Software piracy is a crime and many of us don’t realize it and use pirated software in our office and home. Whatever may be our reasons, by installing pirated software we’re committing a crime according to the law. Another issue with pirated software is security. All those crack sites and crack files may have some kind of viruses or trojans in it and you may never know whether your personal data is compromised.
Does this really mean we need to buy expensive software and make those software companies more richer with our hard earned money? Not at all. We can really do most of our work without buying any expensive software or worrying about software piracy. All you need to do is explore the web and find alternative software which are free or open source. In this article I will try to list out free or open source software for most of your needs.
The simplest solution
The most simple solution is to install a GNU Linux operating system like Ubuntu in your computer. The advantage is, you’ll get all the applications for your normal office or home usage and you’ll never need to worry about piracy. If you’re not comfortable with installing operating systems, you can ask your local hardware dealer when you buy a computer or ask your friends or relatives to install it for you.
If you’ve already installed a GNU Linux OS, you can safely skip the rest of the article. But, if you plan to buy Microsoft Windows OS or already installed one with a valid license (if you buy a branded PC or laptop, most probably you will) please read on.
Office Applications
LibreOffice
Libre Office is an open source office suite based on OpenOffice but unlike OpenOffice, LibreOffice is purely community based. It is a very powerful alternative to Microsoft Office and is compatible with Microsoft Office file formats and can even create PDF documents without installing any additional software.
Other options: OpenOffice
Email clients
Thunderbird and Zimbra Desktop are excellent open source alternatives to Microsoft Outlook. Zimbra Collaboration Server can even power email servers of small to medium level business organizations.
Archiving / Backup
IZArc is an excellent tool which can handle almost all compression formats like zip, rar, 7zip etc. It can also password protect your archive files.
Diagram / Flowchart
Dia is an excellent application for creating most type of diagrams or flowcharts.
Blogging
If you’re into blogging, Windows Live Writer is an excellent offline blog editor which can integrate with almost all blogging platforms. You may tryout the LiveWriter tips and tricks.
Multimedia
VLC Player
VLC Player is the Swiss army knife of media files and comes with tons of features
Other options: KMPlayer, Mplayer (for excellent subtitle support)
Video editors
Windows movie maker is a good and and easy to use tool for editing your video clips.
VirtualDub is a simple video trimming and editing is tool.
Video Encoders
Handbrake is an excellent and easy to use encoder for most of your encoding needs.
Audio editors
Audacity is a more than adequate tool for audio editing and creation.
Media center
XBMC – XBox Media Center is a very powerful software which can make your PC a complete MediaCenter.
Image management
Google Picasa
Picasa is a very good image manager from Google. It features basic editing features and integrates with Picnik online editor if you want more powerful editing functionality. The face recognition and tagging feature is the best.
IrfanView
IrfanView can handle most of the image formats and even videos. Available as a small download. It can also do many powerful batch conversions.
GIMP
If you want Photoshop like editing features, GIMP is an excellent software. Though the interface is not the easiest, it is very powerful and can do most of your editing needs.
Other option: Photoscape
3D Animation
Blender – Though it is not in the same level as other professional 3D tools, it is a powerful software and there are many short 3D animation movies made with it.
You may also try Google SketchUp
Programming / IDEs
Eclipse
You can find an Eclipse plugin for almost any programming language and hence a very useful alternative to commercial software.
Netbeans
If you’re a Java developer NetBeans is the best IDE you can get.
Aptana
If you’re a web developer (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP etc) Aptana is even better than many commercially available IDEs.
Security
Antivirus
AVG Antivirus is a very good free antivirus application. You may also consider Avast and Avira antivirus
Firewall
Comodo firewall is an advanced yet free firewall with tons of features.
Spyware detection
Spybot Search & Destroy (Spybot S & D) is a great spyware detection and prevention tool.
Encryption
Truecrypt is the best open source software to protect all your personal data from prying eyes by dynamically encrypting a complete partition, file or thumb drive.
Games
Though not excellent as commercial games, there are many free interesting games including some open source 3D games. You can also play a lot of flash based games and try many of the game demos where you can play at least a certain level.
Flash games
http://www.flash-game.net/
www.miniclip.com/
http://www.freegames4all.net/
Open source games
More open source games
Other free games
How to find free applications for your needs?
Though the above list has all the applications required for a normal user, sometimes you might need to replace a specific application. In that case you may find the following sites helpful.
Alternativeto.net
In this site you can find alternatives for your application by searching the application name. It has a freeware / open source filter so that you can find free alternative software easily.
Softpedia
Try to find a free software in world’s largest database of software applications
cNet Downloads
Another excellent database of applications
Try googling. Someone, somewhere might have already solved your problems. You might want to check the Google & Bing search engine tricks for searching efficiently in Google or Bing.
I hope I’ve discussed about most of the applications required for normal use. If you have any query please feel free to post in the comments section. I would be glad if I can be of any help.
