Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Tools and Benchmarking addition

The second set of links below the "Free/Open Source" software is pretty much my day to day toolbox. The best part is that all of it is Free/Open Source programs. I'll be adding more and/or revising as time goes on.

The Free/Open Source scene has matured leaps and bounds in the past few years. What used to be alpha-at-best-software is now practically commercial quality, without the bloat. I remember in early 2k looking for software and downloading crappy shareware after crappy shareware for audio/video solutions. With Audacity you have a lot of your day to day audio needs met. I used to use Nero religiously but now infraRecorder and when I can't use it, I use CDBurnerXP Pro for the simple fact that both programs have a small footprint and exactly what I need. InfraRecorder doesn't even need to be installed. You can download the .zip package, extract the contents and run it. Pure sweetness.

When people (clients?) ask me for quotes on systems, I know I can keep there cost low when you don't need to add pricing for a lot of commercial bloatware. If the person feels comfortable, a decent linux (ubuntu) distro runs approximately $0. But most stick to windows as it's the more popular, less intimidating, and has the biggest software library available at the moment. And no, I don't want the comments to degenerate to a LinuX PWNS ALL flamewar... yes Andrew, I'm looking in your direction. haha. Linux has a big place at the table (a big chunk of the Free/OpenSource software listed was produced first on the linux platform) and is very important to software and intelletual development. But for the time being, windows is the dominating OS out there. OSX, you say? PIPE DREAM... just kidding... or am I... or am I?

9 Comments:

Unknown said...

I don't think I have ever once claimed that Linux is better, I just like to discuss open source stuff with you and Spencer to get your thoughts.

Like I said on Sunday, I mainly encourage you to try out linux because then I know you will root around more than me and figure stuff out quicker and then I can get info from you. But it doesn't matter, I love google, and I can find everything I need there, pretty much.

On a side-note, how do you feel about Spencer ganking your name for his email?

Alex Cottle said...

I AM THE SECRET NINJA... maybe i kept it a secret too long/good? ha ha.

the coltons said...

i completely concur about him STEALING your name. alex, you are thesecretninja :) haha.

Unknown said...

the name stealing just doesn't make sense, rellify is so unique, why not use that?

Alex Cottle said...

"stay on target" -porkins.

Johanna said...

I'd like to point out that I said the same thing to Spencer. He came up with a lame excuse that it's the name of a song. Whatever. They do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I do think Spencer wants to be you when he grows up!

Alex Cottle said...

heaven help us.

Alex Cottle said...

to be fair it is the name of a song... but to be correct, I have been using it since i started playing battlefield 1942, back in 2004.

ah to be 13 again.

Unknown said...

obviously it is a song name, but if he was just looking for a good song name, why not "key lime pie", high school football hero", "He Who Laughs Last...", or even more appropriate, "Kung-Fu Devil". I could go on, but......