www.thefreecountry.com

Because free is very awesome.

There are a lot of open-source/freeware software out there that can almost, if not, replace commercial products. I personally use open source/freeware software for most of the applications I need.

Gimp > Image Editor > Photoshop
Infrarecorder > Media Creation > Nero
Inkscape > Vector Graphic Editor > Illustrator
Foxit > PDF Viewer > Adobe Reader
AutoMKV > Video Encoder > TMPGenc*
Audacity > Audio Editor > Goldwave*
CutePDF > PDF Printer > Adobe PDF Maker
7Zip > File/Folder Compression > WinZip, WinRar

Are any of the aforementioned programs superior to their commercial counterparts? Well, I'd have to say the Foxit (small, no bloat), Infrarecorder (small, no bloat, portable), and 7Zip (small, no bloat, many compression types supported) are. Photoshop, Illustrator, Goldwave, TMPGenc are clearly superior, but their open-source counterparts are usually more that adequate for most users needs. http://www.thefreecountry.com/ contains a treasure trove of open-source/free software. I highly recommend it.

later

*these are very good programs and would recommend their purchase if the need arises.

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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?

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