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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?
Graphics:
Other stuff:
My blog
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
well you can use a bootable USB of course, or you could use virtualization-on-a-stick, using qemu or portable virtual-box
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/using-a-portable-virtualbox-to-run-linux-from-usb/
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/run-a-live-linux-cd-from-within-windows/
or you could use portable app's projects off of sourceforge.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Works off a CD, DVD or USB flash drive. live.linuX-gamers.net
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.
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
If they are using Windows, I suggest the full collection of PortableApps from http://www.portableapps.com :-)
It will runs directly from your flash drive and is really useful!
> I'd suggest Ubuntu, with a "readme.txt" written for those who will plug it into their Windows box.
And make sure you give them WUBI instead of expecting someone new to Free Software to be willing to figure out repartitioning. Sure it doesn't perform quite as well, but the benefits balance out for new users.
Democrat delenda est
If giving a cheap flash drive full of crap is your idea of a nice Christmas gift, then the best gift you can give to your family and friends is dying.
He did say stocking stuffer. I don't know about your family but when I was growing up sometimes our stocking stuffers weren't worth nearly the cost of a flash drive. They'd often be filled with candy or small yo-yo-like toys. I think a flash drive is perfectly in line with that.
On the other hand, if you are of the habit of sending out $100 bills as stocking stuffers, I'll happily send you my mailing address and you can send some of your extra money to me.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You should fill it full of stuff from PortableApps. Tons of great programs there. Plus they don't have to install anything. No worry about messing up their computer.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Inkscape
GIMP
Those were the first things that came to mind for me. I use Gimp at least once a week in my job, and Inkscape probably once a month. They are great tools for those who don't need the fanciest of plug-ins. I would bet that they are mature enough now that 90% of home users who think "I need photoshop and/or illustrator" could actually get by just fine with these tools instead.
And being as most home users know what they can do with the Adobe programs, but not specifically how to do it, they could be just as well off to learn these instead.
So indeed, save your relatives a few hundred dollars by giving them a flash drive with Inkscape and Gimp. Of course, they probably won't install them, but at least you tried.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
the penguin king demands it, justin!
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.
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)
You're missing the point, the flash drive is the gift. The pre-loaded software is just a bonus.
Just give them uTorrent - the gift that keeps on giving!
Seriously, though, are we talking about freeware or Free Open Source Software? There's a lot of great freeware out there; applications like Picasa, utilities like Piriform's set, games like Cave Story (a.k.a. Doukutsu Monotogari). I hope you're not ruling out closed source, since your friends and family really won't care about the difference.
Also, you should probably start by looking for popular downloads on sites like FileHippo, SourceForge, and even (groan) Download.com. There are also quite a few commercial games that were later released as freeware or free-to-play; Team Fortress 2 is a prime example.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
*Anonymous bro hug*.
Not quite free, but you can buy a handful of them at $1 a pop and explain that you're giving them away as gifts.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
"nerd ass faggot"
you have a family of cunts.
I used to have a zip file with a ton of free-use black and white cigarette/tabacco commercials. I'm sure they still exist on torrent sites. They're free and *legal*, and some will make your head spin in three different directions all at once. Then they can delete them and use your gift as a gift ;)
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
The portable apps suite is a powerful free toolbox useful for any user and admin alike.
You can also customize each flash drive to the recipient of the gift. There's tons of apps available including games.
www.portableapps.com
They're using their grammar skills there.
Back in the 80s I did a Commodore 64 Christmas Disk for three years, one thing that was good about it is that I know everyone who I gave it to had a Commodore 64, and thus everything to use the disk. Now ids a different matter, you have people running potentially three platforms (Linux, Mac, Windows) with several versions as well as varying system specs. Not that FOSS software isn't a bad idea, I just hope you have time to support all those people you give it to as there will be issues depending on thier OS, and technical skills.
I have a better idea; A couple years ago I did that but included family photos, etc. stuff my family would be interested in regardless of the platform.
Besides photos, also think about video clips of the family and kids, and you can throw in PD or CC music , e-books, art, etc.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Linux Media Player and some CC music and movies.
Did this in '08 for my friends, still gets talked about - I still get voicemail with "Got any more of that free live music?"
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
How about the Wikipedia database? Only 7GB (compressed) and will provide many hours of bedside reading.
Or, if you're feeling particularly generous, give them the full database including all revisions - only 28GB compressed with 7-Zip, so will fit nicely on a 32GB flash drive. This expands to over 5TB of data, so will provide many more hours of exciting reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#English-language_Wikipedia
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.
I don't think I believe him either; the general gist of the story sounds plausible, but the details make it seem fabricated, especially the bit about the "nerd ass faggot", people leaving them lying on the floor, etc. Unless this guy comes from an incredibly rude family, most people are polite enough to accept gifts as-is, and if they don't like them keep their mouth shut and dispose of the gift later. One kid not being polite is certainly believable (kids haven't learned all their manners yet), but multiple adults? Doubtful. Moreover, he didn't say what year this was, but I'd assume that at that time, 256MB USB drives were considered decently large. If someone gave me a 2GB USB drive (today considered fairly small) loaded with pirated Windows software, for instance, even though I have no use for Windows software I'd still take the USB drive and just erase it and use it for my own purposes. You can never have too many of those things.
