Open-source software rated: Ten alternatives you need

AnonymousFri 16 November, 2007 8:36pm

_Opera_ is the most secure Web browser available.

RobertFri 30 November, 2007 4:17pm

Any suggestions for good open source accounting software? All small businesses need accounting software, and it seems to be difficult to find - open source or not. I did a search a year ago and didn't find much more than a replacement for personal finances - nothing powerful enough for a real business. A small manufacturing business needs General Ledger, flexible chart of accounts, Account Payable, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Bills-of-Material, etc.

AnonymousMon 19 November, 2007 9:58am

To theme pidgen download the Gtk+ Theme Selector, then use any recent Gtk+ theme. Finding where these are located can be a bit convoluted on windows so use search/livedesktop/googledesktop to locate the Gtk folder locations.

GeorgiMon 19 November, 2007 11:42am

Who wrote this article? Honestly?
Did Micro$oft paid you some crisp, cold, green cash?

The only reason Firefox is not the most used and popular web browser is because of M$ monopoly (which thanks to the EU commission will soon end in the EU) and people who bought Windows Vista have no idea that there is something called a better alternative. I mean saying that I don't have to use Firefox is saying you don't have to use Windows Vista, Linux or OS X - let us just stay with MS DOS 3 (was that with the dual floppy support?) and leave rivalry and innovative mind behind.

Don't think I'm some dull ranting American -- I love your blog and podcast but excuse my language this post is full of crap. It is obviously pro commercial apps and open-source apps can go to bloody hell.

Nate Lanxon, CNET.co.ukMon 19 November, 2007 12:43pm

Georgi, your comment is perplexing me. I couldn't be more anti-commercial apps if I tried. The entire purpose of this article was to get people off products from the likes of Microsoft, and onto open source alternatives.

bobMon 19 November, 2007 1:13pm

Georgi -- are you on drugs? The article is called "Ten alternatives you NEED". How on earth can say it's saying "open-source apps can go to bloody hell". You retard.

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 9:26am

Georgi I don't mean to rain on your rant, but he actually said - "There's no reason not to use Firefox", I think you misread it and thought it said "There's no reason to use Firefox."

Well I hope thats the case.

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 4:53pm

I'm surprised Thunderbird (for one) wasn't offered as the replacement for Outlook to round out Open Office.

I'm also surprised not to see CD Burner XP Pro 3 as a better CD/DVD burner.

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 5:06pm

About time

geoffTue 20 November, 2007 5:06pm

It might be worth noting that Outlook is such a badly written programme (yes, I'm English!) that it's generally estimated to be responsible for the propogation of the vast majority of Spam when coupled with an insecure system (most Windows boxes).

I am biased here, but not prejudiced as I've thought about the issue, I now use only free software (a lot of video work and complex maths). Windows simply doesn't come close to my needs and, having had to support academic users on NT and XP, I was happy to switch to the robust, free, alternatives. No pain, no gain - a little work gets a large payback.

It's so easy to try a totally free set of alternatives, why wouldn't you?

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 5:10pm

Stop requiring signup to see articles. It is an invasion of privacy.

FTWTue 20 November, 2007 5:12pm

why am I getting a comment box instead of an article?

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 5:15pm

Hello

Nick Hide, CNET.co.ukTue 20 November, 2007 5:15pm

Sorry, there was a problem where the article wasn't showing, only a comment box. It should be fine now. Thanks for all your comments.

James SchendTue 20 November, 2007 5:16pm

Paint.NET may not has as many features as GIMP, but it's equally open source and frankly a lot easier to use. I've always thought that Paint.NET was under-appreciated, and it would have been nice to call it out.

Peter DesnoyersTue 20 November, 2007 6:54pm

Photo editing - I'll second the vote for Paint.NET - I've done a lot of work with the GIMP, and having recently tried Paint.NET I like it much better. Unfortunately it's Windows-only.

OpenOffice - MS Office doesn't have anything that can compete with OO Draw - the drawing commands (which are the same as in OO Impress, the PowerPoint replacement) are much better than PowerPoint. OOImpress, however, is handicapped by truly sucking at printing "handouts" - otherwise I find it's about the same as Powerpoint.

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 5:31pm

I'm surprised Thunderbird (for one) wasn't offered as the replacement for Outlook to round out Open Office.

I'm also surprised not to see CD Burner XP Pro 3 as a better CD/DVD burner.

Aunty AgdaTue 20 November, 2007 5:45pm

Dear Nate Lanxon,

Thanks for a very informative and clearly written article. Most of the alternatives mentioned in your article are available by default in the excellent Ubuntu Linux which was first installed for me by my young nephew after my Windows went haywire a couple of times.

