Open Source Software List; Part 1: Essential Software for everyone

Glad you came here to read more about open source. In case you haven’t read "Why you should use Open Source Software" yet, maybe you should check out that one first.

This is a series of 5 articles, in this series you will find many Open Source Software and few Free but not Open Source software, which are good to have for better creativity, productivity, communication, media management, and more. No software here is a trial, all are fully functional and forever free, though few software may have a premium version which are not free. Some of those software are very good alternatives to some well-known industry standard Proprietary and Paid Software, some are so good in their work that there is not even a paid software like them, they are the industry standard.

Although the title does not give a clue of it, there is a few software which are not Open Source but are free. There are some domains, where I feel Open Source software couldn’t make up to the mark and some non-Open Source Software are doing great. Those names have been mentioned in the list, to make the list well rounded.

People often render a lot on the internet, searching for the software, for their specific uses, but they couldn’t find one or find something out of their budget.

So, the objective of this series is to let you know about some of the best Open Source and Free software, so that you can find at least a few software, as per your area of interest, which are very useful and in your budget as well.

You are reading the first article in this series, which is

Open Source Software List; Part 1: Essential Software for everyone

This is an introduction to some of Open Source and Free Software which are must have for every PC user. These are used very frequently so you may want to keep them always installed on your machine.

Well, this list probably does not contain many surprises for computer nerds, you may have already used or at least have come across many software in the list before, yet this may help many other people. Or you may use the list as a  guide, so whenever you build a new machine or when you have to use a machine where these are not installed already so that you don’t have to remember (I surely can’t) all the software.

Whenever you need to install multiple apps you don’t really want to download and install manually all the apps one by one, responding to every pop ups like selecting what else you want to install, or where you want to install, accepting their terms and conditions; this can be a boring and tedious process. So, I suggest you install multiple apps from www.Ninite.Com. There you will find all most all the essential software. Just select the apps to be installed, and hit the install button. It will install all the selected apps one by one without even downloading the .exe files. It will even select the necessary options, accept the license for you.

Let’s have look at what is there in this

a. Internet and Communication:

Browser: 

The first thing I want to do when I get a computer with internet connection is to browse the net. So browsers get the first position in this Open Source and Free Software List.

Firefox: Firefox used to be world’s most favourite browser because it is highly customizable, strong on security, privacy and performance, and feature-rich Open Source Web Browser. With tonnes of good plugins or add-ons, Firefox Browser can be infinitely expanded, which can make it very useful to you and customised as you need.

Get Mozilla Firefox browser. [Windows, Linux, Mac OS X]

Get Addons.

Chrome: Chrome, by Google, has a better interface, is simple to use and probably the fastest browser. After adding some cool features (which it didn’t use to have for years) it has become world’s most popular browser. If you use Google’s products it is highly recommended to use Google Chrome. And now many useful extensions (Similar to plugins in Firefox) are available, use of which makes the experience even better.

The main disadvantage of Chrome is it engages a huge amount of RAM, if you do lots of browsing, open many tabs in multiple windows, rather use other apps like MS Office at the same time, the experience will not be so good if you have a bit slow PC.

Download Google Chrome. [Windows, Mac OS X, Linux]

Get Extensions

I suggest you to at least have both. If you want customization and lots of plugins use Mozilla Firefox as your primary browser, and if you want minimalism and fast browsing experience use Google Chrome instead.

Downloader: 

For normal downloads, I think your browser is sufficient.

uTorrentz: It is not illegal to download torrentz files unless you are downloading copyrighted content. It is much faster and convenient to download larger files using Torrentz than your regular download method. Download uTorrentz, it is free, fast and small in size.

Get uTorrentz. [Windows, Mac OS X, Linux]

Communication:

Skype: It is an awesome video conferencing program, owned by Microsoft but it is free. It is available for almost every possible device that has a screen. For free you don’t get such a robust piece of full-featured software. Skype Users can make unlimited video calls, voice calls, and chat, it even provides group video calling feature which is nice.

Download Here.

b. Media and Photo Management:

Media Player:

Listening to music and watching movies and other videos are of thing we do much on a PC. Show a good media player deserves a good place in this Essential Open Source and Free software list.

VLC: Bring any type of video file to it, which some other video player can’t even recognise as a video file, VLC media player will play it for you, even some little-damaged file as well. It is an Open Source program by VideoLAN. It even plays many types of audio files, so there is actually no need of a dedicated audio player. It has all the feature you can expect from a video player, it runs subtitle, runs CDs, DVDs and various streaming protocols, it even converts video files into different formats.

Get VLC media player here.

Photo Management: 

Most of us love taking lots of photos; so viewing photos, organising them, and being able to do some basic editing is very much necessary.

