useful, free software

[Fury]

Do you know any free, mostly non-profit computer programs which are good (or at least better than the preinstalled ones)? I will list mine and yours below:

Legend:
Open Source
Freeware
Adware
Rest

Audio editor:

- Audacity
[Linux, Mac OS, Unix, Windows]

BitTorrent:


- KTorrent


- utorrent
[Android, Linux, OS X, Windows]

File archiver:

- PeaZip


- Izarc
[Windows]

Graphics editor:

- GIMP
[AmigaOS 4, FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS X, Solaris, Windows]

- Inkscape (vector graphics)
[OS X, unix-like, Windows]

- KolourPaint
[Linux]

- Paint.net
[Windows]

Image viewer:

- Honeyview
[Windows]

- Irfanview
[Windows]

IRC client:

- Konversation
[BSD, Linux]

[U][B]Music player:

- Clementine
[ Linux, OS X, Windows ]

- foobar2000
[Windows]

PDF reader:

- Foxit Reader
[Linux, Windows]

Secure communication:

- Freenet
[Java]


- I2P
[Java]

- Tor
Linux, Mac, Windows][/COLOR]

System tools:

- TrueCrypt (Disk encryption software)
[Linux, Mac OS, Windows, DragonFly BSD]

- CCleaner (deletes useless crap from your PC)
[OS X, Windows]

- Speccy (shows information about hardware and software)
[Windows]

- teracopy (copy and move files)
[Windows]

[B]Text editor:

- Code::Blocks (IDE)
[Linux, OS X, Windows]

- Notepad++ (well organised, syntax for many programming languages)
[Windows]

- OpenOffice
[Linux, OS X, Windows]

Video player:

- VLC
[Android, BSD, BeOS, iOS, Linux, OS/2, Solaris, Syllable, QNX, Windows]

Web browser:

- Chromium
[Android, BSD, Linux, Windows]

- Firefox
[Android, Linux, OS X, Windows]

Misc:

- AutoHotkey (macro-creation and automation)
[Windows]

- Gnuplot (plotting)
[cross-platform]

- K3B (disk burning)
[Android, Linux, OS X, Windows]

- Launchy (search tool)
[FreeBSD, Linux, OS X, Windows]

- SpeedCrunch (calculator)
[Linux, OS X, Windows]

- XBMC (nice media center)
[Android, Apple TV OS, BSD, iOS, Linux, OS X, Windows]

Game:

- FasterBlaster (platformer)
[Windows]

- OpenHexagon (like SuperHexagon)
[Linux, Windows]

- Iconoclasts (platformer, in dev.)
[Windows]

- Shuriken Skies (2-4 player beat-em-up)
[Windows]

(pixelprospector.com: nice website to find good, free indie games)

[Paul Cockshott]

I find Latex and the Lyx word processor invaluable for producing well formatted articles and books. Gnumeric is an excellent spreadsheet which can dump latex formatted tables. Xfig is excellent for precision line diagrams. Gnuplot is very good for producing graphs.

[Zostrianos]

The best Archive software I've seen is Izarc (http://www.izarc.org/). It beats even paid ones like Winrar and Winzip in my opinion.

For image editing, Paint.net (http://www.getpaint.net/)is amazing. It's no Photoshop, but has all the essential options, tools, and filters most people would need.

[Q]

Some suggestions, for a useful discussion:
- There are different definitions of "free": Open source software (which is free as in free speech and free as in free beer) and freeware (free as in free beer, but not open source). Both definitions are valid, but please make a distinction.
- What platforms are supported by this software? (Windows, Linux, OS X, *BSD, etc).
- Could you post a link? Most software can easily be googled, but some niche stuff might not easily be found.

[Q]

As for myself, I like:

IRC client: Konversation (http://konversation.kde.org/) (Linux, *BSD), open source.
Desktop: I like KDE (http://www.kde.org/) (Linux, *BSD) and Cinnamon (http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/) (Linux) which are both open source.
Secure communication: Freenet (https://freenetproject.org/) (Every platform that supports Java), I2P (http://www.i2p2.de/) (again, Java) and Tor (https://www.torproject.org/) (Linux, *BSD, Mac, Windows) which are all open source.
Music: Clementine (http://www.clementine-player.org/) (Linux, OS X, Windows), again open source.

So yeah, I like my software open :)

[Sea]

Agreed, Q. Konversation is pretty sweet, the 1.5 rc is even better in a few areas too but there's no binary distros yet which sets off some people.

As for the OP, I'd suggest qbittorrent (http://www.qbittorrent.org/) instead of utorrent as it's open-source. KTorrent is better if you're on KDE because it integrates well with the rest of the desktop, but otherwise it's similar.

Privoxy (http://www.privoxy.org/) goes great with anonymization software if you can figure out how to set it up. Proxychains (http://proxychains.sourceforge.net/) is great too if you want to chain proxies together.

K3B (http://www.k3b.org/) for disk burning.

Fldigi (http://www.w1hkj.com/Fldigi.html) for ham radio.

If you like Plan 9 but hate how it's been cursed by obscurity, you'll love this (http://swtch.com/plan9port/).

[MarxSchmarx]

It depends on your needs, really. I think OO (now libre office) is pretty solid on 95% of stuff but for power point presentations and equation editing they are not there yet in terms of word compatibility. But I do just about all my text editing in gedit and vim. I can't recommend the gedit plugins high enough. OO is mostly just when I have to work w/ people using M$ or apple crap, although their spreadsheet program is, for the most part, good enough.

If you are a researcher, for now Mendeley is a free bibliographic reference system with pretty wide usages (which makes it easier to find stuff with, although the consensus among users appears to be that this state of affairs is unlikely to last and it will probably become a pay system soon enough.

For graphics, I would recommend KolourPaint

http://kolourpaint.sourceforge.net/

it is basically just m$ paint for linux and IMO is plenty adequate for the vast majority of graphics work. Others have suggested gimp but I only use it when I have to edit some high resolution photographs and only if I really ,really have to. But again, this depends on your needs, if you have to work with vector graphics formats I think inkscape

http://inkscape.org/

is still state of the art, although again it isn't quite as usable as photoshop although it has gotten noticably better. But it still crashes and its pdf saving features are poor. It just isn't "there yet" as an adobe photoshop replacement but it suffices.

And last but not least, the terminal. Talkabout a useful piece of amazing FOS software :)

[Fury]

Some suggestions, for a useful discussion:
- There are different definitions of "free": Open source software (which is free as in free speech and free as in free beer) and freeware (free as in free beer, but not open source). Both definitions are valid, but please make a distinction.
- What platforms are supported by this software? (Windows, Linux, OS X, *BSD, etc).
- Could you post a link? Most software can easily be googled, but some niche stuff might not easily be found.

I can't add links because I have under 25 posts. But thank you for your suggestions :)

[kolobok1993]

not bad combination of programs ,but that list need often update,development dont standing)))

[Le Communiste]

Put Slackware on there. Learned a lot about computers on that

[tuwix]

Autohotkey is great tool for automation of boring and tring activities on Wnidows. For Mac and Linux the IronHotkey is its equivalent. Both absolutely free.

[Doflamingo]

Kawaii Codec Pack (http://haruhichan.com/forum/showthread.php?7545-KCP-Kawaii-Codec-Pack) for all of you videophiles that want to watch your anime in the best quality possible.

[ckaihatsu]

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Linux for the desktop has finally fully matured, with the availability of Point Linux. Anyone can now backup their data, ditch Windows, and continue on as usual with full application support. You may want to try it on an older, unused computer first, though. More at this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2627751&postcount=72

[ckaihatsu]

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