Slashdot Mirror
Free Windows Software Without Spyware/Adware
Jem Berkes writes "This week I launched CleanSoftware.org, a resource site with a unique goal: listing free, daily-use software that is free from spyware, adware, and other malicious/intrusive components. With Windows users increasingly believing that free software invariably means adware or spyware, I set out to promote good, clean, free software. Perhaps geeks helping family and friends set up their new computers this holiday can make use of this resource; sticking to clean software is much easier than struggling with never-ending cleanups. To expand my listing, I am also looking for input from the Slashdot readership: what other free, clean desktop software do you regularly use that Windows users should know about?"
I am also looking for input from the Slashdot readership: what other free, clean desktop software do you regularly use that Windows users should know about?
Firefox (and Linux!).
for the mac page, see http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/
I use IrfanView. The lighest and quickest image viewer for Windows that I've ever used.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati ve.htm
Although less annoying, there's a Quicktime alternative too:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alte rnative.htm
This one's straight from microsoft's site, but heck the software there are free and I use 'em daily:
o ls /default.mspx
:-)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/to
I also use The Core Media player, a free media player that I use to replace windows media player with. It has all the known codecs already built-in, and has many other unique and helpful features.
http://www.tucows.com/preview/299014.html
Hope you'll find those two useful.
Anthony
http://www.palmzone.net
that should be BODE not BOD.
Now to be a little more of a help than an ass...
There's Bittorent, Azureus, Firefox, Mozilla, Thuderbird, Open Office, the GIMP, Ad-aware, Spybot-S&D, Winamp (at least in the 3.0 series...haven't upgraded for a while.)
I'm sure others will name more.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Trillian basic is a great IM client.
- CD Burner XP Pro
- Ultra VNC
- POV Ray
- Sygate Personal Firewall
- IconShop
Good luck!By the way, how do you plan to take submissions in the future and filter out bunk submissions? It'd be nice to have a moderated system that could evolve some.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
You gotta have Cygwin! Best thing since sliced bread.
Underholdning.info
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- Outpost Firewall
- Cygwin
- The GIMP
- Spybot
- adAware
- Trillian
- Google Desktop Search
- SETI@home
- iTunes
I'm sure there are many other specialty apps that could be useful, but searching SourceForge for something in the appropriate category seems like a better approach than trying to audit a bunch of closed source stuff for malware."I would give my right hand to be ambidextrous."
For the geekier MS Windows user, how about emacs and yudit?
For power users, mostly (because they'll confuse your grandma)
I'm sure there are many others, but those are the ones that immediately came to mind.
Seriously speaking my desktop right now looks like a Full screen X0rg-cygwin + Fluxbox running - like this. With lots of Xterms and ssh logins :)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
FileZilla is a nice FTP/SFTP client and apparently a server too, but I've never tried using it for that.
Media player classic is part of the "guliverkli" suite of multimedia opensource tools and applications.
It is much better than any other free player that I have tried, such as WMP, BSPlayer, and others.
I found out that most problems related to subtitles, audio, and codec-specific sync issues, which occur in many other players, never happened in Media Player Classic.
This could be a nice addition to CleanSoftware.org
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/
WinMX is a P2P program that is NOT infested with spyware or adware. You must have gotten it from a bad location, because I use it and it's clean.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
You missed http://gaim.sf.net/Gaim. Arguably the best IM client for both Windows, and Linux, and as a bonus it's also totally free. If anyone can direct me as to the correct way to make a link with the name Gaim, like the parent has (and as I obviously failed to do here), I would be most apreciative.
From their intro page: "Before we list anything here we check for viruses, trojans, spyware etc."
Horribly outdated. Firefox listed as v. 0.9.1.
Zoom Player http://www.inmatrix.com/
VideoLAN http://www.videolan.org/
VirtualDub http://www.virtualdub.org/
> You've got to be kidding.
