Introduction

This page originated when I graduated from University. A lot of the software on my computer was … well, not exactly above board. I wanted to investigate alternatives, but I didn’t want to have to pay too much. This is when I started getting into Open-Source software! As I got into it, I realised it’s not just the price I agree with — in fact, to be honest, it’s not necessarily about that – it’s the philosophy. But you can read about that elsewhere.

In the first version of this page, I was still using Windows XP Professional. Since August 2005, I’ve been using Linux, so I’ve decided to re-write this page and update it with everything I’ve come across since then! That could be a tall order, but still…

Help Out: If you have any software you have tried and recommend and would like me to add it to this page, drop me a line and I will be more than happy to try it out!

Contents

  1. Operating Systems
  2. Office Suite
  3. Web and e-mail
  4. Media Players
  5. Utilities

Operating Systems

Ok, there will probably be people who disagree with me here, but I’ll say it straight out: unless you’re a techy type, you probably won’t want to use Linux. Although I think some distributions have done a fantastic job (I haven’t tried them all, but I’ve read about some of them) in trying to make it easier to install and configure, Linux still isn’t quite there yet. For example, getting my wireless card to work with Linux was a bit of a convoluted process which I wouldn’t expect someone who didn’t know much about computers to do. I’m not saying I’m an expert by any means, but I know enough about the command line to get around.

The reason I decided to make the migration to Linux fully was because we started using it at work, and I managed to build up my level of expertise on it there without actually having to use it at home. I’d also had Linux on my old computer at home for a while, and I’ve experimented with dual-boot before.

Anyway, if you do decide you want to use Linux (and there are websites out there that will help you choose far better than this one), here are some good places to go to get you started:

  • Ubuntu Linux (this is what I use at home, it’s very good for beginners and detected my wireless card first time round!)
  • Fedora Core (this is what I used to use at home, it’s a good distro with lots of community support)
  • Gentoo Linux (I use this on my older machine – more techy than Fedora Core but very customisable)
  • Getting Started with Linux

Office Suite

I currently use Open Office. All I can say is that I have found it to be a perfectly usable and up to all the tasks I have asked it to perform! It reads and writes Microsoft Office documents, so you’re not going to lose out with compatibility. It contains an editor for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, web pages and images (or at least, my installation does). Incidentally, if you haven’t used OpenOffice since version 1.0, then have a look at 2.0: it’s a bit improvement!

It’s definitely worth checking out…find out more:


Text-based editor

Those of you who do any programming or web design in HTML / ASP / PHP will know what I’m talking about. Something to mess about with text in. Now, I’ve been using this piece of software so long that I can’t even remember what proprietary software I used to use! That just proves how good it is.

It’s jEdit. I have to say, this is probably the best open-source editor I’ve used (not that I’ve used many, but still…). I’ve used it to edit Java, PHP, ASP, HTML, CSS and SQL — it contains support for the highlighting of these by default :-) As well as many other languages. DEFINITELY worth downloading (it’s written in Java so you will need the Java software from Javasoft first).

If you’re using Windows, another alternative is Notepad++. This is a free, open-source text editor which is well worth checking out.


Web and e-mail

I have to say, what sparked off this open-source campaign was Internet Explorer: I got absolutely fed up with the amount of adware / spyware / etc that it got infected with. It seems like every piece of malware is designed for Internet Explorer, because it’s so popular! There are disadvantages to being the world’s most popular browser, especially when it contains security flaws.

One piece of software I’d used before on Linux, which was the Mozilla browser. I checked it out, and found that there was a browser called Firefox. Interesting name (due to legal difficulties they had to change it first from ‘Phoenix’ and then ‘Firebird’), but it’s certainly a lot better than IE! I use it as my main browser now. Here’s a tip: if you download it, get the “All-in-one Gestures” extension. You’ll never look back! Also have a look at the other extensions – NoScript and Adblock are two very popular (and recommended!) ones, and there are plenty of others.

As for e-mail, Mozilla also do a product called Thunderbird. Previously, I’d used Microsoft Outlook for email. Again, Thunderbird seems to perform as well or even better than Outlook. Although it’s only an email client (i.e. doesn’t include scheduling stuff which Outlook does), it performs its task well. Definitely worth the download!


Media Players

There are several good freeware media players available for Linux and Windows. To be honest, there are too many to go into in any great detail. I’ve found the one which was the least hassle to install and use has been Xine. One thing you realise about Linux when you migrate to it is that a lot of the things you take for granted (such as DVD players) are a bit tricky to install, they don’t always work. (Actually that could just be me, but still). And, they don’t always have menu support… Xine has menu support, and seems to be pretty flexible. It plays back my DivX movies / episodes of Family Guy, and hasn’t crashed yet!

There are a couple of other alternatives. I tried VLC Media Player, although I couldn’t get it to work with Fedora Core 4 (probably because FC4 was fairly new at that time, so a decent build hadn’t been put up for it. It should work now). I used mplayer for a while as well which was pretty good, although it didn’t have DVD menu support and would crash on some DVDs (probably because of the lack of menu support). Also, it doesn’t come with a GUI (if you’re installing using yum, you need to install mplayer and then mplayer-gui).

If you’re looking for a straight music player, I recommend Audacious. It’s basically a Linux version of WinAmp classic – and it’s done well, it serves my music playing needs without getting in the way (i.e. with big, over-blown dialog boxes and the like!).