Full of free Portable applications, so they can take their email inbox, firefox favourites and a whole lot of other tools and toys with them wherever they go. The best bit is, they are all FREE!!!
For image manipulation, The Gimp. To get it out of the camera, UFRaw. To get rid of duplicates, Clonespy. These are all rock solid maintained performers
All your database are belong to U.S.
There exists such a project currently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDisc
Couple this with the selection from OSS-WIN solves your dilemma significantly: http://osswin.sourceforge.net/
http://ttcsweb.org/osswin-cd/index.htm
Fill the drive with all the malware you can find.
*Slightly* off topic, but let's face it: you'd do something like that because, deep down inside (if nothing else), you're hoping they'll fire up the software on that USB stick and say, "wow! And it's free??? Gimme some more o' dis!"
If you're trying to spread the news about Free Software, the only effective way to do it is to SHOW them. Most of the people whom I've converted to Linux did so after watching me use KDE (formerly) and Gnome (more recently). The multiple desktops are absolutely intriguing to a power user; it won't be long before he/she starts thinking, "hmmm ... I could use that." The fact that you're not playing "whack-a-mole" with a dozen pop ups each time you boot is impressive, too, as is the fact that, with a good distro, updates are centralized, controlled and politely done, with rarely a need to reboot.
Of course, I go one step further. If they want to see Windows, I've installed Windows in a Virtual Box. I can bring up Windows as a nice, well-behaved little application one one of my multiple desktops, where it stays out of the way until I really want or need it ..... the way it SHOULD BE. (Evil. Grin.)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
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
or you could just boot from a live cd and wipe it and not be a turd.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I don't think this is a particularly good gift. Giving people free software on top of a cheap thumb drive (even giant ones are a dime a dozen now) feels little more than a silent push to free software from whatever they might be currently using.
If you want to give them a gift, give them something like a copy of Minecraft--something they can't just download for themselves.
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
This actually sounds like a pretty typical American family event to me. I've seen the same stuff happen at my family's Christmas events in California, as well as at my wife's family's events in New Hampshire. Kids will be very vocal about gifts they don't like, especially the teenagers. They'll throw tantrums and cuss if they get something they don't really want. It isn't limited to the children, either. Some of the adults will exhibit similar behavior, although it's often more passive. Leaving unwanted gifts behind is just the kind of passive-aggressive attack that they'll perform. I know this can happen because my wife and I gave her adult sister and her sister's husband some wine last year, but apparently it wasn't expensive enough for them. They showed disappointment when they received it, and they left it behind, although they did keep some more expensive wine they were given by other relatives. We ended up taking it instead.
Games: FrozenBubble, Neverball, Vertigo, Zaz, Supertuxkart, Some form of tetris, Gweled, Blobby Volley 2, LBreakout 2, Frogatto, armagetron, xmoto, PokerTH, trackballs. Others: Cryptkeeper (hide directories), audacity(bundle mp3 support), openshot, desktop recorder, clementine-player(music), smplayer (if everyone has vlc), cherry--tree(note taking app, http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/), tasque, focuswriter and virtualbox to run ubuntu.
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.
it's the gift that keeps on giving, literally...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Why not load a bunch of old family photos that they may not have.
Wow, that's weird. I guess good manners and politeness are just a thing of the past for America now.
As for the wine, I'd be perfectly happy with cheaper wine. I've tried many cheap and expensive wines, and have found an inverse relationship between the cost and how much I like it. I guess I don't have enough of an "acquired taste". :-P
wine: Something that appreciates in value as your willingness to say "Oh, now that's interesting!" increases.
Kid-proof tablet..
Anything that you can get for free, they can get for free. If they can get it for free, it's automatically unsuitable as a gift.
Even if the software is just a bonus for the flash drives, and you're also giving them a real gift and the flash drive is just the equivalent of a candy cane, it's still a bad idea. Free software is something you're interested in. You don't give people gifts that you're interested in, or that are meant to convince them to do things that you approve of. That kind of gift is self-serving and arrogant no matter how good the cause; just giving them actual candy canes would probably be received better.
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".
Wait, wait, wait...
Did your niece call you a "nerd-ass faggot"... or a "nerd ass-faggot", because the hyphen really changes the dynamics of the entire story :)
http://xkcd.com/37/
Don't be an arse and try to "convert" people to your FOSS leanings by giving them a trojan "gift horse". Seriously, either give a gift that you actually think they would like or don't bother. That gift does not have to be expensive or even bought but if it is the latter, then you actually have to have created it yourself. Taking a USB stick and copying over FOSS is not creative or a real gift. You are basically giving out a FOSS tract.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
next year... malware
In this context you might as well give them Chlamydia.
You get to keep the usb also!
-- no sig today
"nerd ass faggot"
you have a family of cunts.