Ask the slashdot admins to reveal what % actually uses desktop linux, its in the logs. The windows userbase is huge, even here. Almost all of my unix use is server side. That being said:
Winamp - disable anon statistics at setup
Firefox/Mozilla
Media Player Classic - best videoplayer out there OSS
Music Brainz - indentifies mp3 files my their sound signature
Abiword - word processor OSS
eMule - like kazaa only better
TightVNC - A nice VNC derivative
Cygwin - unix on windows. sexy.
Winzip - it now does 256 ARS encryption
PGP - the free version, crippled but useful
Textpad - great text editor
Thunderbird - email client OSS
7-zip - free zip/rar/everything opener
Trillian - best IM client, does encryption
Gaim - okay IM client OSS
CoreFTP - better than filezilla
atomic time sychronizer - for PCs/users that cant do NTP
Tweak UI - Users will want this eventually
AGP - free virus scanner
Ad Aware - spybot not needed really. AA catches just about everything now
What NOT to recommend:
Google toolbar - the full version is spyware. Warn users if they are going to use this.
I just spent a weekend setting up my wife's new laptop. In doing so, I added a lot of free and Spyware-free software. Here are some things you missed:
1. Editors! There are a lot of freely available (open source, freeware, etc.) editors out there. EMacs, Jove, VIM, Elvis, VILE/XVile/WinVile, NVI, Scintilla, and others too countless to name. I haven't seen ANY of these encumbered by SpyWare.
2. MultiMedia: RealPlayer and QuickTime both avoid spyware, if I'm not mistaken.
3. Blender and DIA are missing. They appear on
TheOpenCD.org, which seems to be a similar project to yours.
4. Cygwin32 -- Essential for any Linux user that needs to occasionally run Windows. With laptops with humongous drives, you can have an entire development system with GCC, perl, python, etc.
5. ActiveState has freeware implementations of a few useful languages, such as ActivePerl.
6. Tcl/tk comes to mind as not on your list.
7. Sun's Java is almost a requirement nowadays and integrates into IE, Opera, and the Mozilla-based browsers.
8. PaintDotNet was mentioned on Slashdot recently.
Now... for the site...
If you wish to use this as a service for users, then you should have a "This Just In!" section that shows items and when they are added. This way, a person can visit every couple of weeks and keep abreast of the things that have changed since they last left. This is also a good use for cookies--remember the last visit and highlight things that have changed since then.
Good attempt, and good luck!
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
Why does anyone use WinMX, Kazaa or any other spy and mal-ware software when both eMule and Shareaza are available? with source?
I guess I spend so much money on my hobby, CGI and the software for that, I just can't handle the thought of buying something when a free application does as good or better.
Some free software that is better than alternative commercial software (or has no alternative):
FREENET
Steel Panthers: World at War
Irfanview
PAF 5 (genealogy software, go to download products, ignore Marie Osmond's attempts to seduce you to the dark side)
GMAX 3D Modelling software
You can also get tons of free software with the purchase of magazines (I know, not really free); you can get the previous version or a free version of just about any graphical app when you buy digit magazine, including software that cost kilobucks as recently as a year ago.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
though, with that attitude you could just warez stuff and say "it's free, it didn't cost me a bit.".
among other things that nag screen says is that "WINZIP IS NOT FREE SOFTWARE", it's kind of it to let you keep using it but it makes it pretty clear that you shouldn't. there's quite a lot of shareware that even if it works after 30days says in it's licensing that you're not allowed to use it after that.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Winzip is not freeware. You are supposed to pay for it, not use a keygen from from emule.
http://www.pmail.com Excellent Free email program.
Buy the President
I've noticed a lot of sites actually selling NTP clients for windows as shareware. Rediculuous scams.
All versions of windows 2000, XP and 2003 support Simple NTP natively via the Windows Time Service. You just can't configure it using a GUI. However, entering this simple command line:
The server time.nist.gov is a decent choice for users in the US. You can enter multiple NTP servers separated by commas, and the Windows Time service will try them in order.