SwRec
From nformation
Software Recommendations
Part of the challenge with computers is knowing what the best software to use. With all the options, how to know what is good and bad has become an art. Here's stuff that I use and recommend to others.
Contents |
Introduction
It seems worth saying a few words about Open Source and Free Software.
Open Source
Open Source software, is software which has its' code freely available to the public. This means that early versions of the software are often unstable or still in testing, and may have issues. Because of it's accessibility, over time bugs get fixed, and the software becomes more stable and more reliable. New projects can be built off of old projects, and there is a sort of ecosystem of open development. The more widely used Open Source software is, usually the more carefully audited it's code is. It takes time, but this allows for unprecedented levels of quality. These projects are also often good about taking feedback about new features and bugs.
Free Software
Open Source software is generally free, but Free Software isn't always open source. If the source isn't available, one should ask, why is this available for free? Sometimes it is a niche product made by a hobbiest for other hobbiests, and that's great. Sometimes it is sponsored by a big company or a non-profit. But other times it is a vehicle for profit in other ways. There is a lot of hazardous junk out there, so be careful. The information below is provided to help people who are less familiar sort the good from the bad.
Windows
The following is popular, mature projects that are known to work on 2000 and XP.
Web Browser
The World Wide Web has almost become synonymous with the Internet. Since most people interact through the web browser, the choice of browser is particularly important.
- http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/ - Mozilla's Firefox. This is a free, open source web browser, that supports plugins and includes many useful features. In particular I'm a big fan of the way I can easily resize most text. Firefox is a descendent of Netscape, which was one of the first web browsers. This is a very mature project, backed by a non-profit corporation that gets much of their money from Google.
Internet Explorer is still probably the most common web browser, why should you use something else? Here are a few reasons:
- Internet Explorer is free, but not open source - so you don't know what it's doing, it is not audited by the public or community, so you don't know that it's really getting better with every version.
- Since it is so popular and closed, it is a popular target for attacks and scams.
- Microsoft have their own way of doing things. The browser does not, and has not closely conform to the standards for Web Pages by the "World Wide Web Consortium" aka W3C. It's a big world, and if we're going to get along and share information, standards make a big difference.
Mail Client
Another interface to the world is email. Having a good email client makes a big difference.
- http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ - Thunderbird is a mail client which is available for Macs, Windows, and Unix systems. It is open source, and has been a part of the Mozilla foundation who maintain the aforementioned Firefox Web Browser. It is a descendent of Netscape's mail system, and still bears a lot of resemblance. It takes care of most of what people need in terms of mail and newsgroup reading. It will do RSS feeds, and has an integrated addressbook.
Since Outlook is what comes with many people's computers, that's very common to use. There are a number of problems with it.
- It's from Microsoft, and they have their own way of doing many things, which they prefer.
- Since so many people use it, it is a target for attacks. Since it is closed-source the public can't audit the code to make sure that it gets more secure with each version.
- There are different versions of Outlook, all with their own quirks. Since it is free and multi-platform, you can always run the current Thunderbird, and you can use it on just about any computer.
Office
A big part of productivity and computers is the Office Suite. Things like a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing programs, etc. are core parts of what many people do with computers. They're indespensible for many people's livelihoods.
- http://openoffice.org - Open Office Org. This is a free, open source, office suite. Contains just about everything you need to do presentations, charts, word processing, spreadsheets, etc, and it's free. It is maintained largely by Sun Microsystems, who have been around for many years.
Why should you use Open Office Org instead of Microsoft Office.
- Microsoft office is premium pay software.
- It is closed source, so you don't know what it's doing, or that it's getting more secure and supporting more options.
- With software changing, you don't know for sure that your new-fangled documents will be readable in 10 years, or if you don't have the right version of Office. Many people have been stung by this with their old Works documents.
Media Players
There are various ways of playing media on computers. The most common ones are Windows Media Player and iTunes. Alas these are generally proprietary software which has the aforementioned detractors. iTunes in particular installs drivers which you may not need and that are hard to disable. Both of these "phone home" when you try to play some media. This means that you might lose your media if there is a problem with the license or internet connection.
If you'd like something you know is going to work now and in the future, there are some good options.
- http://winamp.com - WinAmp media player. It may be pwned by AOL, but it's smaller and lighter by far than iTunes, and it comes with the MilkDrop visualization plugin. This is what I recommend for playing music.
- http://videolan.org - VLC Media Player - great open source media player. It can play all sorts of unusual stuff and also knows how to perform some unusual tricks, like transcoding. This is what I recommend for playing video and talks (audio).
- http://www.codecguide.com/download_qt.htm - QuickTime Alternative - Tired of the bloat of quicktime / iTunes pwning your computer? Here's an option... You may also be able to find the equivalent for Windows Media Player, which is byzantine, but much more respectful.
Terminal / SSH
Some people use terminal programs to connect to other computers. This used to often be telnet, but over the years people have switched to secure protocols like ssh.
- http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ - Putty - a great light-weight open source ssh client. It also behaves like an xterm, and can do port forwarding. Humble program, many features.
Anti Virus / Spyware / Malware
Many people know that there are dangerous programs out there. It is common for people to have software to protect them. Alas, this software isn't always that helpful, and can make the user-experience even worse.
It is very important to note that in order to install new anti-virus software, you need to uninstall old anti-virus software. If your computer came with a free trial of something (Norton or McAfee) it must go! Having more than one program installed at the same time can make even the fastest machine grind painfully like an XT.
- http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390/us/frt/0 - Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware are great and free. They must be downloaded and installed separately. Or you could go for their pay stuff, which does it all.
File Transfer
- http://winscp.net/eng/index.php - WinSCP - Windows Secure CoPy program. Free, Open Source. Works with old FTP style transfers as well as newer ssh protocols (scp / sftp) to move files around. Has the option of looking like the windows file browser.
Firewall
The internet has become something of a hostile place. With things like infected computers scouring the net looking for targets to attack, it is handy to have some software to block out traffic from the most likely sources of threats.
- http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/ - PeerGuardian - maintains lists of hosts that you might not want to talk to, and blocks traffic from them.
Web
With advances in web-browsers and the internet in general, Web servers have become an application platform of their own. There is a lot of great popular open source software that empowers people.
The software mentioned below is all for the AMP platform. AMP = Apache + PHP + MySQL. Everything is Open Source.
Blog
Blog or "weB log". The application of these ranges from personal journals, to news sites. Generally it is a single stream (or feed) of posts dated, sometimes with other meta information.
- http://wordpress.org/ - great free, easy to use, modular, rss, configurable, blog software.
Content Management Systems
Content Management Systems are a lot like blogs, but more complicated. These are more like news sites. In fact more and more news sites use CMS software, just like the ones here.
- http://drupal.org/ - Drupal - Modular. Has community, has momentum. - Used by the Seattle Times, as well as other notable institutions.
- http://joomla.org/ - Joomla - used to be Mambo. Simpler system, not as much community or momentum.
Wiki
Wiki is said to stand for "What I Know Is". They are collaborative documents, that (registered) users can update and refine. The most widely seen example of this is http://wikipedia.org/ - Wikipedia the free Encyclopedia.
- http://mediawiki.org/ - MediaWiki - is Wikipedia's wiki engine. It may be a bit much for some tasks, but many people are familiar with it.
Store
There is also open source software for online stores / ecommerce.
- http://zencart.com/ - Zen Cart - forked from OsCommerce. Modular. Store software. Has stuff for order and inventory tracking, as well as shipping, and payment processing. Yippee!