Yes, as an old aged pensioner I am not very well versed in the finer arts of computing, but I've been successful in installing Ubuntu for some of my friends and we have no more troubles with Windows spyware and the like.

I'm not very computer literate and neither are my neighbors and friends but we have certainly improved the quality of our computer usage since we installed Ubuntu a couple of years ago.

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 5:45pm

May I make a suggestion for the missing number 11 on this list: an alternative to Windows itself? I use Kubuntu, on which most of the other software in the article is available. And it's not too intimidating for the average Windows user either.

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 7:09pm

Media Player
DVD Player
Multipage PDF Publisher
Wireless Access Point Manager

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 7:30pm

Yeah, I read this article because I was curious...

It should have #12....UBUNTU LINUX

I am 56 yrs old...have been building my own computers and using microsoft ...correction 'had' been using microsoft products since the original ms-dos.
I had tried linux in the distant past (mid-90's...Mandrake Linux). I was using XP and was dreading moving to Vista....then I ran across articles about Ubuntu...tried it and have not looked back...I'm writing this from inside Firefox running on Ubuntu 7.1 and I'm handing out LiveCDs for Ubuntu to anyone and everyone I know...

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 7:37pm

I find your choice of products quite interesting;
for instance OO.o doesn't have a mail client. But what about Thunderbird Vs Outlook.
re: pidgin, it is great but most MSN Messenger users would probably prefer aMSN
re: media portal; i haven't used any of these, but myth TV, mythubuntu & linux MCE sound better.
re:I also find the VLC/WMP comparison a bit strange; for playing music, vlc losers badly agaisnt the likes of amarok though i *do* use it for video,
re: spot on with 7zip
re: gimp; i think gimpshop, may be the way forward for the loudest criticism of gimp (interface), but other than that i agree with most; gimp can do everry thing photoshop can.
re: rrsowl; im suprised you bothered. azerus might have been a better choice.
I find the audacity comparison quite strange; ive been using audacity for a *long* time and I have never ever thought of it as recording level software etc, but merely the necessay piece of software that every home needs when you need to edit an mp3 30 seconds shorter etc. thing i like about it least is the magnify mouse mode and most is the plugin architecture.
i agree with most things said about firefox; there are really no excuses for not running it with adblockplus installed these days.

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 7:43pm

If Pidgin isn't very attractive, you may have a look at an online messenger client, built on top of the open source Ruby On Rails at www dot meebo dot com

WhitespiralTue 20 November, 2007 9:04pm

Great. Finally a major site promoting some very good open source alternatives to the eternal money-suckers. Now just have the balls to recommend other OSes as well, because you aren't afraid of Microsoft, are you? Are you?

AnonymousTue 20 November, 2007 10:18pm

Excellent article Nate Lanxon. Please keep writing them!

ResunaTue 20 November, 2007 11:12pm

Outlook is not "essential for business". If anything, Outlook is *dangerous* for business. I banned Outlook (along with every other program that used Microsoft's HTML control, including IE) in 1997 at our site, and for the next five years we were the only part of the company that had no virus problems. Every time there was a company-wide virus problem, we missed out on the fun. Then they decided to centralize IT, outsource to IBM, and when we got borged we immediately joined in on the next company-wide virus infestation.

And we didn't miss out on any features. We used web-based calendar applications, which had the advantage that they could be used from any browser.

The latest version of Outlook uses a different HTML rendering engine, and may be an exception to this problem, but the one it's using may allow for attacks based on Office scripting APIs. But in any case our experience shows that you don't need Outlook... you just need more than one tool to replace Office.

ResunaTue 20 November, 2007 11:16pm

Gimp vs Photoshop: very few applications handle structured layers (like text) like Photoshop, and Gimp is no exception. When you enter text it's immediately simplified, which means you can't resize and drag and warp your captions to fit the subject the way you can in Photoshop.

If anyone knows of an open source bitmap editor that handles text the way Photoshop does, speak out damnit...

ThoreauHDTue 20 November, 2007 11:47pm

I actually found a few new programs that I hadn't used before in this article. And I use linux 24/7. Kinda of embarassing really. Oh well. Thanks.

AnonymousWed 21 November, 2007 1:40am

Great stuff here. A list of must have firefox extensions might be appropriate to follow with?

AnonymousWed 21 November, 2007 4:01am

GIMP is actually much better than the Photoshop. I like GIMP a lot, but I detest the Photoshop.

