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Best Free Open Source Software For Windows
snydeq writes "InfoWorld surveys the FOSS-on-Windows landscape, detailing the 10 free open source solutions most likely to unseat proprietary offerings. 'Some, like TrueCrypt and VirtualBox, are real diamonds in the rough: enterprise-grade solutions that deliver many of the same bells and whistles of their commercial brethren, but for free. Others, like Firefox and OpenOffice.org, are already legendary, and their strong followings ensure their continued development and support at levels that rival the best proprietary solutions.'" Rather than click through 10 different pages, the slideshow presentation at least lets you hover over each page's link to preview the author's top picks.
You could just list them in the summary - in less space than it takes to explain the "hover" trick
No sig today...
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Is the reason I actually stuck with Windows 2008 Server when evaluating my choices for a home NAS solution with easy-to-use partition encryption that doesn't get in my way and yes, I had tried out different Linux and *BSD-based solutions, but in the end, Win2008+Truecrypt was simply too powerful and too convenient to not pick as the clear winner. I might look at FreeBSD and OpenSolaris again when ZFS crypto finally gets implemented to see how it fares on the usability side of things.
(let ((lisp (not real programming language))) ((parentheses (too many))) )
Seriously though, if you include Cooperative Linux then you get to include most of the Posix/Unix/Linux free-software universe.
:P ;)
But still, I say Wubi is the #1 piece of free software to be had on Windows -- har har har.
jdb2
Or if you want pictures browse to the print view of the article.
The Open Source For Windows project
http://osswin.sourceforge.net/
And while the Open Source CD project is dead, it looks like there's an alternative.
http://www.ttcsweb.org/osswin-cd/
Now if only Windows had Debian style repositories.
--
BMO
THEN Ubuntu.
Never heard of the application. Summary say it is extremely limited. Is there a reason, other than complexity of interface, that one might choose it over gimp. I suppose gimp does not have all the shapes of a drawing program, but it does paint, with colors.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Cygwin!
I know many people who have used OpenOffice and not one of them thinks it holds its own against MS Office.
Me. Now you know one. Will that stop you from posting trollbait like this?
Just callin' it like I see it.
PDFCreator!? I just downloaded and installed it yesterday on a Vista machine at work. I got a Yahoo search toolbar installed after specifically telling the installer app not to do so, and then I also got a 404 redirector installed too!
This was from the installer I downloaded from sourceforge...
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
How about a list of more apps?
Anyone else have any good recommendations?
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
I truly pity anyone who really thinks FileZilla is the best FTP client out there. Why don't more people worship The Perfection That Is WinSCP? :(
I recently came across InfraRecorder and was impressed.
http://infrarecorder.org/
Yeah, I had that happen when I recently installed it. It's pretty slimy and left me with a bad impression of PDFCreator.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
I suppose it has a few pluses:
--It isn't a memory hog like VMWare.
--Guest tool installation is noticeably easier for non-MS guests.
But I still have issues:
--Installing guest tools completely breaks my OpenSolaris guest display.
--My shiny 1 GB graphics card becomes a 128 MB POS in the guests.
--No USB support in the Open version.
--Running my OpenSolaris guest in NAT mode totally gimps the connection.
VirtualBox isn't bad, but I can't see it being a VMWare killer anytime soon.
Surely VLC should have made this list? While it isn't exactly pretty it is very much FOSS, cross platform, and removes the need to download endless quantities of random codecs. Definitely better that Media Player classic in my book.
Man, don't be dissing Lisp. Lisp is the foundation of a lot of the niftier concepts in lots of languages today, and is considered by most computer scientists to be one of the most perfect languages ever invented. Yeah, all those parentheses are a pain, but they consistently push you to do the Right Thing, and for me one of the highest complements I can place on non-Lisp code is "that looks almost Lisp-ish".
And if you don't believe me, believe these guys:
"The greatest single programming language ever designed." - Alan Kay
"Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot." - ESR
"LISP being the most powerful and cleanest of languages, that's the language that's the GNU project always prefers." - RMS
"Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." - Philip Greenspun
"These are your father's parentheses. Elegant weapons, for a more... civilized age." - Randal Munroe
I am officially gone from
That's interesting.
