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advice for a greener life
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Q: Can I get free alternatives to the expensively packaged commercial products? A: OpenSource software is free and open to all to develop and improve on. It is not generally packaged and is available for anyone to download and distribute on. This page contains links to some of the best OpenSource software available, all of which are great, free alternatives to some of the more familiar commercial packages, but don't compromise on features: Firefox - is an award-winning web browser now in it's third incarnation. It supports a multiitude of extensions offereing eveything from in line spell checking to an ebay sidebar. It offers far more functionality and security than internet explorer. 
Thunderbird - is a great email application from the makers of Firefox. It also has an extension called lightning which adds full calendar support. A great replacement for Outlook., 
OpenOffice.org 2 - is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many language and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.  Gimp - is a graphic image manipulation package similar to photoshop. It allows you to correct or edit photos and images and containd a multitude of tools. There is also an animation package available. http://www.gimp.org GNUCash - is a double entry accounting package ideal for both home and business accounts and you don't need to be an accountant to use it. Only recently available for windows it is a great alternative to Money or Quicken. http://www.gnucash.org/ Pidgin - is a great replacement for all your instant messaging programs, such as AOL instant messenger, windows messenger or Google Talk, as it allows you to log in to all of the services within the one application. It also supports email message notification for most protocols.  Scribus - is a full featured desktop publisher. If you need a more robust publishing package than the word processing services in OpenOffice this is worth a look as an alternative to Publisher. http://www.scribus.net/ Nvu - Finally! A complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for "new view") makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.  Portableapps - all of the above programs are available as portable apps. These are the same as the full versions but run from a USB pen drive/key, and leave no footprint on the PC they're used on. Great if you want to use some of your familiar programs and documents on a public PC. http://portableapps.com/ Ubuntu - if you want to go the whole hog with opensource software, you can even do away with Windows. Ubuntu is a great Linux operating system, and has all the above applications built in. It will work with almost all PC hardware and is available as a bootable live CD. This means you can try the operating system out without touching your PC, then if you like it you can install it from the CD. Be warned Windows software doesn't work in Linux, but you can dual boot Linux and Windows if you still use some windows applications.  |