I use GIMP for Windows.

AnonymousWed 21 November, 2007 6:10am

If using Pidgin I'd suggest also using the "Off-the-Record Messaging" plugin... it allows encryption of your messages and is compatible with other clients such as Adium X (popular OS X client), Miranda and Trillian.

AnonymousWed 21 November, 2007 6:16am

Pidgin is beautiful compared to the ad-filled and bloated commercial alternatives. And, as others have mentioned, it can be further skinned.

hadasoWed 21 November, 2007 7:26am

The GIMP is good for kids.
Kids easily adapt to new environments. Just put the GIMP on their PC, show them the icon that opens it (and perhaps show them how to choose "file->new if they are really young), and wait a few hours to see what they've done with it, and you'd be amazed at their creativity. Then after a few days ask them to teach you how to use it. Kids learn by doing things, and giving them powerful tools helps their creativity. My 7 years old son did in the first 10 munutes of using the GIMP much more than he ever did with Photoshop.
BTW it is possible to use the GIMP (and some other open source software packages) on Windows without installing it by using the versions from PortableApps.
another thing: Art of Illusion is another open software application that kids can do marvelous things with if you just lets them play with it and learn by trial and error.

mrbenWed 21 November, 2007 9:16am

FWIW, the latest version of Pidgin has reinstated the option to view protocol icons next to your buddies, so you can see if they're on MSN/ICQ/AIM/Jabber/whatever.

AnonymousWed 21 November, 2007 11:26am

Oh no, you can't use OO for e-mail. Well, s**t I guess you may need to get another free program to fix that problem, in the corporate world. Like maybe use Seamonkey. Then you can get a web browse and an e-mal client. Who wrote this? Maybe we should get a look at who pays this person.

AnonymousWed 21 November, 2007 8:51pm

Yeah, genius ... if only Opera was Opensource ... You some code somewhere?
... And i don't think Opera is the most secure Web Browser ...
At least i know IE is not that one ...

Foxy GoddessThu 22 November, 2007 5:16am

There's no doubt these alternatives are wonderful - but there's some great stuff out there that is also free, even if not strictly open source. For a start, there's Opera browser. It's up there as far as security is concerned, and many of the FireFox extensions that you have to download and add on, come standard with Opera (including pop-up blocking, ad blocking, using right-click function to save graphics, a "wand" to save passwords and the ability to automatically fill out frequently-used fields like your name and address, to name a few). It also has a built-in email client (including POP3), a built-in download manager, and you can right-click -> save to note - and then later, right-click ->insert note on other web pages. If you're tired of filling out the "about me" section in various online profiles, create a note, then whenever you have to do the "about me" thing, just right click and insert the note you select - done! I have lots of notes for various purposes. It has tabbed browsing, of course, and is completely skinnable and customisable. I have a whole bar full of quick-launch buttons (if you like), rather than messing around with my bookmarks. Oh yeah - and it comes with IRC. Oh, and you can reopen closed pages (by default - no add-on required). But wait, there's more! Seriously. Check it out. I used to exclusively use FireFox - till I found Opera.

I use Gaim/Pidgin regularly - don't undersell it, guys! It doesn't just do Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and ICQ. It also does Jabber, Gadu Gadu, Google Talk, MySpace IM, GroupWise, Bonjour, QQ, SILC, Sametime, Simple, IRC and XMPP. It really is a true all-in-one messaging client, without the annoying ads - and is uses a fraction of the memory the others use. And yes, you can have a display picture, status message, etc. with it. Another alternative which is free, but not quite as comprehensive (and not Open Source) is Trillian Basic.

AnonymousThu 22 November, 2007 10:56am

Pls don't post 10 page articles with 2 sentences and 20 billion adds in every page. I would have forwarded the link to this article to all my friends, but the format is borderline torturous.

AnonymousThu 22 November, 2007 11:00am

I had a go at vlc, which i had not heard of before. I realize that this is new(ish) app. But I experienced stability that I would be unhappy with even in an alpha release of windows ( Can't even blame it on windows - I installed it on OpenSuSe 10.3) ... Now I'm not having a go at the developers who have no doubt put in countless hours getting it to the state it is, but touting this as an alternative that I NEED when its in its infancy is a bit sensational, and a bit annoying for some who might then go and try and use these. Anyway..thats my 2 cents

AnonymousSat 24 November, 2007 2:42am

Why the presumption that businesses need Outlook? For starters, it's a crappy email client and secondly, there are better solutions for out there for managing online calendars. Email is NOT hard people.

IMHO, the "Outlook as a necessity" mindset stems from a combination of "we've always done it that way" and the legions of help desk drones w/ 2-year college degrees who've never touched any software that doesn't have a Microsoft logo...

AnonymousTue 27 November, 2007 3:04pm

I have used Firefox for a couple of years. The only gripe I have is that some sites won't open in Firefox. I must then go to IE to view the site. But overall it's great.

AnonymousFri 18 January, 2008 9:32am

Is there any tool to convert the VB coded macros of Ms office file to that adapitable for open office? If VB coded macros works in open office it is going to be a ver useful tool.......

AnonymousFri 22 February, 2008 11:19pm

If you are a advanced user, you can do nothing but laughing about WinZip "advanced features", as 7-Zip offers a lot more features than WinZip.

If you want to exchange data with others, it's better to use ZIP archives compatible to ZIP2.0 standard (Deflate algorithm compression). In this case 7-Zip beats WinZip not only because its free, but also as the 7-Zip Deflate implementation allows you to use more than one CPU thread, which speeds up compression on dual or quad core computers. Beside that 7-Zip's archives are a bit smaller than the ZIP2.0 compatible ones produced by WinZip.

You may take it to the edge, using "Ultra Compression" for Deflate or even "Ultra Compression" with Deflate64 algorithm for smaller still ZIP2.0 compatible files.
But the little advance in better compression, does not weight up the much lower compression speed.

WinZip (since version 10.0, I guess) offers compression with PPMd algorithm for ZIPs but it's no good idea to use it, because a lot of ZIP decompressors can't handle these ZIPs. Beside that its much slower and uses more memory than Deflate. Also the memory usage and time for decompression equals to the compression time. (For ZIP with Deflate, decompression is faster and less memory consuming.)

If you use the PPMd algorithm you better combine it with the 7Z archive format. 7Z supports solid mode compression which will lead to much smaller archives than the combination of PPMd and ZIP when compressing many files.
If you want to get the archive as small as possbile 7Z solid archiving with its default LZMA compression method will be the best choice for most cases. LZMA nearly always compresses better than PPMd, can use two CPU threads (PPMd can use a single thread only), and its decompression speed is approximately 10 to 20 times faster than its compression speed.

Did I mention that 7Z supports Unicode file names and 256 bit AES data encryption and that you can encrypt the file names, too?

7-Zip outscores WinZip at every aspect. WinZip is beaten by nearly every compression freeware or shareware software you can find.
I you want to have a every-day, easy-to-use compressor for ZIPs, addionally providing an own archive format with features and compression ratio comparable to 7Z and furthermore having more features than the combination of 7-Zip and WinZip Pro but for the same amount of money you have to pay for WinZip, you may take a look at WinRAR.

AnonymousThu 6 March, 2008 3:01pm

i don't understand about the open source alternatives for common office or industry support software.can somebody help me..

AnonymousSat 15 March, 2008 5:47pm

What an excellent article. I already use some of these programs, but it's great to know that many others have free alternatives too. Bookmarked.

AnonymousWed 7 May, 2008 1:11pm

I came here via Google loking for an alternative for 7-Zip, which I have already used. I have yet to try the most recent version, but the editing (e.g. select) functions weren't as good as they could be. Count that sort of thing in the "vast array of features for advanced users" that WinZip spoils you with.

Also WinZip, 7-Zip and any other compression agent I've ever come across don't handle EVERY compression format (.ACE?). Is there one out there that does?

AnonymousWed 7 May, 2008 1:30pm

"There is no reason not to use Firefox." Opera not only has tabbed browsing like Firefox (and now IE) but allows retention of the tabs from session to session, which Firefox doesn't. That's reason enough for me, I have the same 19 tabs open day after day.

I know, Firefox allows you to "save session" with the tabs and then reload them... Opera does that automatically. Also, it seems "user scripts" work straight away on Opera, on Firefox you need to add an extension called Greasemonkey.

AnonymousMon 4 August, 2008 10:11pm

Opera does not have tabbed browsing like firefox. Operas "tabs" are basically a slimmed down MDI view, without all the capabilities of MDI but keeping all the attendant annoyances... for example, the tab bar is not associated with the page your'e viewing, it actually takes over the menu bar. I tried using the latest Opera and gave up. They shoudl either implement tabs afresh or go back to MDI.

AnonymousSat 6 September, 2008 12:19am

it's secure because it's not as popular as ms stuff. If it had a proper user base it would become as much of a target- then we'd really see just how secure it is.
Although ms products may be a target there are lots of people working on prevention- can't say there'd be the same effort for this.