I did a recent verbal survey in a literature class at the community college I am attending and 45% of the class was using it exclusively(other then the forced use of MS Office at the college labs).
I did it again at the end of the semester and that number had changed to 60%. It is possible that my first survey prompted the increase, but I also asked if the newer users preferred it over MS's product. ALL of them said they did. I then asked WHY.
The most common answer was that it was completely cross-compatible as far as opening MS created files...and it was free. The students could create files on the school MS system, then go home and open it in Open Office. And that it was free. Another reason they gave was that it was free.
I understand that there are some issues with bouncing back and forth between MS Office and Open Office, but most students choose one or the other. And its free.
As you might expect, students are not keen on spending upwards of $200 on MS Office when they can get Open Office for...free.
Did I mention that it is free?
Not to mention that if you're using OpenOffice (like this article suggests you do) then you don't need a separate PDF app. OO.o generates PDFs just fine.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
It's really bizarre that the article author included Paint.Net in a list of "best free open source software for Windows", because the source code - as the author himself even admits - is *not* available for free download for any of the recent versions of Paint.Net.
If that wasn't enough, there's been no new release of Paint.net for almost a year and I'd have thought GIMP (or GIMPShop) was a clearly superior (and fully open source) graphics package on Windows anyway.
I know many people who have used OpenOffice and not one of them thinks it holds its own against MS Office. Including myself.
OO.o will:
* Export to PDF
* Import a plethora of formats that MS Office can't open.
* Export to Open Document Format (MS Office 2007 with SP2 will do this, but previous versions can't)
* Allow me to easily install and manage extensions
* Run natively on Mac, Linux and Windows
* Doesn't cost a penny.
We pay $400 a pop for MS Office licenses here at work. Novell's Go-oo fork implements better macro support and such which is one of the few complaints I get about vanilla OO.o. So, a free product that implements 99% of the paid product's features, including every feature I've ever needed over the past 20 years, and then does several things that MS Offiice can't do, can't hold its own?
What is your definition of hold its own?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Celestia - astronomy program, lets you travel around the universe
Wireshark (as another poster already recommended) - lets you capture network traffic
FileZilla Server - FTP server
Cygwin - gives you Linux-like environment
Marble - 3D globe
I have plenty more:
http://user.interface.org.nz/~gringer/iopencd/browser/home.html
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Which is useful if you only create PDFs from OpenOffice and no other program. PDFCreator installs a PDF printer driver. Once installed, any program that can print can make a PDF. That's much more useful.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
I downloaded PDFCreator to give it a spin, but after learning about the toolbar and reading your post I've deleted it without completing the installation.
Wikipedia has further [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDFCreator]details[/url]:
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Your own inability to use the program does not imply that it is a horrible program. I am sure that there are many people here that would extol the virtues of vi or emacs, not because either is easy to use, but because they are powerful. Furthermore, complaining that one product sucks, but failing to provide a better alternative is not constructive. It may be true, but it is not helpful. If FileZilla is so horrible, why not provide an example of something that is better?
Then you are not really qualified to speak about whether or not this product has competition, are you? Perhaps you should have left it out of your reply.
Let us, for a moment, accept that only business users need an office suite. Why should they be ignored? They do make up a rather large number of computer users. That being said, you are ignoring a large number of people. Lots of high school and college students use office suites, as do their instructors. Many researchers also use office suites, especially in the social sciences. Authors of all stripes might use office suites. Even grandmothers writing letters to their grandchildren might use an office suite. One might argue that none of these people need to use an office suite, but that doesn't change the fact that they do use an office suite. Thus, you are just plain wrong here.
Opera isn't open, and neither it nor Chrome have the mindshare that Firefox does. As pointed out by the article, Firefox is one of the most visible and most widely adopted pieces of open software in the world, especially when considering the ecosystem of Windows software. This alone seems like a good reason to discuss it in a list of top open source programs on Windows.
Bingo. GIMP is a replacement for PhotoShop, whereas Paint.net occupies a niche somewhere between Paint and PhotoShop. It is easier to use than PhotoShop or GIMP, but is still powerful enough to fill most non-professionals' needs. Given that FileZilla was included in the list, it might have made sense to include GIMP as well, but one can also understand why Paint.net was included and GIMP was not.
