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The Best of Windows Open Source Software?

Posted by Cliff on from the not-just-for-penguins-anymore dept.

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."

9 of 889 comments (clear)

  1. how about... by RedWolves2 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    OpenOffice

  2. Religion? by dotgod · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'm not criticizing here...I'm just curious. Why do so many people think of Open Source Software, namely Linux, as some kind of religion that they have to "convert" people to?

  3. TortoiseCVS - Enjoyable version control by MaCa · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Aonther excelent example of good OSS for windows is TortoiseCVS. From its site:

    With TortoiseCVS you can directly check out modules, update, commit and see differences by right clicking on files and folders within Explorer

    I wish Konqueror/Nautilus had something similar.... really a shame that such a god CVS client has no similar in the linux world. :-(
  4. Re:Web Server Tools by cscx · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    IIS/ASP/ODBC rips Apache/Perl/PHP a new asshole... _if_ configured properly and securely.

    Plus, the same old song and dance is getting old, now that Apache has its own share of bugs and worms.

  5. cost arsehole by child_of_mercy · · Score: 2, Offtopic

    my LAMP (Linux Apache Mysql PHP) box cost me exactly the price of the hardware.

    can you do me a quote for an equivalent IIS/ASP/ODBC box?

    cheers.

    --
    'There is a Light that never goes out.'
  6. Re:CDex fine under XP by Reaver88 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    hahahhaa, you said "dancing like Gene Kelly"... hahahah :)

  7. Re:ADOM by hub · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I couldn't find a way to download source code for ADOM. Too bad. It look like this is NOT Open Source software.

    --
    Hub
  8. Re:Is GIMP suitable for this project? by Metrol · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    If you happen to be on some flavor of *nix, you might want to consider using Fluxbox as your window manager. It lets you connect windows for anything, in much the same way Photoshop does.

    --
    The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
  9. SCREW open source!!! by swordgeek · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Really, this has nothing whatsoever to do with open source, other than that you're claiming that you want it.

    For a disk of crossover apps, you're limiting yourself by only including open source software. How about stuff that's just free? How about demos of software that's actually commercial, closed-source, but available on both platforms?

    Weaning someone off of Windows for Linux is one thing. Weaning someone off of all non-open-source (and by whose definition?) software is entirely something else. Make sure you're clear on what you want to do.

    Having said that, the Unreal Tournament 2003 demo (and soon game) is available in Windows and Linux versions. Why not throw that on?

    --

    "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban