Ask Slashdot: Good, Useful Free Software For Gifts?

First time accepted submitter Jeng writes "I'm planning on sending flash drives to friends and family as stocking stuffers. Rather than just send a blank drive, I'm looking for what good useful free software that I can load on it — from system utilities and encryption software to fun little games." We've asked similar questions before, but software keeps getting better, and so do the prices on flash drives. So what would you give as a gift this holiday season?

MS Office 2010 Home edition

[Anonymous Coward]

*ducks*

ooh maybe we should put linux in hotel rooms

[decora]

the penguin king demands it, justin!

A simple text file

[Anonymous Coward]

Just include a text file telling your friends not to put random flash drives in their computers. If you can't find such a text file, I suggest making one and releasing it under the GPH. Since this will probably offend them, you'll also need to get new friends. But who wants to be friends with people that run random things they get on a flash drive, anyway?

Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the

[Anonymous Coward]

*Anonymous bro hug*.

Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the

[NFN_NLN]

Right after getting it, one of my nieces threw it back at me, calling it useless, and then she called me a "nerd ass faggot".

Wait, wait, wait...

Did your niece call you a "nerd-ass faggot"... or a "nerd ass-faggot", because the hyphen really changes the dynamics of the entire story :)

http://xkcd.com/37/ [xkcd.com]

Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the

[Anonymous Coward]

next year... malware

Re:Bootable USB

[justforgetme]

In this context you might as well give them Chlamydia.
You get to keep the usb also!

Why?

[gillbates]

After having received from someone a gift that took their time and money to buy and wrap, and maybe make themselves, the last thing I would want to give in return is something that didn't cost me anything. Okay, so maybe you're also getting them a real gift. But who would install something they just found on a USB stick?

• Your dumb user isn't going to care about FOSS, because he's already bought all of his software from Microsoft, and as far as he's concerned, that's all the software he'll ever need.
• Upon finding Windows programs on them, the Mac user in the family will loudly speculate that he might get you a "real" computer for Christmas next year.
• Your younger brother will tell your mother that 'ubuntu' is the African word for pornography, after which your mother will delete everything on the drive and casually mention to you that you need to update your virus scanner.
• Your sister will ask you to reimburse her for "crashing" her computer after her 5 year old found the drive, plugged it into the computer, and inadvertently installed Ubuntu over Windows. And she's going to be forever mad that the only copy of her wedding video went with it.
• Most of your relatives will be a little perplexed, because they can't really appreciate the gift at first. Most of them didn't bring their computers, and even the ones that did have better things to do that troll through a collection of software they could just download from the internet anyway.
• A three year old will find one and admire the shiny plastic. A fate which will not bother the original recipient the least - hey, at least someone appreciates your Christmas gift.
• Your Grandpa will mistake it for candy and spend Christmas night in the emergency room while panicked relatives try to figure out if it the cover is missing because Grandpa swallowed it, or it never had one in the first place.

Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get to choose your family.

But you do get to choose which ones live :D

Re:Send them a blank drive that's really blank

[Mr. Underbridge]

I just bought four SanDisk USB drives, in original packaging, at Costco. I had to clean them of junk before using them. They even had autorun files and some kind of installer. Send the guy an empty drive that's really empty. That's a real gift today.

That's an especially fun gift for computer security professional. Since they'll never believe the drive is actually *empty*, you've given them a fun game where they try to figure out how you hid the malware. Everybody wins.

Re:Not flash drives or free software

[tbird81]

What child wouldn't want a copy of 7-Zip for Christmas? You'd be the coolest uncle in the world!

For their birthday you could get them pngcrush! And maybe, for a treat, you could include an update for the Windows PCI device driver.