Best Buy Free Software

[Ammok]

I was just wondering about some of the software I use that I don't pay for.
Of course you can donate to the authors if you like the product,
I use
songbird instead of media player
Irfanview instead of Imageviewer
Firefox instead of IE
Thunderbird instead of Outlook
In addition, all these programs give me free functionality
Picasa
Audacity
Google Earth
Secunia
and best of all OpenOffice 3.0

I can personally recommend all these programs to you, since I use them myself.

Can you recommend any free software for other functions?

There is an anti virus, web, and quakelive thread already so i was thinking more applications type stuff.

Only software i pay for is the operating system and my games.

Got to be stable to be nominated.
Thx.

[jonbanjo]

Only software i pay for is the operating system and my games.

I don't pay for any, except I do have Vista Home Basic on my dual boot laptop. I do need to see web pages work on IE.

Trying to think of some other things I use that will run on Windows.

Apache, MySQL, php, Ghostscript, ImageMagick, the gimp, VLC media player.

[Kevster]

Portableapps.com is full of them - light and portable too! :D

[Ammok]

I tried VLC a few years ago but it kept crashing, maybe the bugs fixed now. I was looking more for your favourite app, then we know it works, a personal recommendation if you like.

[PMM]

VLC has changed quite a lot over the last few years lol never had an issue my self.

[Soup Dragon]

pedant corner

how can it be 'Best Buy Free Software' it is free so you don't need to buy!!!




(I know what you mean though;))

[Vic]

I tried VLC a few years ago but it kept crashing, maybe the bugs fixed now.

VLC works well on all the platforms I've tried it on.

It did go through a phase of being a little flakey at times a few years back - but that's ancient history.

Vic.

[Vic]

how can it be 'Best Buy Free Software' it is free so you don't need to buy!!!

There are two meanings for "free".

The first - and the one most people unused to Freee Software think of- if synonymous with "gratis". This is often called "free as in beer". It is software you get at no cost. This definition of "free" is largely irrelevant, TBH.

The other definition of "free" is the same as was used in some years ago when people wore T-shirts that said "free Nelson Mandela". They didn't mean he'd be given away in Corn Flakes boxes. This version of "free" - usually capitalised to Free - means you have rights over what you do with this software. This is also referred to as "free as in speech", and is the *important* part of Free Software. Whether it costs money or not just doesn't matter - when you *need* to retrieve some data from a 15-year old file format, the knowledge that you have the source code that produced that file *and* the right to pass it to any contractor you choose trumps any cash you might have paid when you first got this code.

Of course, most Free software is also free. Which is nice.

Vic.

[Vic]

Can you recommend any free software for other functions?

Yes. All the software I use personally is Free.

OS? Whitebox.
Office app? OpenOffice
Browser? Firefox or Seamonkey (Technically, IceWeasel and IceDove if I'm honest)
Connectivity? OpenSSH
VPN? OpenVPN
Sounds? Amarok
MTA? Sendmail
IMAP/POP server? Dovecot
Web server? Apache
Brain dump? MediaWiki
Accounting? phpbms

That's pretty much the things I use on a daily basis; there are loads of other tools I use for one-off customer apps & the like.


Only software i pay for is the operating system and my games.

I build my operating systems. But I'm like that[1]...

Vic.

[1] Flippancy aside, I do it so that others don't have to.

[jonbanjo]

I tried VLC a few years ago but it kept crashing, maybe the bugs fixed now. I was looking more for your favourite app, then we know it works, a personal recommendation if you like.

Everything I mentioned works for me.

I must admit I've not really used VLC for long and I don't know about old bugs but it has been fine for me.

Around Christmas, I was playing about with a Karaoke CD and getting the audio (ogg) and cdg files. I found VLC was the one player I already had on the system that will display the text in a window if I open an audio file which has a matching cdg.