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."

Comments

A few ideas.

[cadillactux]

These are a few of the ones I like.

FreeeCiv
OpenOffice
and WinGimp
I would love to hear more from everyone else.

Re:PuTTY

[0x0d0a]

Hey, I thought you only trolled! What's with the good suggestions?

PuTTY is a work of art. It's free, it's flexible, it's self-contained in one executable (no bloody installers!)...it's the single Windows program that I must have if I'm using a Windows machine.

It can even emulate X11's middle-click-to-paste and select-to-copy mode. Absolutely wonderful.

Don't forget to OGG-vocate vorbis

[MaCa]

CDex was the first OS project for windows (besides mozilla) that popped into mind. But if the idea is to make a CD to "educate" people into using OSS, then it would be a good idea to advocate the use of OGG/Vorbis - with CDex in this case.

GIMP is not obvious to Windows users

[Plug]

Most Windows users start out with MS Paint{,brush}. Compare this to the GIMP. Then compare it to Photoshop.

Paint has the right idea in my Book of UI Design for Image Editors - a 'full screen' workspace for your image, tools that are kept outside the image, and menus that are accessed from the top of the screen.

Photoshop take that one step further with tabbed palletes (as this comment says, perhaps that can't be replicated exactly without infringing copyright laws) - however, I expect with a few hours of work, someone familar with the GIMP could write a more usable (in this case, yes I mean more Windows-friendly) UI for it, moving all the menus to a MDI style application. Take THAT app and package it on your Windows OSS CD.

GIMP has all the hard work done - the image tools are great, and wingimp claim to have 90% of PS's functionality. And you can't complain about 0% of the price.

Windows people would only get confused by The GIMP. It looks like crap so normal users don't bother figuring out how to use it. Sure, some learning is always a good thing, but the interface is not only (IMO) counter-intuitive, it goes against the established norm, in a way that could be very easily fixed.

Re:GIMP is not obvious to Windows users

[stephenbooth]

A few reasons really. Mainly comfort factor and learning curve.

Generally, people like things that look familiar, it gives them a comfortable feeling. If I'm used to one application that uses a certain key sequence to perform a particular task (eg copy something to the clipboard) and then want to do the same thing in another application I'm going to be a lot happier if the key sequence is the same. Whether we like it or not a lot of people are used to the Microsoft way of doing things.

If I know how to do something in one application and want to do the same thing in another application then, if it doesn't do it the same way, I'm going to need some training or to spend some time reading the manuals. A lot of people are used to the Microsoft way of doing things and, to be honest, one of the few good things about Microsoft is at least they have interface consistency accross their apps.

To take another approach. On UNIX (and other OSes for that matter) programs like grep, sed and awk (amongst others) use REGEX. Further they all use the same REGEX. How many problems would it cause if they all used different ways of representing strings?

For most users a PC is just a tool for writing letters, web browsing, playing games or some other task. They don't want to RTFM and if they've had to learn one application they want to be able to apply that knowlege in the next application they have to use that does similar things, not have to learn another way to do the same things.

Stephen

Re:Religion?

[Sivar]

It isn't. Well, not for most people (even Slashdot people). I can't speak for others, but I find it mildly offensive that many people are convinced that Windows is the only way, that with software you get what you pay for, and that if a person cannot afford photoshop or MS Office that they simply cannot edit photos or create documents/presentations/spreadsheets. It is more a matter of educating people, showing them, "See, there is ANOTHER way, and it's better in many respects."
Others, to a degree myself, are offended by Microsoft's (and other) commercial software company's moral bankruptsy and their screwing of users, and feel morally compelled to at least let others know that they do not have to put up with it. That nobody has to use Microsoft, and that for the most part to not do so involves very little loss and significant gain.
Some people are just cheap, or truly low on money, and think they must choose between rent and important software. These people can also benefit greatly from OSS if they only knew about it.
Still other people, such as aspiring programmers, often have a tough time doing any real programming in Windows because it's so damn complex and crufty, and some eventually lose interest and leave for a different interest. Some of these people would also benefit greatly from being able to see the source to their programming tools--how they actually work--rather than reading unnavigable gigabytes of MSDN documentation to find info on how to work around some obscure bug or "feature" in their tools.

It isn't a religion, it's philanthropy.

Can you post the ISO somewhere?

[Delgul]

I would be very interested to have a copy... Can you post the ISO somewhere for us to burn? I have some interested family members too, as I guess otheres here will have too!

Re:Vim? No, no, no, NO!

[robinjo]

It may not be for you but do you consider your computer skills average? If you spend some time teaching computer skills to Normal People, you'll notice how even the concept of a file or directory structure is difficult.

People are lazy. They don't bother learning things unless they have to. Most people will gladly learn and use AbiWord instead of WordStar. Not because AbiWord has more features. It's just easier.

Vim will take over the world when most people stop using elevators and opt for climbing the stairs.