Open Source Software

Post all the best O>S software here - I'm trying to get a list of all the BEST open source software available. After all, OS software is sometimes the best and im 13, ergo i cant buy anything so... this is a cheap option for me.

Also post freeware! So long as its free i dont care. I just wanna load up my pc with brilliant software that costs nothing.

And of course, it could also help anyone else whos lookign for freeware open source etc.


So far ive got:

Inkscape - graphics editor
Blender - THE most amazing 3-D CGI-thingy
Open-Office - Not the best, but i like it!
MediaCoder - converts all file types from anything to antyhing (roughly)


That can probably be re-written to sound better, but i really cant be bothered.

Not all of it open source, but you want free (as in beer), not necessarily open source, so:

- Visual Basic/C# Express
- Paint.NET

Also stuff like Live Messenger, but I don't think that's the sort of stuff you're looking for.

I could probably think of more, but I really can't be bothered.

I've heard of this site....

http://www.osalt.com/

...but haven't had time to go through it yet.

I would have to say Firefox is very good. Also, I like Ubuntu, however this is an operating system so I don't know if this is the type of software you are interested in.

Angus Higgins

And, like we've said many times before, it's not the "best" you want. It's the "best for you" you want.

Which is also why we don't make fun of Jamie for using Corel products

The one OSS product I use on a daily basis is Camino.

Not so much because I like it, but because Safari has such a hard time rendering sites the other popular browsers can handle with ease.

As I've stated here in the past, I'd much rather use Safari. It'd be nice if Apple would swap out KHTML for Gecko. That would be quite the nice browser.

Why Apple went with KHTML is beyond me. The story's probably out there somewhere - just haven't looked.

Now that I think about it, though, I don't use any other OSS products. At least not on the desktop.

Community Server for my site.

That's about it.

Used to run OSS stuff exclusively, but that was back in the Windows ME days. I couldn't afford Windows 2000, which I would have otherwise used. At the time, I was using Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware on my various machines. Worked out pretty well.

Lost interest when XP and .NET came out. The switch also seems to have been income related. Once the dough really started flowing, I wanted to spend more time going out, and less time twiddling all the little configuration bits to get distros perfectly dialed in.

It was fun for a while. Nowadays, I want simple, turnkey software, hence my interest in Windows and OS X.

Sometimes I miss the fun of customizing my desktop (was always a Gnome/Enlightenment guy). That said, it's for the best in my case, as I want to spend less and less time on the computer as I get older.

Reading... Courtship... Driving... Music...

Those are the things I do now instead of typing away for hours on end.

I also have this nasty habit of responding to people in forums with the intention of keeping things simple, but then accidentally telling my life story

Here is some of the OSS I use on Windows.

Gaim..errr..Pidgin
7zip
FileZilla
z390 (System/360 through z/Arch cross-assembler)
DOSBox
Hercules (use it more on Linux, though)
PuTTY
Notepad2

Ultimate Boot CD For Windows (UBCD) - http://www.ubcd4win.com/

And my personal fav for Open Source / free project of the last 5 years - Xbox Media Center! Although it's for your xbox (not the 360, the 'classic' xbox) it is a nice shiny application that has made a huge impact in my daily life.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/ (manuals, etc)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmc (source + Binaries)
http://blackbolt.x-scene.com/ (XBMC Skins)
http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox-tutorials.php (Tutorials)
http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2006/03/21/screenshots-of-my-xbmc-setup  (Screenshots)

Rory wrote:



The one OSS product I use on a daily basis is Camino.

Not so much because I like it, but because Safari has such a hard time rendering sites the other popular browsers can handle with ease.

Rory wrote:

Why Apple went with KHTML is beyond me. The story's probably out there somewhere - just haven't looked.

Because the code is understandable, and because it is easy to scale down (as shown by the fact that it is now running on some Nokia phones), because it is fast.