As I have not used MPC (though I have used VLC), I can't really comment on this. If you have used both, why not give a reason to use VLC over MPC, rather than just throwing something else out there? The article seems to suggest that MPC was included because of the UI similarities between it and a program that might be familiar to more users who are not used to open source software. Perhaps that is the reason it was included over VLC?
Then it is good you didn't comment on it, I suppose.
You've never needed, so there must not be a need for it. H
Rhapsody in Numbers
At the risk of cross-pollinating Slashdot with Fark memes... THIS!!!
Though Base is a heck of a lot more usable now than it was in OO.org 2, it still has a long way to go to match Access 2000, much less anything more recent. No ODBC connections to multiple outside databases (at least that I could find), the form builder is still explicitly designed to create the worst-looking forms imaginable, importing into Base databases, especially with larger data sets, is ssssllllloooooowwwww (we're talking 15-30 minutes to import a 60,000 row Excel sheet, something which Access pulls off in well under 5), no multiuser support unless you're willing to host your own SQL server... yeah. It's better than it used to be, mind you - at least it's now obvious that you can actually code macro events against state changes on your forms. That wasn't true in 2.
Calc is better than it used to be - seriously, Sun went out of their way to clean up the worst of the problems in the upgrade to 3, which I'm very appreciative for. That said, it's still a little flaky on larger data sets that Excel seems to handle a little better. No personal anecdotes of pain on Calc 3, though, which is far more than could be said for Calc 2, so no real complaints.
Audacity is one of the best free audio editors. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
...Microsoft Office 2007 (and 2010) create PDF files just fine too.
So does Corel's WordPerfect product.
(and yes, I do have OpenOffice installed on this machine...I'm just sayin')
-B-
There's a checkbox labeled "Set Yahoo! as my default search engine and notify me of changes." Directly below that, in BOLD, it says "IMPORTANT: If you don't want to install the PDFCreator Browser Add On, then please unselect it on the next screen."
Nobody bothers to read, though, so they uncheck the first box for the search engine change, leave the toolbar enabled, and then bitch and whine about how PDFCreator bundles spyware. I've been using PDFCreator for 5 years now, have installed it on a few dozen computers, and I've never seen it install the toolbar when you opt-out.
I think we can all agree it sucks that it's even included, optional or not, but that's another issue.
As I explained in my post, I unticked the 'install toolbar' option, yet I still got a toolbar. Slimy.
On top of that, I got a URL re-director that was *not* mentioned in the install, and didn't go away once I uninstalled the toolbar plug-in in firefox. I had to uninstall the whole application to get rid of the re-director. That is slime on top of slime.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
It's GPL. Guess it's time to fork.
For the record, anybody with a .edu email address can get Office 2007 Ultimate for $60 (less than the cost in the MS company store, in fact).
http://theultimatesteal.com/
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
AutoHotkey is a necessity. Open Source, free, but unfortunately no Linux version. Automates keystrokes. Very professionally maintained. The programming language is quirky.
AutoIt makes programs that do automatic installations for examples.
Both can imitate keystrokes and mouse movements.
"These are your father's parentheses. Elegant weapons, for a more... civilized age." - Randall Munroe
Fixed that for ya.
In Soviet Russia a beowulf cluster of these things imagines you welcoming your new, neural-network overlords.
I installed it yesterday as well. I didn't have a yahoo toolbar installed though I would point out that opting out of this is a little confusing. Liek the installer says, you have to deselect it on the NEXT screen. It's quite cunning.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Those instructions are clearly designed to mislead and confuse. How are you supposed to realise the "PDFCreater Browser add-on" is in fact a yahoo toolbar and 404 redirector? If I was installing some software called PDF creator that creates PDFs and part of it was called "PDFCreater Browser add-on" i'd assume it was some kind of necessary component to enable the creation of PDF files. Especially since just before you get the option to not install it, there is a nice piece of decoy hand-waving about opting out of some yahoo related bullshit to distract your attention away from the innocuously labelled real malware payload.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons