"Must-Have" Open Source software?

[Please support Stackprinter with a donation]

[+33] [79] Drake

[2009-07-16 07:12:59]

[ software-rec open-source must-have ]

[ http://superuser.com/questions/4939] [DELETED]

When I am searching for a program to use at home I will consider at first all open source programs because I like the philosophy, the approach and the communities behind these projects.

What are, in your opinion, the must-have Open Source software that should be installed on every Home PC?

One program per answer please.

Should be CW? [I don't need 15 characters to say that...] - Ehtyar

sorry, I am still not sure when use it, now should it be CW :) - Drake

Why not make the condition stronger and go for free software? fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html - mas

(9) CW is for subjective questions that have no definitive answer - Ehtyar

For which base OS? - Doug Harris

(4) Another "must-have" question? Is this the only reason people go to Super User? - musicfreak

@Doug the questiony was OS indipendent - Drake

(6) I'm still surprised these questions are allowed to remain open while others are closed. - romandas

definitely should be community wiki - matthews

(1) The approach and community aspects are very visible in some non-FOSS projects. The Opera browser is one example I know of. They are very open with development. - DisgruntledGoat

Due to spam this question is now locked. - Diago

[+142] [2009-07-16 07:25:32] John T

7-Zip ^[1]

[1] http://www.7-zip.org/

[+138] [2009-07-16 07:18:12] mark4o [

ACCEPTED]

Firefox ^[1]

[1] http://getfirefox.com

(31) With AdBlock installed as a bare minimum. - Charles Roper

it seems that Firefox is most popular here, after two weeks I can accept it as answer. Also for me, it's of course the first software I install on a newly installed PC. - Drake

(62) FireFox is so overrated. - Nippysaurus

(1) @Nippysaurus: If there is a better open source browser then please suggest it. Chromium may be a hot contender once the bugs are fixed and Mac and Linux versions are out of beta. - mark4o

(1) Iceweasel is so much better ;) - DisgruntledGoat

(6) sighs - kjfletch

(4) sighs with kjfletch - TWith2Sugars

(1) sighs with TWith2Sugars - chakrit

(3) @Nippysaurus: That may be but until other browsers have AdBlock Plus, most techies will stick with Firefox - Schnapple

(17) I wont switch from Firefox to IE because of valuable Add-Ons. I wont switch from Firefox to Google Chrome because Google is sneaky with privacy. I wont switch from Firefox to Safari because it got installed after I installed iTunes. I wont switch from Firefox to Opera because Opera is a bunch of whiners who wants to get bundled in all the Operating Systems, starting with Windows. - thenonhacker

@schnapple most techies block ads before the browser even has to :) Adblock is a major resource hog. - salmonmoose

(1) @thenonhacker: If privacy is what's stopping you from trying out Chrome, you might want to take look look at Iron: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron It's basically Chrome with all the tracking and other privacy-invading stuff stripped away. - Matthew

@salmonmoose, how? Hosts file? Is there a way to instantly block nearly all ads that's as fast to set up as installing adblock? - skypecakes

FF with AdBlock, NoScript, and BetterPrivacy installed FTW. - nedm

[+127] [2009-07-16 07:23:55] John T

VLC ^[1]

[1] http://videolan.org/vlc

[+90] [2009-07-16 07:28:37] Ehtyar

Notepad++ ^[1]. Text editor. Windows only.

[1] http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

Works pretty well w/ Wine on Linux, too. - dsimcha

[+88] [2009-07-21 19:48:20] paulgreg

Ubuntu ^[1] ! By the way, it includes Firefox, Libreoffice, Pidgin,... :)

[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/

(7) +1 for having an 'all-in-1' solution. - LiraNuna

"Please note that the GIMP is not included by default anymore starting with version 10.04" - alexanderpas

[+85] [2009-07-16 07:28:07] hangy

PuTTY ^[1]. Free Telnet/SSH Client. For Windows and Unix.

[1] http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

(1) most definitely! awesome! - Sander Versluys

(7) Why would you want this on a unix system? - Nippysaurus

(2) The question didn't say on a Unix system, and you can run it on Unix. I eventually decided that, while it's indispensible on Windows, I had better Linux options. - David Thornley

@David: The problem is the answer implies that you "need" putty on linux. - hasen j

It can be used as a gui for .ssh/config, still I'm not convinced that it makes sense. - mbq

[+73] [2009-07-23 16:17:29] Vin

Chrome, Chrome and Chrome ^[1]. Open source web browser. Windows only (but Linux and Mac OS X versions are under development).

[1] http://chrome.google.com

(1) The Linux version is pretty stable right now. It's missing Flash and some other small bits, but it's never once crashed on me. Get it from dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel - DisgruntledGoat

(20) Technically, the open source part of Chrome is Chromium: code.google.com/chromium - Jason Sundram

I like Google Search, but I still prefer Firefox just for the add-ons alone. Google frowns on Ad-Block Plus, I love it. - thenonhacker

-1 Chrome is not open-source... for open source use Chromium - artyom

[+70] [2009-07-16 08:36:01] FerranB

VirtualBox ^[1]. For platform virtualization ^[2].