You don't get to choose your family.
Wow, that's weird. I guess good manners and politeness are just a thing of the past for America now.
Not all of America, but, yes, there are some exceptionally rude pockets here and there.
After having received from someone a gift that took their time and money to buy and wrap, and maybe make themselves, the last thing I would want to give in return is something that didn't cost me anything. Okay, so maybe you're also getting them a real gift. But who would install something they just found on a USB stick?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I just bought four SanDisk USB drives, in original packaging, at Costco. I had to clean them of junk before using them. They even had autorun files and some kind of installer.
Send the guy an empty drive that's really empty. That's a real gift today.
You don't get to choose your family.
But you do get to choose which ones live :D
I posted the following to this same exact post that Jeng did:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1854046/good-useful-free-software
For some reason, this post was posted again, and edited, not sure why. But here was my answser to the original question:
You have many different portable application suites to choose from:
PortableApps.com (seems to be the most popular):
http://portableapps.com/
LiberKey (is somewhat new, and hasn't been around all that long, but it's catching up to PortableApps.com):
http://liberkey.com/en.html
I've never heard of the following two, so you may want to check them out anyway:
Pendriveapps:
http://www.pendriveapps.com/
winPenPack:
http://www.winpenpack.com/main/news.php
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
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.
Yes, yes. M$ ad hominem to truth from an AC mask, we know the OS modus.
He's right, though. The worst presents (software or otherwise) are those that seek to impose your views on how things should be done on others.
Second worst is a fruit cake.
First off, your relatives suck for not even having the common decency of feigning appreciation. Second, this was a learning experience. I was planning on doing this same thing this year for Christmas. Now it's off to buy giftcards: something I hate doing.
I refuse to buy gift cards. Fuck that. If they want a gift card I'll give them cash with one I printed myself and a suggestion on where they MIGHT use it if they so choose. Do you have any idea how many of those things end up not being used before they expire!? And how many more because companies file for bankruptcy or get bought out. Fuck that shit. Giving the gift of becoming an unsecured creditor I may as well flush the money.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If you're trying to spread the news about Free Software, the only effective way to do it is to SHOW them. Most of the people whom I've converted to Linux did so after watching me use KDE (formerly) and Gnome (more recently). The multiple desktops are absolutely intriguing to a power user; it won't be long before he/she starts thinking, "hmmm ... I could use that." The fact that you're not playing "whack-a-mole" with a dozen pop ups each time you boot is impressive, too, as is the fact that, with a good distro, updates are centralized, controlled and politely done, with rarely a need to reboot.
This is exactly how I became interested in Linux. Then, I tried it, and none of my plug-and-play devices worked, and I was expected to write my own drivers or stop complaining, and I went back to Windows. Windows 7 is the best Windows so far. I am fully satisfied with it. I run Debian in VirtualBox as a coding environment.
I happen to like a good fruit cake
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
And everyone hates receiving... You've spent $20 to give them $20, but you've tied their hands about where they can spend it. There's nothing more infuriating than a giftcard for a store which doesn't sell anything you want.
(upshot: give cash)
I don't have that many relatives left, but they know that an Amazon.com gift card is always appreciated by me, so that's what I usually get. Frankly, that's probably the perfect gift for me.
For the artsy teen, promote Blender and MyPaint; needlessly inflicting vector graphics on people is criminal, and I use Inkscape about 8 hours a day at this point. My friends in the 3d biz don't have nice things to say about Blender, either, but they also complain about Maya. If/when the Doom3 engine goes open source, you might promote that instead; it has some name recognition, and gives the budding modeler something to do.
MyPaint, for those who haven't used it, is a painting program most similar (but superior) to OpenCanvas, which hasn't had an open source release for years. MyPaint runs on all major OSs.
I understand the thing about GIMP, but home users are less likely to care -- my mother has been known to use it.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
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.
Your post reveals in inconvenient truth.
Lightworks was developed as commercial software. Now trying a new free version + subscription pro version model.
Blender was developed as commercial software. After bankruptcy a charitable appeal bought it for the open source community.
Paint.net was developed by a Microsoft intern. It's a free download but not open source.
Out of the four, only Inkscape was developed from the start by the FOSS community.
This is a great idea, especially for older people. My parents (who at their age don't really need anything) got a single photograph from a long-moved-away neighbor in the mail recently. It was of my sister and I in their backyard, playing with their kids. My mom was over the moon. I've heard about that photo like 5 times in the last month.
If you've got an old picture of somebody else, that you suspect they don't have, make a nice copy of it and give it to them this Christmas/Hanukkah. It'll restore your faith in "it's the thought that counts" which will be as big a gift to you as to them.
How about a copy of DOSBox and a load of old DOS games? There are numerous sites where you can get abandonware or shareware games.
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
I have no desire to start a fight over FOSS ends versus means, but is it fair to say that for most non-technical users, the thing that matters most is the 'F' in FOSS?
Also, while the Blender story is interesting, why does that matter from a FOSS perspective? Don't deathbed converts get admitted to Heaven?
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?