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The Best of Windows Open Source Software?
Posted by
Cliff
on Wed Sep 25, 2002 09:38 PM
from the not-just-for-penguins-anymore dept.
from the not-just-for-penguins-anymore dept.
Boiotos asks: "I'm cooking up a CD-ROM image of excellent Win32 Open Source software to give to friends and family who are intrigued by the whole OSS movement but don't know where to start. I figure once they're used to Mozilla and AbiWord under WinXP, a Linux partition would be less daunting. So fellow Slashdotters, how about it: what Win32 OSS projects deserve a place on the 650 Mb of Solid Gold? Remember, this is for non-geeks and families, so Cygwin is out (even though I love it) and games are in. Extra points, as always, to the obscure but beautiful. Finally, projects targeting only Win32 -- with no Free Unix crossover -- may apply, but will be subject to a strenuous physical test."
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Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:3, Informative)
CDex (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget to OGG-vocate vorbis (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Open Office (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, there is always gimp (Score:5, Informative)
GIMP is not obvious to Windows users (Score:5, Insightful)
Paint has the right idea in my Book of UI Design for Image Editors - a 'full screen' workspace for your image, tools that are kept outside the image, and menus that are accessed from the top of the screen.
Photoshop take that one step further with tabbed palletes (as this comment [slashdot.org] says, perhaps that can't be replicated exactly without infringing copyright laws) - however, I expect with a few hours of work, someone familar with the GIMP could write a more usable (in this case, yes I mean more Windows-friendly) UI for it, moving all the menus to a MDI style application. Take THAT app and package it on your Windows OSS CD.
GIMP has all the hard work done - the image tools are great, and wingimp claim to have 90% of PS's functionality. And you can't complain about 0% of the price.
Windows people would only get confused by The GIMP. It looks like crap so normal users don't bother figuring out how to use it. Sure, some learning is always a good thing, but the interface is not only (IMO) counter-intuitive, it goes against the established norm, in a way that could be very easily fixed.
Parent
Re:GIMP is not obvious to Windows users (Score:5, Insightful)
A few reasons really. Mainly comfort factor and learning curve.
Generally, people like things that look familiar, it gives them a comfortable feeling. If I'm used to one application that uses a certain key sequence to perform a particular task (eg copy something to the clipboard) and then want to do the same thing in another application I'm going to be a lot happier if the key sequence is the same. Whether we like it or not a lot of people are used to the Microsoft way of doing things.
If I know how to do something in one application and want to do the same thing in another application then, if it doesn't do it the same way, I'm going to need some training or to spend some time reading the manuals. A lot of people are used to the Microsoft way of doing things and, to be honest, one of the few good things about Microsoft is at least they have interface consistency accross their apps.
To take another approach. On UNIX (and other OSes for that matter) programs like grep, sed and awk (amongst others) use REGEX. Further they all use the same REGEX. How many problems would it cause if they all used different ways of representing strings?
For most users a PC is just a tool for writing letters, web browsing, playing games or some other task. They don't want to RTFM and if they've had to learn one application they want to be able to apply that knowlege in the next application they have to use that does similar things, not have to learn another way to do the same things.
Stephen
Parent
Gnucleus (Score:5, Informative)
OpenOffice, not AbiWord (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, make sure you find a way of installing good configurations for things (package Mozilla with Orbit for example, or use the new Phoenix browser), and package it all with a simple installer if possible. There's nothing worse than battling ten different types of installer ported from GTK/Qt/Xlib.
Re:OpenOffice, not AbiWord (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but screw that.
One of the best parts of free software is choice and telling someone to forget Abi is crazy talk. Abi's only like 10-20Mb (I forget how big, maybe less) and makes a PERFECT drop-in solution for someone that wants the ability to create and print small documents (and maybe even big ones). It has a lot less overhead and will be faster on older machines. And since it reads some (but admittedly not all) DOC and RTF files, it may even just work for that occasional Word document that comes along.
It's about choice and freedom. I mean, come on...give people things they need, not what you think they need.
Parent
Re:OpenOffice, not AbiWord (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
PuTTY (Score:4, Informative)
Re:PuTTY (Score:4, Insightful)
PuTTY is a work of art. It's free, it's flexible, it's self-contained in one executable (no bloody installers!)...it's the single Windows program that I must have if I'm using a Windows machine.
It can even emulate X11's middle-click-to-paste and select-to-copy mode. Absolutely wonderful.
Parent
Re:PuTTY (Score:4, Funny)
Plus, the registry keeps your home directory free from dot-file clutter. Or INI file clutter, in this case.
Simply put, Registry >> INI files.
Parent
Lol, putty. (Score:5, Funny)
Me: Okay Grandma here's Putty, it's for connecting to my servers via ssh/sftp/ftp or telnet.
