Open Source Software

Written by: Noteforself 

Photo Credit: custom-build-computers.com

I bought my newest computer over the summer at Costco.  It is an HP laptop that was on sale for $450. It has a 17 inch display at 1600×900 resolution, and it came with Windows 7. The first thing I did when I got home was to create the recovery disks.  That used up 4 DVDs. If I had a USB stick with at least 19 GB of space that would have worked too, but I didn't. For anyone who knows computers, 19 GB to reinstall your operating system is simply ridiculous; there is way too much bloatware that the hardware manufacturer is putting on your computer. That being said, making recovery disks is always a first priority when you get a new computer; you will need it in a year or three when your computer gets slow and you need to reformat it.

In my biased opinion, the software that comes preloaded on a computer is often bloated and slow.  Besides the operating system, I usually remove everything else and, instead, install open source software.  Open source software are software that have source code available, in case you want to modify or learn more about the software you are using.  The source code is the written text that makes up the software; the hardware, the physical computer, reads the text and runs the software.

Below are some open source software that I use.  I believe they are smaller and faster then the software that comes with your computer.

7-Zip 
If you ever download a file that is compressed into a 7z, BZip2, Gzip, Tar or other formats, you can use this program to uncompress it.  You can also use this file to archive your files.

ClamWin Free Antivirus 
This is my anti-virus program.  I use it when I want to check to see if my files and folders have anything dangerous in them.

TrueCrypt 
I use this to protect my sensitive documents.  It would create an encrypted file, and I would store all my important things in it.

Gimp
This is my image editor.  I do basic cropping and resizing of my images.  Since I am not a graphics artist, it fulfills my basic needs.  For 99% of computer users, this makes an excellent Adobe Photoshop replacement.

Sumatra PDF 
This replaces Adobe Reader; it's a simple PDF reader.

Notepad++ 
I use this instead of the Notepad that comes with Windows 7.

LibreOffice 
This replaces Microsoft Office.  Hands down, this is the best alternative to it, and it's completely free. However, you can still pay to show your appreciation by sending money to The Document Foundation so they can continue to work on this software.  LibreOffice used to be call OpenOffice. Anything Microsoft Office can do, LibreOffice can most likely also do.  It comes with Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation), Draw (build diagrams and sketches), Base (database) and Math (equation editor).  It can save in different formats and open many formats, including but not limited to past and present Microsoft document formats.  Additionally, you can save your documents in PDF format.
I highly recommend LibreOffice.  To me, it is on par with Microsoft Office.

VLC 

MPC-HC 
Both VLC and MPC-HC are multimedia players.  You can use them to watch most video formats.

ImgBurn 
This software is to burn CDs/DVDs.  It's simple and works well.

Firefox 
Chrome 
Please don't use Internet Explorer; it can be unsafe.  I would recommend either Firefox or Chrome.They are both good in terms of speed and security.  Additionally, they are updated often to keep pace with technological advances.

In brief, whenever I reformat my computer, I would install the above programs.  Using these programs would also ease you into Linux if you ever want to give Linux a try in the future, because these programs are also available on Linux.  Before using any of these software, please read the instructions; I don't want to be held responsible for bad experiences.

As you can see, I embrace open source.  First, it's free.  Second, I have access to the source code, which allows me to modify it.  (If I knew how.)  Third, the open source software that I use are faster and  smaller than the software they replace. Without open source, Google, Facebook, Amazon and other  technology companies would not be what they are today, and I feel that the world would be a grimmer place.

If you have any interesting open source software, please let me know.  I'm always curious.