Best free programs

‘THAT’S a cool looking notebook,” the customer at the computer shop said.

He was referring to the Asus Eee PC, an ultra-portable notebook that I was buying. The notebook’s small form factor and attractive price had made quite an impression, and he asked me a few more questions. The fact that the computer had no hard disk but used a flash memory drive seemed to intrigue him, but the idea of Linux—the operating system installed on the Eee PC—seemed to stump him. He had only heard of the operating system but had never used it.

“Okay ba ’yan? [Is it okay?]” he asked.

In the brief time I had, I tried to explain to him that Linux wasn’t just okay, it was superior to Windows in terms of security. In the two years since I switched from Windows, I told him, I had never been hit by a virus attack—and I’ve never had to use any antivirus software.

What about programs, he wanted to know. On Linux, I explained, all your software is free (in both senses of the word). There is no need to pay exorbitant licensing fees or use pirated programs and you are free to modify them to suit your needs.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to get into too much detail and merely advised him to download Ubuntu, one of the most popular free Linux distributions, so he could try it out. If I had time, I’d probably have given him this list of commonly used Windows programs and their counterparts in Linux:

Azureus, BitTorrent or uTorrent. Utorrent, the hands-down best utility for downloading large files in Windows, does not run on Linux. Azureus does, but it’s a memory hog and not all that good. Fortunately, there are Deluge and qBittorrent, which are feature-rich and efficient alternatives. Transmission, a simpler torrent handler that is available on Mac OS X, now also runs on Linux.

Dreamweaver. Site designers looking for a what-you-see-is-what-you-get tool like Dreamweaver can turn to the free and open source Kompozer or Nvu for their Web authoring needs.

iTunes. For many iPod users, iTunes is defacto program for playing and organizing music files. Apple’s program isn’t available on Linux, but there are many alternatives. These include Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox and Songbird.

MS Office. OpenOffice.org comes already installed on many Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, and is comparable (and compatible) with Microsoft’s Office suite. OpenOffice Word Processing is the equivalent of Word; OpenOffice Spreadsheet does what Excel does; OpenOffice Presentation is the free version of PowerPoint; and OpenOffice Database is the counterpart of Access. Longtime MS Office users will take some time to get accustomed to the slightly different menus, but there are enough similarities to make the transition fairly quick and painless. For most users, there really is no need to shell out thousands of pesos for MS Office, or worse, break the law by using pirated versions of the software, when OpenOffice is available free.

MS Outlook. Need an integrated e-mail, contacts and calendar program in one? Evolution, which is already installed with Ubuntu, or use Mozilla Thunderbird, which is also available free.

MSN and Yahoo Messenger. You don’t need to be cut off from your MSN or Yahoo instant messaging buddies with Pidgin, a program that can handle accounts from both networks as well as AOL and Google Talk. Skype users will be happy to know that a Linux version of the popular Internet phone program also runs on Linux.

Nero Burning. The defacto CD burning software that is bundled with many CD writers is available on Linux but is free only if you are a registered user, and is not open source. Fortunately, there are many open source alternatives, including Brasero, GnomeBaker andK3B, all of which enable users to create data and audio CDs, VCDs and DVDs.

PageMaker, MS Publisher or InDesign. Desktop publishing in the Linux world can be done through the free and open source program called Scribus.

Photoshop. Gimp, short for GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a free and open source image editor that does many of the things Adobe Photoshop does, including photo retouching and image composition. Photoshop users will need to get used to multiple docks and the different menu layout and terms, but there’s a lot of help available, including videos on YouTube that demonstrate how to accomplish certain tasks in Gimp. Like Photoshop, Gimp has a large variety of plug-ins that enable users to apply special effects and perform other operations more easily.

Winamp. The venerable MP3 player is not available on Linux, but Audacious or XMMS will make longtime Winamp users right at home. Both players support the same audio formats and even Winamp skins.

Windows Media Player. Nobody should miss Windows Media Player because there are many better open source alternatives for playing video on your computer. VLC Media Player is on top of my list, but Mplayer and Totem Movie Player will do the same job.

A few years ago, it was easy to dismiss Linux alternatives as inferior copies of programs available in Windows or Mac OS. Anyone who uses these applications today knows this is no longer true. And the truly amazing part is, all of them can be downloaded free of charge, with no danger of a virus attack—or a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Now if that’s not a great deal, I don’t know what is.

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