Free and Open Source Software

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Free Software Howto

Free software plays an important role in my life. In my daily life I use mostly open source/free software. This website is hosted using Apache (open source) and the site is scripted in PHP. I have been using Openoffice at home for quite a while now instead of MSOffice and I think it is every bit as good. Even at work, I use mySQL (free database) for various projects, one of which already has over 3 million records.

On this page, I'll tell where and what free stuff to get to do almost everything that you normally do on your computer. No philosophy about open source here, just a plain simple get it for yourself guide. To get your hands on free stuff you need a geek friend with a CD Burner or a broadband internet connection or just somewhere where you can download stuff and copy it to a CD.

Office

To replace Word, Powerpoint and Excel there exists Openoffice.org, which does most of the work that office does. Best of all its completely free.

Here is a free PDF creator (print driver) and here is a free PDF viewer and creator.

Security

You can get a free firewall from www.zonelabs.com. If you want the pro version, here is $10 off - Download ZoneAlarm Pro and Save $10

A free antivirus is available at

Browsers, Email etc.

Mozilla - Tired of popups and scared of IE security? And don't want the dozen IE windows in the taskbar. Get Mozilla, a completely free and more standards compliant browser. Netscape is based on Mozilla. Personally my favorite browser is Opera - it's not free but they do have a free ad supported version. Mozilla also has an excellent email client with in-built spam filters. So does Opera. However their email client M2 is just different, revolutionary in their words, but a bit confusing to start with.

Also you are less likely to be affected by email viruses if you switch from IE to one of these.

Image Editing

If you just wan't to view, convert resize images and do simple operations, the most recommended free software is Irfanview. However for more advanced image editing, manipulation and drawing, get gimp, which is open source.

There is also an open source vector graphics package called Sodipodi.

Multimedia

Have a computer with a DVD Drive but no DVD playing software? Check out VLC, an open source media player that plays a lot of different kind of audio/video files including DVDs. Don't like Media Player?? Check out Winamp.

Misc. Tools

VNC = Virtual Network Computing is an open source remote desktop tool with which you can view the desktop of another computer on your computer. With the latest version of TightVNC you can even transfer files among computers. I use this almost everyday to manage 3-4 computers at work.

Other Interesting Open Source Projects

Compiere is an open source ERP/CRM package for small to medium sized businesses.

phpmyAdmin is an excellent database administration tool for mySQL. I used to use SQLYog (not linked because it is no longer free) but now I use phpmyadmin. This demonstrates another advantage of Open Source. It can't become non-free.

Microsoft's first Open Source Project - wiX (Windows Installer XML)

At MARC, we are evaluating OpenEMR, an open source EMR project for possible expansion/adaptation to integrate with our smarthouse technologies.

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