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.
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