My free software list

Folks,

I was familiar using illegal program (who wasn't?), and never feel guilty.

(In my opinion, it is quite ridiculous to make a high-school term report with 10,000 THB Microsoft Office)

But then I graduate in computer science, and found that the real software development need a lot of efforts, man works, etc. I kind of guilty a little bit to use those illegal software in any of my productions. However, I did still feel OK to use piracy software for educational purposes. For example, using illegal Microsoft Words or Windows to make some silly term report.

But when you do something serious, like publishing a paper, develop a commercial web site, etc., piracy couldn't be an option as you can be easily caught for using illegal software in profitable productions. (Even you didn't get caught, it's such a cheating to produce profitable works with illegal softwares).

Most commercial softwares always come with high prices. As a reference, Microsoft was selling Windows XP Professional Edition at $299 (see link). Just for you information, Windows Vista Ultimate Edition was amazingly sold at $259.95 (see link).

OS alone could cost us so expensive T_T. Obviously, it would be more expensive when Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Macromedia Dreamweaver, etc., were included.

The way out for the low software budget people like me is obviously "the free software".

NOTE: In this article, a free software is a software that can be commercially used for free. 

Most of the major free software projects have ports to Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. You might use one of them as your OS. Linux could cost $0. Following by Mac OS X (latest version - Leopard), it cost only $129. As mentioned earlier, Windows Vista cost $259.95.

If you want the lowest cost, I would potentially suggest Linux (I prefer Fedora Core 7).

But if you are considering between Mac and Windows, I would strongly encourage Mac OS X. This is because it is Unix-based OS, i.e. closer to Linux than Windows is. Moreover, after I had experiences on both OS, I love OS X more and unbelievably it cost me less (supposed you use all legal softwares).

OK, no more ads for Mac (they should give me some credit :p). Back to the topic, free software.

This is a list of free software I currently used on my Mac OS X (Tiger).

1. Adium (Mac only) : the instant messaging app implemented a bunch of protocols, including MSN, AOL, Google, etc. (see www.adiumx.com)

2.  Azureus : The Java-based bit-torrent client (azureus.sourceforge.net)

3. Eclipse : The Java IDE (can also be applied to many languages with its extension), see www.eclipse.org

4. Flip4Mac (Mac only) : The WMV quick time component (to decode WMV media file), see www.flip4mac.com

5. FreeMind : The Java-based mind-map software (freemind.sourceforge.net)

6. Gimp : The GNU image processing program (photoshop-like), see www.gimp.org

7. Google SketchUp : The 3-D model sketch tool from Google, see sketchup.google.com

8. Inkscape : The vector image editor (an Illustrator substitution), see www.inkscape.org

9. Journler (OS X only) : I took notes with this program. It can also sync with some blogs, see journler.com

10. LiquidCD (OS X only) : The CD/DVD burner, see maconnect.ch

11. LyX : The WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean) word processor. We can say LyX is a easier and more user-friendly version of TeX -- the typesetting system created by Donald Knuth. I now use this software to write my term report. It's ability to manage cross-reference, citation and style is great. Comparing to Microsoft Word, this guy might not be as user-friendly as MS Word, but its cross-reference managing capability is way more efficient than that in MS Word. For more info, see www.lyx.org

12. OpenOffice (or NeoOffice for an OS X port) : The office suite program. I substitute this guy for MS Office. ref: www.openoffice.org

13. Skim (OS X only) : The document reader with taking notes (also including highlights, underline, etc.) capability. See skim-app.sourceforge.net

14. VLC : The all-in-one media player. This program support almost all media files. See www.videolan.org for more info.

Some of this guys might require X window system. For OS X, the X11 can be found on the installation CD, or for the most updated, please search in www.apple.com/downloads. For MS Windows, please visit x.cygwin.com for the instruction to setup a Cygwin/X (a port of X window system for MS Windows).

Wish you all have fun with the free software I listed here :)

Regards,

Fug U Man.