Grandma: [confusion on face] what was that honey?
Me: Oh come on now Grandma don't be coy. You know you've been secretly sshing into my servers to check your AOL mail via Pine.
Grandma: [with a look on her face like she just smoked a QP of weed] huh?
Me: Grandma? You still in there?
I can see it now Putty for the family, everyone huddled around the PC roasting chestnuts, securing their linux boxes, checking top to see current system utilization, running ps to see if there are any runaway processes...
lol, great post, PuTTY. I've got tears man, tears!
Parent
Re:Lol, putty. (Score:5, Funny)
Me: Oh come on now Grandma don't be coy. You know you've been secretly sshing into my servers to check your AOL mail via Pine.
Grandma: No, no dear. Pine [washington.edu] is for wussies. I use mutt [mutt.org].
Grandma: You still in there?
Parent
Re:PuTTY (Score:5, Funny)
I cannot begin to tell you how pleased I am to hear this about my future competition in the job market. What kind of wine do your professors like? I feel like I owe them something!
Parent
Re:PuTTY (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:PuTTY (Score:5, Funny)
I cannot begin to tell you how pleased I am to hear this about my future competition in the job market.
Competition?
He'll end up being your boss...
Parent
A few ideas. (Score:4, Insightful)
FreeeCiv [freeciv.org]
OpenOffice [openoffice.org]
and WinGimp [wingimp.com]
I would love to hear more from everyone else.
Celestia all the way! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Celestia all the way! (and Stellarium too) (Score:4, Informative)
btw, in my search I did find another very cool program [stellarium.free.fr] which renders the sky accurately and beautifully, which is also quite impressive. You might like it.
Parent
Does MAME Count? (Score:4, Informative)
For your IRC friends. (Score:4, Informative)
Some other important Apps (Score:3, Informative)
Also a very addictive game called crack attack, which runs on windows and linux, and is under the GPL:
Crack Attack [aluminumangel.org]
Other things that you should consider include Python [python.org] and PyGame [pygame.org] (don't forget SDL as well!).
[x]Chat [xchat.org] runs under windows (native), and is the only irc I'd consider using (beats the hell out of mirc).
Putty [greenend.org.uk] is an open source ssh/telnet client. Its possibly the best telnet client for use under windows. Then again, could anything be worse than C:\Windows\Telnet.exe ?
I've probably missed quite a few good ones, but these are things I seriously like.
virtualdub (Score:5, Informative)
Aggie, a news aggregator (Score:3)
Aggie [bitworking.org] is an open source [opensource.org] news aggregator. Basically, you give it the URL to your favorite RSS feeds, it downloads and parses them, and then builds a web page with the headlines. The really nice thing about it is that it supports RSS autodiscovery [diveintomark.org], so in many cases, you can simply provide the URL to the site itself, and it will find the RSS feed for you.
It does not use the GPL, but its license is considered open source by the OSI definition.
Another caveat is that it is written in C# and thus requires the .NET framework to run, so it isn't portable to other operating systems (not yet [go-mono.com], at least). The upside is that the C# source code is fairly easy to follow, even for a dunce like me.
FreeAmp (Score:3, Informative)
A few.... (Score:5, Interesting)
jzip (http://www.bytamin-c.com/Source/) - this is an unzipper, and a great replacement for WinZIP.
For the Windows and Unix world try:
Gimp for windows (http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/)
And don't forget the games!
The game of Go for windows (http://www.public32.com/games/go/)
The Windows GNU gaming zone: (http://wggz.sourceforge.net/)
Some unixisms? (Score:3, Informative)
gcc or djgcc or something to let people do free development for windows - kdevelop ported to Win32?
vim!!! (though that may not be a good idea for people who have never seen VI
Does Blender have a win port?
Apache - how to have a safer web server.
VNC - for people who want to do work from home (or abuse works high speed connection)
dia (Score:3, Informative)
The home page is at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/ [lysator.liu.se]
Don't forget the games! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but that's a good start. Hopefully other posters will list their faves...
PHP Edit (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.phpedit.net/ [phpedit.net]
Quite a good prog - even though I dont use windows anymore.
Beyond that Quanta is a great program that does the same stuff - but for linux.
Derek
Vim editor (Score:4, Interesting)
Jabber (Score:5, Informative)
Many open source Jabber [jabber.org] clients are available, so maybe you can get your friends to use open source software with an open instant messaging protocol!
Personally, I use PSI [sourceforge.net] when using Windows, but there are others out there that may be just as good. I do believe, though, that Psi is cross-platform, which may be a plus.
What I use... (Score:4, Interesting)
OpenOffice.org
Miranda ICQ
Mozilla
Putty
XNview
Audacity
TuxRacer
GLTron
Povray
FreeCiv
Kakepad
FileZilla
Xchat
CDex
All GPL (I believe), and hopefully I didn't include anything too geeky.
