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Ask Slashdot: Good, Useful Free Software For Gifts?
First time accepted submitter Jeng writes "I'm planning on sending flash drives to friends and family as stocking stuffers. Rather than just send a blank drive, I'm looking for what good useful free software that I can load on it — from system utilities and encryption software to fun little games." We've asked similar questions before, but software keeps getting better, and so do the prices on flash drives. So what would you give as a gift this holiday season?
If you're arrogant enough to think that you're doing something for OTHERS by giving them things that represent your passion and "religious" devotion to open source, you're not likely to understand why, but this is a terrible idea. Give other people what THEY want, not what YOU think would be cool. This is an absurd idea.
Bootable BSD or Linux on USB.
I'd suggest Ubuntu, with a "readme.txt" written for those who will plug it into their Windows box.
Give them a text list of apt-get commands and tell them all the software was pirated :P
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
How about a big collection of free music/ebooks/movies/art, etc? Maybe consider putting together a digital slideshow of photos and movies of family and friends, too.
Sorry, but that sounds like a really lame gift.
Then they mess up their computer trying to install it, probably destroying all their personal files in the process. What a nice xmas gift. :P
Seriously lame gift.
Who would be running Linux and wouldn't have Python installed, or a browser of their choice? Who would want rubbish opensource games they could download?
What is wrong with you guys.
I think the idea's a lil bland, I mean ... yay you put some free apps they could go get anyway.
But.... its' a stocking stuffer, let's have a little fun, right? Why not run around a few sites like Fail blog or LOLCats and find a big heap of funny pictures, and plunk em on the drive? That way they'll plug the drive in and have some fun zipping through those and having a few laughs. You could even throw in a folder family photos and give them something unique.
But if you're dead set on giving away apps, I can tell you I'd dig it if somebody took a flash drive and put Portable versions of Chrome, Opera, Firefox, a good mail client, and... well surprise me! I say 'portable' because if I don't have to install them, I'd definitely poke around and try them out.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"nerd ass faggot"
you have a family of cunts.
Roms don't have to be illegal, you just have a smaller number to choose from if you are looking for freeware roms.
But it is not like everyone does not already pirate roms, lets face it the consoles and the original games are no longer produced if you wanted to pay money for them you would only be paying some used games store owner not anyone involved in making the game in the first place anyways.
Now you can make a very good argument that the developers of the game deserve your money, but I have yet to hear one for the owner of the used store.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Yeah, there's a great suggestion. Give them Ubuntu, so they can try out Unity, see what a piece of shit it is, and never look at Linux again.
Which is why you give them on CDs or not at all.
And really, this is a pretty self serving gift so it's probably best not given at all.
Okay, I know some other people have mentioned this - and been voted down for it - but this has to be said: both free software and flash drives are terrible ideas for stocking stuffers on general principles.
Look, there are two reasons for this. The first is that any worthwhile gift has to be about the person you're giving it to. It has to be something THEY will appreciate. And, ideally, it should be something they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. When it comes to holiday shopping, even the friends of mine who are techies I wouldn't give free software or a data stick to. The ones who are into free software likely already have what I'd give them, and the ones who aren't would probably prefer something more non-technical, or more difficult to come by. It doesn't matter if you think it's cool - it's what THEY think.
The second is that, well, the gift should be something out of the ordinary. A flash drive is a basic computer accessory, and free software is, well, FREE. If it was software you created, then it would be worthwhile, as it was something you made. But otherwise, it would be like giving somebody a box of tissues.
If you're looking for gift ideas, be creative and stay away from the free software. If you've got a wine lover, give them a bottle of ice wine; if you've got somebody who loves the cute stuff, an interesting plush toy or the like. And if you absolutely have to give somebody software, make it something you created yourself or something that they would have to go shopping and pay for to get otherwise.
But if you go with flash drives and free software, the only thing you'll end up coming across as is some boring, thoughtless, self-obsessed cheapskate. Believe me, you don't want that.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
You don't ask family to jump right in to linux. You tell your semi-geeky friend to try it out.
