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The Best of Windows Open Source Software?
Boiotos asks: "I'm cooking up a CD-ROM image of excellent Win32 Open Source software to give to friends and family who are intrigued by the whole OSS movement but don't know where to start. I figure once they're used to Mozilla and AbiWord under WinXP, a Linux partition would be less daunting. So fellow Slashdotters, how about it: what Win32 OSS projects deserve a place on the 650 Mb of Solid Gold? Remember, this is for non-geeks and families, so Cygwin is out (even though I love it) and games are in. Extra points, as always, to the obscure but beautiful. Finally, projects targeting only Win32 -- with no Free Unix crossover -- may apply, but will be subject to a strenuous physical test."
CDex -> for converting their CDs to MP3...
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
Gnucleus! Open Source gnutella file sharing. For once you can be REALLY sure that there isn't any spyware in your filesharing software!
Absolutely - Tux Racer and BZFlag (www.bzflag.org) - best cross-platform, open-source games I know!
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
I cannot imagine anyone using a Windows machine without the magnificent PuTTY ssh, telnet, and rlogin client. It is probably the best ssh programme I have ever had the pleasure of using, and its terminal emulator is superior to most xterms in many ways. Your CD collection would be incomplete without it.
Celestia has to be some of the most awesome software Ive ever used. You can navigate the cosmos and it looks absolutely incredible! This would be a program I would use to show people how cool OSS is.
As someone who uses Photoshop now and then, I can't get the GIMP. It all just feels wrong. I'm sure it contains almost all the functionality ('the hard part') of Photoshop, but the UI is so completely different.
Photoshop's UI is very standard - a single MDI window. How hard would it be to create a GIMP addon/port that replicated Photoshop's interface principles (without going so far that Adobe can sue) - things like having floating toolbars over a background window. Some people might like the GIMP's multiple-parent-window architecture, I'm sure, but most I know are repulsed about it. (It reminds me of Visual Basic 2.0.)
If you give Windows people GIMP, they will either be used to MS Paint get confused, or be used to Photoshop and get confused. Some people will say "Well, they should be willing to learn something new", but I think that the Windows graphics program paradigm is better, and it's GIMP that needs the change.
The required ROMS make it kind of a gray app. But the full source IS available...
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
X-Chat is available as windows builds, works great.
I'm pretty sure there's a FreeCiv client for Windoze. That way, when they make the switch (we can hope, right?), they'll have a little something familiar to jump into and play with...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Also a very addictive game called crack attack, which runs on windows and linux, and is under the GPL:
Crack Attack
Other things that you should consider include Python and PyGame (don't forget SDL as well!).
[x]Chat runs under windows (native), and is the only irc I'd consider using (beats the hell out of mirc).
Putty is an open source ssh/telnet client. Its possibly the best telnet client for use under windows. Then again, could anything be worse than C:\Windows\Telnet.exe ?
I've probably missed quite a few good ones, but these are things I seriously like.
A little overkill never hurt anybody.
virtualdub
FreeAmp plays MP3 and Ogg.
FileZilla is a fantastic opensource FTP client. There is also a FTP server component, which is just as good. It's much better than any shareware client out there.
Donald Roeber
Generating 2048 Bits of Randomness...
Blender can now go on your list, as they've reached their 100k. It is my impression that the sources should be opened Pretty Soon now. They whole 3d graphics system or game engine may not appeal to Joe Average, but his kids will eat it up. Face it, how many of us originally got into programing so that we could make our own games?
http://www.virtuawin.com/
Fast, free, and source code is available. Kicks butt.
How about Cygwin? X for Cygwin?
gcc or djgcc or something to let people do free development for windows - kdevelop ported to Win32?
vim!!! (though that may not be a good idea for people who have never seen VI
Does Blender have a win port?
Apache - how to have a safer web server.
VNC - for people who want to do work from home (or abuse works high speed connection)
The home page is at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/
I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but that's a good start. Hopefully other posters will list their faves...
