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Free Software
Why does free software exist?
Because there are some good guys out there, some professional developers produce software in their spare time and other larger companies provide an open source version of their paid-for software for public use.
What is open source software?
Open source software is all about the software licence agreement. Taking a simplistic view, the software produced by a company is provided to the public for free, in the public domain under an open source licence and usually with no support. The company makes money charging for professional support for the open source product and for software sales and support for the companies own more advanced version of the same software product. Active developer communities through user forums take the open source product, use, develop and improve the software. As part of the licence agreement, the community feed the open source development work back into the public domain, which is then available to the company. Hence the product gets bigger and better using the free services of potentially 1000s of programmers from all over the world.
Other free software
So we have covered open source software, other free ‘closed source’ software exists because some people just like developing software, they found it useful so they give it away. Some give away a free limited version of their software looking for to to pay for an upgrade to the latest software version. Closed source is pretty much the opposite of open source in the sense that the code that makes a closed source software product work is only available to the developer.
Operating System Software
Operating system software is the software that makes your machine work. For example Microsoft Windows usually comes bundled on a new machine, if you haven’t got Windows you can buy it separately and install it yourself, its not free. Not to forget Apple Macs, they come bundled with the Mac OS X operating system, a derivative of the Unix computer operating system.
Free Operating System Software
There are free graphical operating system distributions such as Linux and FreeBSD, they look very similar to MS Windows, some Linux distributions tend to be a bit technical but certainly not too technical. Both Linux and FreeBSD are also based on Unix, an extremely well established operating system.
A few of the major Linux distributions are as follows:
Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, Mandriva, Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, Slackware, Gentoo Linux, CentOS
These are all free operating systems, each Linux distribution has its own pros and cons. They work on most modern machines, sometimes better on slightly older hardware due to slow driver releases for newer hardware. My best experience has come with Ubuntu, again sometimes better installed on slightly older hardware. You can load Ubuntu as you can with all the Linux distributions in parallel with Microsoft Windows on the same machine to try Linux out. In fact to go one better than that you can run some Linux distributions directly from a CD or DVD without any installation at all. It runs a little slower because its reading from your CD and not your hard disk but it gives you a good idea of what a Linux machine can do for you, it checks that your hardware runs correctly with the Linux distribution you have chosen, with no risk of damaging your Windows installation.
Free Application Software
Application software is what makes your computer useful, software such as web browsers, email clients and office productivity suites. The good news is that the Linux and BSD operating systems come with 1000s of totally free applications. For Windows and Mac users there are also a number of good quality ‘free to use’ open and closed source software.
I have broken these down into logical areas and have only concentrated on Microsoft Windows compatible software for this article, in real terms this covers most of us.
Web Browsers
Internet Explorer is the most popular because it came bundled with Microsoft Windows. To ensure that computer users are given a choice of web browser an EU anti competition law has forced Microsoft to make Internet Explorer an optional choice with Windows 7 and not the default web browser.
The major web browsers are:
Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
Web Applications
Straying slightly onto a new topic but following on from the web browser is using desktop style applications on the web through just a web browser. You can use web applications through a web browser from any Internet connected computer. One of the best examples of this has to be Google.
Google Mail
Google Docs – Word-processing, Presentation, Spreadsheet
Google Calendar
Google Reader (RSS Reader)
Google Photos (Picasa)
Just a sample of the on-line applications you can use with Google. On-line applications are popping up daily as the computing trend known as cloud computing gathers pace. Anyone old enough to remember computing from yester-year will chuckle at the irony that we have moved full circle to centralised applications and storage, but now on a massive scale.
Desktop Applications
Where to start? This is really just the tip of the iceberg, the following list of desktop applications are all free, as in no purchase required and nearly all of the products are from open source source projects. The Anti-virus and Spyware detection software is closed source software, with reduced functionality to entice you to purchase the full product, they should give you basic cover.
Email Clients
Mozilla Thunderbird
Opera email (part of the Opera web browser)
Pegasus Mail
Windows Mail (part of MS Windows)
Office Suites
Open Office.org (Sun Microsystems Sponsored)
Lotus Symphony (IBM Sponsored)
Music Players
Winamp
Windows Media Player (part of MS Windows)
VLC Media Player
Graphics
Gimp (Photoshop competitor)
IrfanView (Image viewer and editor)
Inkscape (Vector graphics package)
Paint.net
Desktop Publishing
Scribus
Telephony
Skype (Free PC to PC calls)
Yahoo Voice (Free PC to PC calls)
Google Mail (Free Voice and Video chat between Gmail users)
Anti-Virus
AVG Free edition
Avast Anti-virus Home edition
PC Tools Anti-virus Free Edition
Spyware Detection
Windows defender (Downloadable from Microsoft)
Ad-Aware Free
Software Firewalls
Windows Firewall (Part of Windows XP and above)
ZoneAlarm
Comodo (Combined Firewall and Anti-virus)
Utilities
7-zip (File compression)
KeePass (Password manager)
CDBurnerXP (CD/DVD Burner)
Conclusion
We have quickly covered a lot of ground here, the important thing to note is that software doesn’t have to cost a fortune, it can cost nothing. Occasionally some of the free software isn’t quite as polished as the paid for equivalent, but many a time you couldn’t tell the difference side by side. The software community behind a project always moves to fix and improve on its product. From large open source development projects with 100s of contributors and major corporate backing to programs written by a single individual these guys are all working to provide free software.
So if you’re at home not doing any ‘mission critical’ type work with your PC, ask yourself why are you thinking of paying €100s for software when you could do an Internet search for a few of the names noted above and discover what else is free.
This article is also available on Limousin Life Magazine