Picassa: Sad news is Google has retired this service, they are concentrating on Google Photos.

But if you, like me, still love the old offline app that lets you view, organise and edit photos, and does it in a very simple but very effective way, you really want Picasa.

It automatically finds all photos from your PC and organises them pretty well. Not only that, you can do all the basic editing like photo resizing, fixing red eye, colour and lighting, it has a dozen of cool effects, these all features can easily be performed by anyone.

Two features of Picasa I like the most are its face recognition feature makes it organise photos based on people in those and all the previous versions of a photo you are editing are always preserved.

But it’s not available there in official website anymore, you have to find it in www.FileHippo.com, Or just get the latest version here, I have done the searching job for you, in love of Picasa.

Google Photos Desktop Uploader: Google Photos basically does all most same things but you have to upload all photos on their server and then do all the stuff online. Though this feature may not be preferred by people who don’t always use the internet, but you have an online backup of all your photo with unlimited storage, and sharing them is much easier.

View your Photos here or Get Google Photos Desktop Uploader. [Windows, Mac OS]

c. Office Suite and Documents:

Though MS Office is the most powerful office tool ever created, it is overkill for most of us. And it is not free, even the cheapest Plan Microsoft Office Home & Students 2016 costs you $149.99 (Which is worth for those who use those powerful features it has to offer), and we use a very small fraction of its features. Then why not to try something simple and free, and get all the things we need, done.

LibreOffice: As its name suggests, LibreOffice is a free and Open Source office Suite program. It is simple, small in size, very lightweight (Opens and runs quickly), and has most of the features you find in MS Office. You will find a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation programs inside. Besides those, there are also a vector graphics editor, a math formula editor, and a database.

Get LibreOffice. [Windows, Linux, Mac OS X]

OpenOffice.org: But if you have a compatibility issue, no friend of you uses LibreOffice, so you can’t share files with them, then use Apache OpenOffice.org which is another leading Open Source Office suite package, that provides everything that LibreOffice office does, reads and writes files in the same format as MS Office.

Download OpenOffice.org. [Windows, Linux, Mac OS X]

If you are a sucker of the internet, you may love online browser app more. Use Google Docs or MS office Online, they are free. Sometimes using web app is more convenient than using some desktop programs. Like when you are doing research for your project, you need to take notes very fast, copy text from the web to make a rough draft, it is easier to do in some web app. For me, it seems more convenient to do that by switching between tabs than switching to another heavy software.

Check your Google Docs, or try MS Office Online.

Abiword: If a good word processor is what all you need, then AbiWord is a good

replacement for Microsoft Word. It is lightweight, have most of the features you use in Microsoft Word. and file formats are compatible with MS World.

Due to lack of Windows Developers, the updates for this program is lagging for windows (This is an Open Source Project, so people working for it are volunteers, sometimes there are not enough volunteers available).

Get Abiword for free. [Windows, Mac OS X, Linux]

Sumatra PDF: You have Adobe Reader installed on your computer, don’t you? Try Sumatra PDF once, I know you have to set it as your default PDF reader. To simply view a PDF file you need a simple and lightweight (Opens and Runs quickly). Sumatra PDF can completely open any PDF files immediately after you finish clicking on the file, it is as fast as opening a notepad file.

Believe me in this one, Download Sumatra PDF.

d. Data Backup, Synchronisation and Sharing:

It is very important to have a backup of at least some of your important files. You may use another hard drive to do that but having a cloud backup has its own advantage. It can be synced with multiple devices so that you can access the files from all those synced devices, and sharing file online is very easy. You simply can create a link to the file or folder you want to share, and can just text or mail to anybody, share in your social media, and put it on your website.

Google Drive: If you are a Google or Android person you really want to use it, because it integrates with all other Google’s products so well. And if you have a Gmail account (which you certainly have), you already have google drive, maybe you are not using it. It offers 15GB of cloud storage, which is pretty great for free. This is where all your Google docs will be saved.

Download Google Drive Desktop Uploader here, or browse the Web App.

Dropbox: One of the most popular Data backup and Synchronisation services ever, you can perform all the things mentioned above pretty easily, I find the interface more intuitive than Google Drive. But at first it offers 2GB storage, which is not so great but you can expand free storage up to 16GB by referring your friends and asking them to download the app.

So, You’ve been invited to try Dropbox! [Windows, Mac OS X, Linux]

You can even try Microsoft OneDrive, Which provides 15GB free storage at the beginning, again you can earn extra by referring friends, backing up your smartphone photos. And, most importantly if you subscribe to their Office 365 (which is not so affordable) you have 1TB of free cloud storage.

Check out Microsoft OneDrive.

For maximum storage, you can have accounts in all of those, and do a google search for even more.

