Open Source Resources
If you're one of those people that has been following the Open Source movement over the years, you know that OpenSource software has reached level of sophistication that rivals most commercial offerings. These are all FREE and deserve to be checked out. Many of the programs have Mac and Windows installation packages.
We will be updating this page as time allows, so check back periodically as we relate new "discoveries".
- Operating Systems (like instead of MS-Windows and Mac OS X)
- Office Suites (replaces Lotus SmartSuite, and Microsoft Office)
- Graphics Programs (does most of what Adobe CS does)
- Website Authoring (does most of what Adobe DreamWeaver and GoLive does)
- Other Stuff (does most of what Adobe DreamWeaver and GoLive does)
Operating Systems
Free operating systems are based on BSD, Darwin, GNU, Linux and the relatively new OpenSolaris technologies. These are intended as a replacement for Mac OS X (interestingly enough based on BSD technologies) and Microsoft Windows.
Within each one of these distributions are many "flavors". For example, you there are over 30 distributions of Linux (called distros). You might have heard of RedHat, Mandrake, Mandriva, and the like; but our current favorite for ease of use and wide software/hardware support is Ubuntu. This free OS is good for beginners and geeks alike. You can even test drive it from a CD without installing it on your computer. If you do install it, it allows you to keep your existing Windows installation in a dual-boot environment.
Office Suites
Usually contains a Word Processor, a Spreadsheet, and a Presentation Program. Sometimes they also include a database progam. Right now the best of class in the free software arena is OpenOffice.
Graphics Programs
Litte known secret is that a good deal of graphics on the web was never designed using Adobe Photoshop, but GIMP. This is a deep, powerful raster-graphics editing program capable of doing at least 70% of what Adobe Photoshop does.
If you want simple graphics, then OpenOffice has a decent drawing program that comes as part of the suite.
If you want a dedicated vector-based drawing program that can output PostScript, then inkscape is a great choice. Again, does a lot of what Adobe Illustrator does and then some.
Website Authoring Programs
Planning a web site? Use a mindmapping tool. The simplest one I've used is a little Java app called Freemind. If you want a full coding/management environment try LEO.
If you want WYSIWYG editing capabilities then checkout NVU and it's patched spinoff KOMPOZER. We've taught a lot of clients how to update their own site using these two programs. The have almost all the functionality of Adobe Contribute and a lot of functionality of Adobe Dreamweaver.
Other "Stuff"
We're all about business and education, so we're not big into the game world. Below are some links for software we find interesting (coming soon)