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I wrote a little utility that allows you to have window transparency under Windows 2000 and XP. It's called Vitrite, and it's licensed under the GPL.
It certainly isn't in the same league as Mozilla and OpenOffice, but you'll definately have room for it on your CD (only 85 KB).
And yes it's the same utility I've been pimping in my sig for months now.
Many open source Jabber clients are available, so maybe you can get your friends to use open source software with an open instant messaging protocol!
Personally, I use PSI when using Windows, but there are others out there that may be just as good. I do believe, though, that Psi is cross-platform, which may be a plus.
Open Source Software for Windows
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
Please note that there is already a project currently working on this. You may want to combine forces since they've been working on this since this last spring.
Check out the OpenCD project at
http://www.theopencd.org/
You are free to work on your on project of course, but I HATE to see duplication of effort.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
It seems like a great flight sim, but you apparently need a pretty fast computer (either that or I don't have opengl set up where it can find it)
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
Dude, the last few versions of CDex are just dandy under XP. I suugest you pay a visit to SourceForge and download the latest build. Then you can off MusicMatch to /dev/null (yeah, I KNOW it doesn't exist in Win. That's 'cos Win IS /dev/null).
I have CDex dancing like Gene Kelly on my XP notebook. It's one of the few things on my checklist keeping using Windows (although our in-house Linux guru almost has me convinced...)
If you need help, contact me off the boards.
Trib
I have a feeling that most Windows folks would roll their eyes at Nethack's ASCII graphics. I know, I speak sacrilege, but we can win over the infidels with the delights of the Falcon's Eye Nethack wrapper.
Probably not much call for remote control software for most end-users, but MS is promoting it in XP for consumers to use when calling up helpdesks, so VNC is a great GPLed solution.
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
Politas
Well there are a few things that keep me from using the gimp for my own work, but the UI isn't one of them.
It's pretty good, good enough for most people, and looks like a serious piece of software which makes it good for the "See, open source, free ( in both senses ) software can be very sophisticated." demo.
Unfortunately for my own work the Gimp has some pretty serious shortcomings.
You are limited to only 24 bits, and I really want to work in at 48 bit from 36 bit source.
If there is color management or matching in this or any other program available on Linux I'd like to know about it.
I'm not sure if the gamma and curve control is adequate, although given the first two limitations, it doesn't really matter.
Windows just plain sucks except that you can run photoshop and some scanners on it, and printer support is pretty good.
OSX looks pretty nice, maybe I'll buy a Mac.
But back to the subject. People who want to buy Photoshop buy the hardware to match the software , as in " I want to keep 3 8k by 8s images open at once and do unsharp masks on them in about a half second. Sell me some hardware that will do that. "
For everybody else, the gimp is fine.
BTW, is anybody working on a deep color rewrite of the gimp?
A great little multiplatform Postscript and PDF (Acrobat) viewer.
Here's the Ghostscript, home page, and the GSview-specific page.
-- Alastair
Seriously -- if the idea is to make a Linux partition seem less daunting, put the Win32 version of Vim on there. It won't take up too much room (about 3.7 MB or so as of version 6.1) and it's a very straightforward install. Reasons for including vim? Well:
1) Every UNIX machine in the world has vi on there somewhere. Emacs may or may not be installed, depending on the preference of the sysadmin. But if you at least know four or five basic editing & navigation commands in vi, then you'll be fine if you wind up trying to use a strange UNIX system somewhere.
2) You can actually describe it in a way that won't be horrifically intimidating. Tell them it's a replacement for Notepad with a lot more features. And you can use the mouse if you want, but there's keyboard shortcuts for everything: once you learn them, you'll be twice as fast with Vim as with any other editor.
3) Vim's built-in tutorial (":help tutor") -- I wouldn't even mention it as a possibility without this one.
Yeah, a lot of people will hate Vim and run back to Notepad. But if they try it and get at least as far as finishing the tutorial, they won't be COMPLETELY lost when they first try Linux and have to edit a text file.