Here's a good place to start (Score:5, Informative)
The BYU UUG (Score:5, Interesting)
During the summer, I suggested [mail-archive.com] to my local Unix Users Group that we put together a campaign on campus dubbed "Software for Starving Students." The idea is that we would advocate the use of Free Software among the student body at BYU.
The ball got rolling, and we put together a CD image [byu.edu] that we burned and handed out to students from a booth in the student center. We selected OpenOffice, Mozilla, The Gimp, BZFlag, and AbiWord in the most recent incarnation.
Last week, we gave out 400 copies of the CD from the booth. I mentioned to the group that if we did the math the way Microsoft does math [microsoft.com], with each disc, we saved a student around $1,300. The 400 copies from last week combined with the 180 copies we gave out during the summer comes to around 3/4 of a million dollars with of savings to the student body! :-)
I, of course, took every opportunity to explain to passerby who accepted the disc about the multiple meanings of the word "free." The club president was making people promise to copy the software and give it to their friends in exchange for receiving the disc. Our Linux Install Fest last Saturday kept the classroom packed with students who heard about Linux and wanted us to install it on their computers for them.
I'm happy to say that we're [byu.edu] doing our part to keep Linux from getting "stomped." [slashdot.org]
Egoboo (Score:5, Interesting)
The last time I checked (which was several months ago) Egoboo wasn't quite ready for prime time, but it's fun enough that I doubt anybody will care and the installation and setup was painless. It's certainly a project to keep an eye on.
Please Be Aware! (Score:5, Informative)
Check out the OpenCD project at
http://www.theopencd.org/ [theopencd.org]
You are free to work on your on project of course, but I HATE to see duplication of effort.
Ghostview/GSview (Score:5, Informative)
Here's [wisc.edu] the Ghostscript, home page, and the GSview-specific [wisc.edu] page.
Vim. No, I'm serious. (Score:5, Informative)
1) Every UNIX machine in the world has vi on there somewhere. Emacs may or may not be installed, depending on the preference of the sysadmin. But if you at least know four or five basic editing & navigation commands in vi, then you'll be fine if you wind up trying to use a strange UNIX system somewhere.
2) You can actually describe it in a way that won't be horrifically intimidating. Tell them it's a replacement for Notepad with a lot more features. And you can use the mouse if you want, but there's keyboard shortcuts for everything: once you learn them, you'll be twice as fast with Vim as with any other editor.
3) Vim's built-in tutorial (":help tutor") -- I wouldn't even mention it as a possibility without this one.
Yeah, a lot of people will hate Vim and run back to Notepad. But if they try it and get at least as far as finishing the tutorial, they won't be COMPLETELY lost when they first try Linux and have to edit a text file.
Re:Vim? No, no, no, NO! (Score:4, Insightful)
It may not be for you but do you consider your computer skills average? If you spend some time teaching computer skills to Normal People, you'll notice how even the concept of a file or directory structure is difficult.
People are lazy. They don't bother learning things unless they have to. Most people will gladly learn and use AbiWord instead of WordStar. Not because AbiWord has more features. It's just easier.
Vim will take over the world when most people stop using elevators and opt for climbing the stairs.
Parent
Can you post the ISO somewhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
WinVim! (Score:5, Funny)
KFG
Liquid War. Gameplay: 10, Graphics: 3, Overall: 11 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Religion? (Score:4, Funny)
Friends, ig-NORE the sireen call of the pay-to-play heathen that lurk in the hedgerows, clinging to the darkness, roaring like a lion, SEEKING WHOM THEY MAY DEVOUR! Open thy hearts, OPEN THY SOURCE! Come to the cleansing fountain of forgiveness from closed-sources. Do not let these Philistines halt thy progress! Come into the LIGHT! COME INTO THE LIIIIIGHT!
I neeed a nap.
Parent
Re:Religion? (Score:5, Insightful)
Others, to a degree myself, are offended by Microsoft's (and other) commercial software company's moral bankruptsy and their screwing of users, and feel morally compelled to at least let others know that they do not have to put up with it. That nobody has to use Microsoft, and that for the most part to not do so involves very little loss and significant gain.
Some people are just cheap, or truly low on money, and think they must choose between rent and important software. These people can also benefit greatly from OSS if they only knew about it.
Still other people, such as aspiring programmers, often have a tough time doing any real programming in Windows because it's so damn complex and crufty, and some eventually lose interest and leave for a different interest. Some of these people would also benefit greatly from being able to see the source to their programming tools--how they actually work--rather than reading unnavigable gigabytes of MSDN documentation to find info on how to work around some obscure bug or "feature" in their tools.
It isn't a religion, it's philanthropy.
Parent
Re:VNC (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent