Free Software
There are a number of very capable software products that are available as alternatives to their often non-free counterparts. We use and recommend a number of these products and have made a list of them available below:
- Antivirus
- CD / DVD Authoring
- Image Editing
- Operating Systems
- Password Security
- Productivity
- PDF Creation
- Web Browsers
- Misc. Utilities
Antivirus:
- Microsoft Security Essentials - This is a free antivirus / anti-malware product from Microsoft.
CD / DVD Authoring:
- Infrarecorder - This is a very good tool for creating CD's and DVD's
- ISORecorder
Image Editing:
- IrfanView
- XNView
Operating Systems
- Linux
- Ubuntu Linux
- CentOS Linux
Password Safe
- Keepass - This is a very good application that allows you to create an encrypted database of passwords that you store. The database is accessed via the KeePass application (which has versions available for several different platforms) and can be accessed locally, over a LAN or even over FTP.
- Lastpass - This is a web-based product that's similar to Keepass in that it keeps your passwords in an encrypted database. The big difference here though is that LastPass is web-based. LastPass also works from a number of devices / platforms.
PDF Creation:
- PDF Creator
Productivity:
- OpenOffice - With the exception of MS Outloook, OpenOffice is a drop-in replacement for MS Office. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation application and more.
Web Browser
- Firefox
- Google Chrome
- Opera
Misc. Utilities:
- Filezilla - Filezilla is a free FTP client *AND* FTP server (if you need both). Very solid, stable and easy to use. Also supports additional protocols (SFTP).