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/
Politas
LAME [mp3dev.org], the MP3 encoder that CDex includes
LAME is good, but it still ain't an MP3 encoder. It's the source code to an MP3 encoder. It won't be an MP3 encoder until Fraunhofer's U.S., German, and Japanese patents expire in the early to mid 2010s. Yes, binaries are available, but downloading those may be just as infringing as downloading proprietary console game ROMs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
602Suite. Check http://www.software602.com/
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
VirtualDub is in my opinion the best application of its kind, commercial or otherwise. I use it on a daily basis, and it gives me precise and total control over my video processing. Not to mention the unbelievable assembly-optimized speed! VirtualDub is truly the Photoshop of video capture and linear editing.
Those interested in VirtualDub might want to check out the new Unofficial Virtualdub Support Forums. They're a good place to get tips and help if you're just getting started with VirtualDub. Even though they're not "official" VirtualDub forums, VirtualDub author Avery Lee does drop by every once in a while.
(Disclosure: I am one of the volunteer moderators on the site, in the newly inaugurated and not-yet-very-active VirtualDub Development Forum.)
begin 644
Open source, small, light, and fast.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Include vlc as a great DVD / VCD player, and maybe MPlayer too.
it is most godlike of you to mention this incredible program that I had not ever used before! I cannot believe how cool this is. Especially since I just a week or two ago went searching for such a program (much lower standards had I) and didn't find it. And the contributer sites with all kinds of spacecraft and moon models etc. etc. I have been wanting this program for years!
btw, in my search I did find another very cool program which renders the sky accurately and beautifully, which is also quite impressive. You might like it.
-pyrrho
POV-Ray is free (as in beer) and comes with the source but it is not under the GPL and the license doesn't meet the requirements of teh Open Source definition.
Go for it. Use it. But please don't think everything is under the GPL.
All the guys, who are actively engaged in USENET should try Hamster a local Mail- and newsserver with great filtering capabilities and many other features. For reading newsgroups, there is IIRC no good Open-Source-newsreader, but if freeware is enough, you should try xnews
Gimp might be of some interes. //Pingo
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
Some WICKED Windows OpenGL screensavers (best fireworks sim I've ever seen among others.) All source code under GPL.
http://www.reallyslick.com/
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
OpenOffice 1.0 on Windows is excellent. It is not perfect, but it does not crash nearly as much as Office XP does, and StarCalc can be like crack to spreadsheet users.
First and foremost, have a directory for all those required DLLs ;) That way, they don't have to go hunting for them.
Next, there are a few neet-o utilities out there, in various forms. One that I use a fair bit, is a "Universal Converter". Weight, Mass, Distance. It converts Metric, to Imperial, or simply to another unit of the same. Ounces in a Bushel, for example. Then there's a handy utility I use all the time called "Say The Time". Simple little thing that can be set to announce Verbally, what time it is, so you will be less likely to loose track of the time. Alarms can also be set as well as reminders.
Just a few simple things to add. Feel free to e-mail me should you wish the actual files. Say The Time is out there on the web, but I haven't found the converter in Ages. I think it used to be a simple VBasic excercise, or something.
Good luck!
Here's the site for BZFlag: http://www.bzflag.org/
and the site for Tux Racer: http://www.tuxracer.com/
Visit www.seriouslythough.com
If you don't like it, create a dumbed-down Windows-version of Gimp that tries to make up Window's deficencies, but don't expect the creators of Gimp to make Gimp worse.
Freshmeat lists the Win32 projects by popularity and by rating. You can probably find more download sites that let you filter by license.
~~ What's stopping you?
Actually, you *can* use pipes, very similarly to what's done on Linux ... it's just that not as many DOS programs support being used as a pipe.
Next time, try ":!find str" when you already have a selection. "!" executes, and because you have a selection, it will be filtered through the "find" command, for the string "str". Very useful for trimming down 50mb log files when you don't have Grep.
--Robert
nobody has mentioned LiteStep!
LiteStep is a replacement desktop environment released under the GPL.
I have nine desktops, can drag windows between them, I have cpu and ram meters, quick-launch buttons and shortcuts, and can even drag windows from other destkops anywhere (don't think you can do that in most desktop envs).
with litestep and mozilla, unless I have a windows [file] explorer open, there's no MS except the system (kernel, services) running - which means with the multiple-instances-of-explorer option, I need not worry about [i]explore[r].exe crashing.
and (obviously) there is theming
other GPL windows projects of interest:
FreeCiv Civilization (one and/or two+) clone
Gaim AIM/yahooim/msnim/icq/jabber/... client
and the already mentioned cygwin, vim, gimp, mozilla.
if you hunt for it, there's a cygwin version of gvim that allows unix paths, etc. but uses X.
Xfree86 for cygwin is now prime-time (in installer) and works really well with windowmaker and openbox, but lacks integration with ms windows as the wm (the way eXceed, winaXe, XwinPro, and Xthin do). please, please contribute to that somebody!
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
People are into video games but not into the complexity of modern games.
As for being a "gray" app, there are plenty of freely availabe ROMs at Classic Gaming[classicgaming.com].
MAME belongs on the CD.
The only drawback--like most OSS programs--is that it requires a scope of seemingly unrelated skills to get started.
M$ codes for morons. OS Developers code for their peers. Until "coding for morons" becomes the mantra of the movement, the CD will remain simply a demo and not a tool for revolution.
--Chris Uzal, Editor, Cyberista
Laws are for people with no friends.
Egoboo doesn't use the Quake 2 engine. It uses the Quake 2 modeler program. The engine is its own, a top-down tile-based 3D engine.
Once upon a time, I was looking for a free alternative to CuteFTP. I love Cute, but I was always sick of finding a crack for it whenever I reinstalled it, and I liked using they 2.8 version as their newer version have some annoyances. I am unemployed and money is tight, so even though I would love to pay the $40 for CuteFTP since I use it so much, rent came first. So I went to find an FTP client that had similar features to my favorite version of my favorite FTP program.
What a challenge. There are some truly aweful FTP clients out there for Windows. I downloaded pretty much every FTP client on download.com and thought there was no decent FTP client out there. Finally, I did a search on sourceforge.net. The first hit came up with FileZilla.
FileZilla is a great app, nicely modeled after the GOOD features of CuteFTP with not of the crap. It's free and open source. It's a must have for anyone looking for a decent, free FTP client for Windows.
I believe VirtualDub can read MPEG-1 now, but I don't think it can write them.
MPEG is sort of outside VirtualDub's scope; it is first and foremost an *AVI* editing program (not a general video editing program).
To my knowledge there is no single software package that can handle AVI, Quicktime, and MPEG equally well. (Premiere claims to handle all three, but its Quicktime and MPEG support have serious problems; Apple's Quicktime also claims to handle all three, but its AVI support is severely lacking).
Plus, I don't think it is possible to distribute a free MPEG-2 codec since there are active patents on it... (Apple distributes Quicktime 6 without MPEG-2 support, and makes you pay $20 or $30 extra for it)
Solitaire, written in Python. Better than any other solitaire games I've seen (including some commercial). There are something like 200 different solitaire games built in.
It can be found here.
There isn't a windows build on the page, it's python, dude.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
GNU Generation, a student association at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, proudly announces the release of GNUWin-II,
a collection of free and open source software for Windows, which luckily contains most of the software that was proposed some days ago on slashdot.
It comes on a CD with more than 50 applications, articles, and a four-language (yes it's swiss)
html based interface to help newcomers discover Free Software.
The complete GNUWin-II can be browsed online.
The ISO image of the CD
can be downloaded here or better on Swiss SunSITE mirror ftp or http. It is also possible to order a CD in Europe.