(last updated Mar 26, 2011)
Some of the best things in life are actually free!
Office Suite – LibreOffice.org (Windows, Linux, Mac)
I, like most people, use only 10 to 20% of the features found in most office suites. I prefer my data in non-proprietary formats and not in any embraceable and extendible, pseudo “open formats”. Great support for importing/exporting to/from other more proprietary formats when required. Print to pdf, it keeps getting better and better. I like the way it handles import/export of .csv files. There is no change for it so why not install it as well as that other famous suite.
Lower Resource “Office Suite” – AbiWord (Windows, Linux, BSD, Mac, etc…), Gnumeric (Windows, Linux, BSD, etc…)
Office suites can be large programs that use significant resources. AbiWord and Gnumeric on a older machine can be a great alternative or for a faster experience on any machine. This is not quite a suite but there are many standalone programs that can be installed to achieve the essentials. For Ubuntu users a convenient metapackage which will install these programs would be the “gnome-office” package (sudo apt-get install gnome-office). KDE users may prefer KOffice.
Web Browser – Firefox (Windows, Linux, Mac), Chrome
I mostly use Chrome. The “sync” feature allows me to conveniently sync the extensions, bookmarks and theme on all the machines I use. It’s performance and security features are top notch. I also use Firefox due to the great addons such as NoScript, Web Developer, and DownThemAll!.
Light Web Browser – Midori, Dillo (Linux, BSD, etc…), ELinks (Linux, BSD, etc…)
Sometimes it is nice to see the Internet with a program that is tiny and quick. This GTK+ based web browser is light on resources and is especially good on older computers. For that real retro web experience a text console based web browser like ELinks is the way to go.
Graphics Apps (Linux/Unix, Windows, Mac OS, etc…).
GIMP, bitmap graphics editor.
Inkscape, vector graphics editor.
Dia, diagrams and flowcharts.
Scribus, desktop publishing.
Skencil, a vector drawing program.
A powerhouse of truly free graphics programs for the major platforms. Extremely capable programs but unfortunately if printing is required with proper colour matching you will probably have to stick to the Adobe $uite of products.
File Compression/Archive – 7-zip (Linux/Unix/Windows/Mac/BSD/etc)
Winzip is a famous favourite since their license allowed a free trial but you know it is not free. After the 45 day trial you are expected to pay for it or stop using it. If you want a great alternative look no further than 7-zip
Print to PDF – cups-pdf (Linux/Unix), PDFCreator (Windows)
Like it or not you need to be able to exchange documents in a form that will appear in a predictable manner to viewers who receive them. Fortunately, you have choices to do so in either Linux/Unix or Windows. OpenOffice.org will also generate PDF compatible documents as well.
With version 0.9.7, PDFCreator began installing a toolbar for your web browser so use caution during the install or stick to 0.9.6 if using XP.
View PDF – eVince (Linux), Sumatra PDF (Windows)
Email – Google Gmail (Web Based), Thunderbird (Linux/Unix, Windows, Mac)
Gmail has extremely flexible options, secure authentication (why do service providers allow unencrypted authentication any more?), huge storage limits, and great spam management. Thunderbird is a nice, extendible email client. Use Thunderbird to backup your messages from Gmail. My favourite add-on for Thunderbird is MoreColsForAddressBook which for me adds .vcf and vCard file management for contacts.
Sound and Video
VLC Media Player, seems to play (almost) everything for windows, mac, *nix.
Audacity, The Free, Cross-Platform Sound Editor. Linux users please don’t forget to install all the nice LADSPA effects and filters (caps, cmt, fil-plugins, invada-studio-plugins-ladspa, rev-plugins, swh-plugins, tap-plugins, calf-plugins). There is a 90 plugin LADSPA link in the download section for windows users.
MythTV, great personal video recorder (pvr) software. The way it is packaged in Mythbuntu saves a great deal of time.
EasyTAG, get that metadata organized in those audio files.
Audio Server
The super flexible Music Player Daemon (MPD), allows you to setup a server for playing/streaming audio files. Combine it with something like GMPC to control the server and provide a plethora of music streaming solutions on the home network. It is small and resource efficient and can be run on the most modest of power sipping hardware. There are web based clients, you can control it from a command prompt and I like to use Mpdroid to act as a remote control for the MPD server from my Android device over Wifi.
You can use MPD to stream audio from the Internet and then have multiple users connect to the MPD server on the LAN to listen to the stream. This would allow you to conserve the bandwidth on your Internet connection by preventing multiple external connections to the same stream.
IP Telephony
Twinkle, a software SIP phone for Linux. Also has some enhanced features for KDE users.
Asterisk/PBX in a Flash/trixbox, the open source PBX software in a convenient bundle.
Ekiga, a software SIP phone for *nix/gnome.
Zoiper Softphone (formally IDEFisk), a software SIP and IAX phone for windows, linux and mac.
Remote Connection, Management, File Transfer
the X Window System, the magic that makes much of it possible, by design.
OpenSSH, the backbone of a secure connection for so many different things.
Putty, allowing secure remote connections from Win32 to *nix.
gFTP, secure graphical file transfer for *nix.
WinSCP, secure graphical file transfer for win32 to *nix.
LTSP, terminal servers make efficient use of old machines.
Astronomy/Math/Science
Celestia (Windows, Linux, Mac), 3d space simulator.
Geogebra (Windows, Linux, Mac, etc), A free java math program.
Stellarium (Windows, Linux, Mac), planetarium software to help figure out what you are seeing when you look up there.
I don’t use these very often but I wonder how I may have been inspired if I had them when I was young.
Misc
ConvertAll, One program to convert them all (Windows, Linux, Mac).
gbrainy, “is a brain teaser game and trainer to have fun and to keep your brain trained” (Linux, Unix, Windows, Web).
Speedcrunch, “is a fast, high precision and powerful desktop calculator” (Windows, Linux, Mac).