What I found effective and what actually I do is upload documents and office files in Google Drive, Media files and other files in Dropbox, and for photos it is more convenient to upload on Google Photos, because any way you will be using it for viewing and organizing photos, and it provides unlimited storage for photos (But maximum size of a photo can be 8MB).

So for photo backup, use Google Photos.

SHAREit: All of the above were cloud sharing, but what if you need to share files between two desktops, or between your phone and your desktop? You don’t really want to search for a thumb drive or a cable. Use SHAREit, it is developed by Lenovo. SHAREit uses Wifi network to do that, it is fast, stable and works just fine.

Download SHAREit. [Windows, Mac OS X]

Dukto R6: It is an Open Source software that does the pretty same job that SHAREit does. Linux user may try this.

Try Dukto R6. [Windows, Mac OS X, Linux]

e. Performance and Utility:

CCleaner: One of the most essentials product by Piriform (All Piriform products are pretty much essential), CCleaner or Crap Cleaner does exactly its name suggests. It cleans unused registry files, recycle bin files, browser cookies, and other temporary files. Running CCleaner regularly keeps your computer run smooth and fast.

Grab it here for Windows and for Mac OS. [Windows and Mac OS X]

7 Zip: Archive file is a single file with multiple files (even of different formats) encrypted and compressed inside it. This feature is very useful for sharing files. So, you will need archive manipulation tool (packer-unpacker) in many points of time.

7 Zip is a utility for creating or unpacking archive files, it supports so many archive formats (More than Winzip or Winrar) and has a high compression ratio.

Download 7 Zip for Windows or Linux, or Download Keka For Mac OS.

 

f. Security:

Antivirus:

Bitdefender: Bitdefender is possibly the best Antivirus you can get for free. It has one of the largest databases of the virus, it is strong, and does its job silently in the background unlike Norton and some other antivirus which pops up messages for every little thing. In the free plan, you get real time protection, auto pilot, and anti-malware/anti-phishing.

Get anti-virus for free, click here. [Windows]

And yet another good news, if you have a website, Bitdefender scans your website for free, click here.

Anti Malware:

Malwarebytes: When it comes to malware protection, Malwarebytes has some stronger solution for you. Free plan provides you Anti malware/anti spyware protection and anti-rootkit.

Get Malwarebytes here. [Windows]

FireWall:

Zonal Alarm Firewall: A firewall prevents attacks from outside, it secures your web browser, email etc. ZonalAlarm Free Firewall does the job pretty nicely.

Get ZonalAlarm Free Firewall. [Windows]

Choosing antivirus, antimalware or firewall should be personal preference. And I have not tried all the programs with all possible combinations so there may be compatible issues. You can study more and find what works for you. Check http://in.pcmag.com/, they do serious testing on those antiviruses and other software, read their reviews. Here are some more programs below,

Zonal Alarm Antivirus

Comodo Firewall

KeyPassX: KeePassX is a lightweight password manager for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and mobile devices. It keeps all your passwords safe in an encrypted database, which you can quickly access with a master password.

Get KeyPassX. [Windows, Linux and Mac OS X]

g. Productivity:

Notepad++: Note taking is a very important thing, any productive people would say it. You take note about every idea that you come up with as soon as possible before you forget. So for note taking you need something very lightweight and very simple to work with. Use Notepad++ (Open Source), which is 100 times better replacement than Windows Notepad, with tonnes of cool yet simple features like you can have multiple tabs, it maintains unsaved data if you close it, it even supports many programming languages and much more. You can install plugins, so if you need some feature which is not readily available there is a possibility that you can find a plugin for that. For me, it fully replaced Microsoft Notepad, Sticky Notes, and even partially MS Word.

So many super important things in one package! Get it here.

Evernote: If want to be productive, Evernote has a tonne of things to offer. You type here, clip photos, scan photos, tag notes, it has an OCRed feature that means you can extract text from images, a number of powerful search functions, a nice email service, You can even clip a whole web page in it using a Chrome Extension name to few. Then you organise all the things in different Notebooks, you can again stack those notebooks, all the things get synced so easily accessible from other devices. You can organise your work, schedule your day, month, or year pretty effectively. In the free plan, you only can have two devices connected but you can use their Web App from other devices.

Download Evernote from the referral link here and you get premium membership of one month.  [Windows and Mac OS X]

The usefulness of this piece of software can’t be explained, it needs a separate blog to explain even the very best features of Evernote. So, someday there may be a dedicated article about using Evernote effectively in this blog. For now, you can watch this video below.

Let me know in comment section if you have found at least a single software that seems useful to you but you didn’t know about it before. Or is there any other software you think is very important but is not listed above? Which one is your favourite piece of software and why? Is there something else you want me to write about?

And if you think this article was useful to you, this might be the same to your friends too. Please do share.

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