One thing that people tend to forget is that open source isn't just about Linux. Apple uses open source stuff in it's products - like it's kernel & web browser for instance - and even MSFT has released a couple of things as open source (and I'm not talking about their b.s. "shared source" license, which doesn't even deserve consideration). In addition, there's actually a lot of great open source software that runs on Windows. When I use XP, for instance, I don't use IE; I use Firefox. I don't use Outlook or Outlook Express; I use Thunderbird. I don't use Office; I use OpenOffice.org.
Here are some other great open source apps I use on Windows:
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Audacity for sound editing
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WinSCP for secure file transfers
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GIMP for image editing
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Gaim for instant messaging
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X-Chat 2 for IRC
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VideoLAN for video playback (plays DVDs too!)
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nmap for port scanning
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Ethereal for packet sniffing (my {deity}, I love this program!)
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PDFCreator to print any program’s files to PDF
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TightVNC for remote control of other systems (& remote control of my Windows box)
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GnuPG for encryption
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Cygwin for a real Linux command line inside Windows
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Rename-It! for batch renaming of files (love this program!)
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WinDirStat for finding out what’s eating up all my hard drive space
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Azureus for BitTorrent downloads
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eMule for Peer2Peer file sharing
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7-Zip for archiving & unarchiving files
Whew! And that’s just a start! But it’s true - I use all of those programs regularly, and they’re all fantastic. And best of all, they haven’t cost me a penny (although I have voluntarily donated to several projects, and you should too).
For more great suggestions on open source software for Windows, see “The OSSwin project: Open Source for Windows!” I guarantee you’ll find lots of things there that you’ll just love.
And what about you? What are your favorite open source apps for Windows? Leave us a comment & let us all know!
(Check out all my postings on Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Gaim, VNC, & Azureus.)
41. Just to mention an alternative to using OpenOffice is using Abiword for wordprocessing and Gnumeric for spreadsheet work. Gnumeric in particular has a great reputation as the spreadsheet the experts use. It used to be only Linux but just recently has been ported to Win32. Both of these apps are significantly more responsive than the corresponding OpenOffice apps. Of course there is more to OpenOffice than wp and spreadsheets but these cover the big two.
Abiword:
http://www.abisource.com
Gnumeric:
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric
Posted at 6:34AM on Dec 19th 2005 by hazchem