegally copy their software … so use these apps and don’t worry anymore.

The winners are …

7-Zip; 7z442.msi – nearly universal zip application

Firefox; Firefox_Setup_1.5.0.4.exe – high quality browser, highly secure, excellent standards compatibility, very fast too

SketchUp; GoogleSketchUpW-EN.exe – 3D sketching program from Google

Inkscape; Inkscape-0.44-1.win32.exe – vector graphics package

OpenOffice.org; OOo_2.0.3_Win32Intel_install.exe – replacement office suite for Microsoft Office

Thunderbird; Thunderbird_Setup_1.5.0.4.exe – great email application, warns you of scams, excellent junk mail filtering

AdAware; aawsepersonal.exe – run this to remove adware from your computer, an essential maintenance task to do each month

Abiword; abiword-setup-2.4.4.exe – a MS Word replacement with a clean crisp interface

Audacity; audacity-win-1.2.3.exe – sound editting application

AVG; avg71free_385a721.exe – antivirus program that doesn’t use up all your computers resources

Celestia; celestia-win32-1.4.1.exe – extreme star-gazing

GIMP; gimp-2.2.10-i586-setup.zip – complex but fully featured graphics program

IrfanView; iview392.exe & irfanview_plugins_392.exe – best ever graphics viewer, views nearly any type of graphics file, the interface is a bit clunky though

jEdit; jedit42install.jar – good Java based programmers editor, made excellent by installing the extensions

nVu; nvu-1.0-win32-installer-full.exe – full featured web page editor

Opera; Opera_9_Eng_Setuo.exe – another killer browser, this one looks good, is fast, can be controlled (in XP and 2000) by voice commands!! “Computer, make tea”??!

Picasa; picasa2-current.exe – a photo viewing and editting package from Google, enables upload of pictures and easy tweaking. I’ve used this for thousands of pictures

Scribus; scribus-1.3.3.2-win32-install.exe – exceptionally good DTP package that can create SVG and PDF files. Does require getting used to. It’s not great unless you have the text already to hand, IMHO

Spybot; spybotsd14.exe – finds and removes spyware, use in conjunction with adaware

… more soon

That’s about 250MB of great applications, and it won’t cost you a penny.

Tags: windows