Harlequin wrote:

And, like we've said many times before, it's not the "best" you want. It's the "best for you" you want.

Which is also why we don't make fun of Jamie for using Corel products

The Gimp w/ many plugins
VS Web Developer Express
System-config-tool suite
aMSN w/ plugins
GAIM w/ plugins
Quake 3 Arena
Nexuiz
Firefox
Muppen64
OpenOffice 2.2
Euphoria
Evolution
BitTorrent
aMule
Wine
Ntfs-config
VNC Server/Viewer
MPlayer/Xine/VLC
XMMS/Amorak/Banshee
K3B/Gnome Baker
FSLint/KleanSweep
Gnome Dictionary
GConf editor

I havent tried Inkscape or Blender but if I were into that sort of thing, I'd probably like them.

There are other OSS that I like but not arent the best for me. Then there are a few OSS apps that I can't stand, such as Totem.

Blender - great 3-D model program, supports many formats
Audacity - sound editing
Royal Cribbage - excellent "freeware" game

Lloyd_Humph wrote:

Post all the best O>S software here - I'm trying to get a list of all the BEST open source software available. After all, OS software is sometimes the best and im 13, ergo i cant buy anything so... this is a cheap option for me.

Also post freeware! So long as its free i dont care. I just wanna load up my pc with brilliant software that costs nothing.

And of course, it could also help anyone else whos lookign for freeware open source etc.


So far ive got:

Inkscape - graphics editor
Blender - THE most amazing 3-D CGI-thingy
Open-Office - Not the best, but i like it!
MediaCoder - converts all file types from anything to antyhing (roughly)


That can probably be re-written to sound better, but i really cant be bothered.

thumbtacks2 wrote:

Blender - great 3-D model program, supports many formats
Audacity - sound editing
Royal Cribbage - excellent "freeware" game

To add another - definately AxCrypt. if i didnt have AxCrypt then all my secrets would be out by now... seems my brother didnt think about what to do AFTER i left my pc on and fell asleep.

Also VeMODE for converting video files to my Treo 750/Tungsten T3.
And to add to that:
TCPMP which is easily the greatest video player for handhelds.

Rory wrote:

It was fun for a while. Nowadays, I want simple, turnkey software, hence my interest in Windows and OS X.

Now days Linux is pretty much turn key for me, except wireless, Intel graphic chipsets, and ATI graphics drivers crashing X on resume from suspend or hibernation.

Rory wrote:

Reading... Courtship... Driving... Music...

Reading... eww.

Courtship...   Not yet.

Driving... eww.

Music... I'm gonna try learning the guitar again.

Mostly stuff other people have already said:

The Gimp - if you want to maintain your sanity while multitasking with the Gimp, get the Deweirdifier plugin (makes all the windows inside a single window like any sane Windows program).

Pidgin (formerly known as Gaim) - best IM app I've tried, beats Trillian speed-wise and beats having AOL crap on your computer.

NASA WorldWind - like Google Earth, but brings together a lot more information from a lot of different sources.

Notepad2 - Great notepad replacement with code highlighting and the works.

jEdit - for more complicated projects than you'd want to use Notepad2 for--  yet another text editor, but much more powerful.

Dosbox - it runs lots of games.  And windows 3.1.  Enough said.

Wireshark - Open source packet sniffer, in case you want to know what you're computers sending out into the interwebs.

Cygwin - provides the power of a Unix shell into Windows.  Powershell does the same thing, but it's so complex to use, it's not worth it.

TortoiseSVN - if you use Subversion, this is the easiest Windows client you're likely to find.

Oh, and I use my Simple Weather Applet to keep up with current weather conditions.  It's open source--  can I put it on my list? </shamelessPlug> 

Not open source, but freeware:  OWANotify - just found this one yesterday, it's a program that notifies you when you have new mail if you only have access to Outlook Web Access.  Fixes my biggest irritation with OWA--  you have to have it open in a browser window to be notified that you have new mail.