You give family software that works on what they have and know. And you give them what makes sense for that person. Give the uncle that likes to make mediocre movies for youtube a copy of Lightworks for awesome video editing. Commercial software gone open source. Knocks the socks off of the windows home movie maker bullshit he currently uses.
Paint.net for picture editing to your aunt that likes to touch up family photos, maybe.
For the artsy teenager, Blender and Inkscape, if they're not already using them.
For kids, find a good, bright, well-polished game.
For gods sake, don't give anyone a browser or office suite. People hate software that takes over for something they already have. And stick to the well-finished, good looking stuff. The rest (*) just turns them off to the whole idea of anything "free", as if it's inferior.
* gimp style stuff, powerful but ugly as shit with a [perverse | handicap | offensive] name
Your problem is that this is a selfish, smug, self-serving, "gift." It's the nerd equivalent of giving your Baptist neighbors copies of the Quran for Christmas in the hopes that they'll find it to be a learning experience. It's not a gift so much as an attempt to propagate your own ideological beliefs onto others in the way requiring the least actual pedagogy on your part. It's like asking your teacher how to spell a word, and they crassly tell you to look it up in the dictionary. Only worse. Your family aren't even asking. You're just giving them the dictionary and expecting them to have fun looking up words.
"nerd ass faggot"
you have a family of cunts.
You don't get to choose your family.
I think that the analogy was very apt. Your response to this is exactly the same as the religious zealots who get genuinely suprised when people don't react well to their helpful teachings. "But surely everyone wants to know they are loved by God!"
Like it or not, open source software is as much a philosophy as it is a collection of useful software. It certainly feels to the recipient like you are proselytising even if it seems to the giver as providing useful software. Then you have the big problem for ordinary people that giving away free software as presents is like coming in with plastic bags full of air.
A few years ago, I gave my friends and family gifts like this. They each got a 256 MB USB stick with Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and some other open source software I thought they might find useful. Well, they didn't appreciate it at all.
Right after getting it, one of my nieces threw it back at me, calling it useless, and then she called me a "nerd ass faggot". I found out later that her brothers deleted everything on theirs without even bothering to try them.
My older relatives had no idea at all what they were. Some of them thought they were supposed to put them on their keychains, as decorations!
I'm not sure who, but some of my relatives didn't even bother to bring them home with them after they left the Christmas gathering. I found several of them lying on the floor after everyone had left for the night.
I hoped it would be a learning experience for them, but it was really a learning experience for me. Most people don't give a fuck about open source software. They just don't care. And they surely don't want to receive it as a gift.
the problem is you were trying to give a gift that you liked, not one they liked.
Any normal person would see this. We don't.
This is how far slashdot is disconnected from the real world.
My only suggestion would be to choose your apps carefully. After all, you are going to be supporting them for the next five years!
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
The inconvenient truth is that the FOSS movement doesn't develop good applications. There's an old saying that a camel is a horse designed by committee. And there seems to be something of that in software development. A good app with a good UI requires a visionary designer. And open source projects don't tend to have that, or don't give the authority to that one person to make the decisions.
There's perhaps an exception when there's a single developer who is also a good designer, who starts a project and progresses it singlehandedly to a viable level. But developers who are also good designers are as rare as hens teeth.
Note that the one exception, Inkscape, had such a singular person at it's beginnings (as "Gill") - Raph Levien.
Most FOSS proponents on Slashdot are leeches. They love OSS because it gives them software for nothing. Few of them have ever contributed anything. Far fewer still are those rare individuals that are actually capable of creating good software, and willing to do it for no salary. Maybe a handful out of the millions with Slashdot accounts.
Look at the holy war over Ubuntu - most value the old KDE UI - a Windows rip-off. The new Unity UI us an OSX copy and most users don't like it. After 20 years there's still no good original Linux UI. If the OS UI isn't even good, what chance the apps will be good?