Multi-platform, but only for x86 CPUs. No cost for personal, educational or evaluation use. There is also scaled-down open-source version.

[1] http://www.virtualbox.org/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform%5Fvirtualization

[+69] [2009-07-21 20:25:58] Christian

Vim ^[1], a powerful text editor.

[1] http://www.vim.org/

gVim rocks. I always install it on my Windows OS - pcapademic

Couldn't do anything meaningful anymore on a PC without vim. - René Nyffenegger

vim could beat any text editor. No matter what. - Mark Szymanski

terrible shortcuts... how do you use it? - Sergiy Byelozyorov

[+59] [2009-07-21 18:08:51] nik

TrueCrypt ^[1]
Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux

[1] http://www.truecrypt.org/

(1) That is a MUST - acidzombie24

The NHS (Healthcare in the UK) approve TrueCrypt so it must be good! - Dog Ears

[+55] [2009-07-16 07:27:52] Ehtyar

Pidgin ^[1] (formerly named Gaim). Instant messaging client. Multi-platform.

[1] http://www.pidgin.im/

Or the Mac equivalent, Adium! - Henri Watson

Ohh how I wish Adium had a Windows port. - user10547

[+54] [2009-07-16 07:29:32] Ehtyar

FileZilla ^[1]. Open source FTP client and FTP server.

[1] http://filezilla-project.org/

[+54] [2009-07-21 18:03:02] mandroid

Python ^[1]! Is a programming language. Multi-platform.

Python at home, Python at work, Python on your phone, and Python in the car!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python%5F%28programming%5Flanguage%29

What do you use Python for? - Peter Mortensen

(10) It's not something that a regular user would use. - hasen j

I can totally get behind the Python in the car thing. In my pants? Hmm.... - Andrew Szeto

I don't really see Python as software though. Language yes. - Svish

(3) Python on the plane - alexanderpas

[+53] [2009-07-16 07:28:05] mas

GIMP ^[1], the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

[1] http://www.gimp.org/

(5) GIMP is meh. Photoshop still rules. In fairness, Paint.NET is catching up. - thenonhacker

(7) Paint.net is getting my votes - in the corporate work place an application called The Gimp will not do! - Adrian

[+52] [2009-07-16 07:24:40] mas

Openoffice.org ^[1]

[1] http://openoffice.org

(22) Probably the best open source office suite, but still doesn't hold a candle to MS Office. - matthews

(4) What keeps me from using OpenOffice.org is Not really its 1995 user interface. What keeps me from using it, is that it destroys the fidelity of documents created in MSOffice. If you want a very decent and free MSOffice alternative, use KingSoft Office 2007 Personal: instantfundas.com/2008/09/… - thenonhacker

OO.o is still a tough sell in the corporate world, but getting easier as it improves with every release (especially from 3.1 onward) while MS Office simultaneously get more expensive (and bloated). - nedm

[+45] [2009-08-19 04:14:31] Brian Surowiec

Paint.NET ^[1] has come in handy for me at work when I don't have Photoshop on hand. Not sure if this falls under the open source label but it is free. At the very least their home page has a quote from Jeff Atwood on it.

[1] http://www.getpaint.net/

(7) This is no longer open source. - Travis Beale

(2) OK its not Open Source, but it is FREE. And you can develop plugins for it - Adrian

Oho! Quote by Jeff! Can't resist... must upvote... argh.... :E - Arnis L.

[+41] [2009-07-21 18:01:27] Charles Roper

KeePass ^[1]. An open source password management utility for Windows.

[1] http://keepass.info/

[+35] [2009-07-16 08:09:45] FerranB

Cygwin ^[1].

[1] http://www.cygwin.com/

(4) How would I install this on my Linux box? :-) - NVRAM

(4) It's installed by default ;-) - FerranB

andlinux.org beats Cygwin for ease-of-use. - mankoff

[+34] [2009-07-24 18:06:10] Neil

OpenSSH ^[1]

[1] http://www.openssh.com/

[+34] [2009-07-24 18:08:35] Neil

Git ^[1]

Not just for versioning code, use it to track all sorts of things that change over time, even chroots. If you look, you will find many places where it proves useful.

[1] http://git-scm.com/

[+32] [2009-07-25 02:35:07] acidzombie24

audacity ^[1] Audio editing tool

[1] http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Great for editing; not very good for recording. It doesn't seem to like many sound cards. I can't get it to record on either Windows Vista or Ubuntu. Luckily I can extract audio from many files automatically then edit. - DisgruntledGoat

I am waiting for Audacity to get Nero WaveEditor's spatial audio plugins. - thenonhacker

[+26] [2009-07-23 22:18:24] Frank

TortoiseSVN ^[1]
Subversion ^[2]
~~Visual SVN Server ^[3]~~
Thunderbird ^[4]
NetBeans ^[5]
Mercurial ^[6]
Git ^[7]

Everything else I use has been mentioned. Note, I'm a software developer and hence the software development tools. But, I use SubVersion for much more than Software Development -- check it out.

[1] http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/
[2] http://subversion.tigris.org/
[3] http://www.visualsvn.com/server/
[4] http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/
[5] http://www.netbeans.org/
[6] http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/
[7] http://git-scm.com/

(2) Visual SVN isn't Open Source is it? - Svish

(1) First, I meant Visual SVN Server. Second, you are right. - Frank

: P - Svish

[+25] [2009-07-16 08:05:53] FerranB

Mozilla Thunderbird ^[1]. Open source E-mail client. Multi-platform.

[1] http://www.mozillamessaging.com/

I like TB's ease of use but it's missing some vital features for me (like editing signatures in the app itself, never found an extension for that). And version 3 is taking forever to come out. - DisgruntledGoat

[+23] [2009-07-16 07:27:07] Ehtyar

Perl ^[1]

[1] http://strawberryperl.com/

[+23] [2009-07-24 18:07:12] Neil

Grep ^[1]

ack ^[2] - Also known as ack-grep in Debian-based distros. It's much better than grep.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grep
[2] http://betterthangrep.com/

BareGrep is very nice for the Windows GUI crowd - cdenker

+1 I miss this nearly every time I'm on a Windows PC (yes, I know, there are GNU Tools for Windows...but I can't install everywhere I go, can't I?). - Bobby

I've created my own kind-of-grep application, especially because in most cases I find I need to know the few lines in the neighbourhood of the matches found. yoy.be/dirfind - Stijn Sanders

[+23] [2009-08-19 04:35:20] STW

Wireshark ^[1] for network debugging

[1] http://www.wireshark.org/

(4) among other things ;) - alpha1

[+20] [2009-07-21 18:11:55] nik

NMAP ^[1] V5.0 onwards with scripting support.

A free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. But: use it with care.

[1] http://nmap.org

+1 - Nmap Rocks - Mark Davidson

The new ncat included in NMAP is really awesome too - rogelio

[+15] [2009-07-25 01:11:02] matthews

Notepad 2 ^[1]

[1] http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

+1: Way better than Notepad++ - John Gietzen

[+15] [2009-07-16 07:59:20] Andrija

Chromium ^[1]. A web browser.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_%28web_browser%29

[+14] [2009-07-21 17:59:05] Charles Roper

WinSCP ^[1]

[1] http://winscp.net/eng/docs/introduction

[+13] [2009-08-04 00:30:58] Qwerty

Synergy ^[1] is a must have.

Also, Synergy+ ^[2] which is a fork with bug fixes and new features.

[1] http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/

[+13] [2009-08-18 09:26:35] Ola Eldøy

Eclipse ^[1]

[1] http://www.eclipse.org/

(1) This will get many +1's if we are in StackOverflow.com - thenonhacker

[+12] [2009-08-21 19:28:53] community_owned

Inkscape ^[1] - a must have for working with vector graphics

..and Blender ^[2] for 3D graphics

[1] http://inkscape.org/
[2] http://www.blender.org

[+9] [2009-08-21 19:29:33] KenB

CCleaner ^[1] - Freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool.

[1] http://www.ccleaner.com/

(5) That isn't OpenSource... - Bobby

[+8] [2009-08-21 10:43:18] drby

Launchy ^[1]

[1] http://www.launchy.net/

[+7] [2009-10-26 23:38:36] Russ Cam

Media Player Classic ^[1] - the king of media players.

[1] http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/

[+7] [2009-07-21 18:04:55] Charles Roper

Console ^[1]

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/

[+6] [2009-07-25 02:16:06] Weaver

UltraVNC ^[1]

[1] http://www.ultravnc.com/

[+6] [2009-07-17 16:56:54] mas

Lyx ^[1] with a full LaTeX installation, including convertors.

[1] http://www.lyx.org/

I'll agree with LaTeX, but I use TexMaker. - new123456

[+6] [2009-07-16 08:02:44] user205

EmacsW32 ^[1]

[1] http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html

-1: Vim forever! - Mark Szymanski

[+5] [2009-07-24 00:21:36] Bert Huijben

SlikSVN ^[1]
AnkhSVN ^[2]

[1] http://sliksvn.com/en/download
[2] http://ankhsvn.net/download

[+5] [2009-07-21 18:06:33] Charles Roper

InfraRecorder ^[1]

[1] http://infrarecorder.org/

[+5] [2009-08-31 04:33:42] Mahmoud Hossam

GCC ^[1] on Cygwin ^[2] on windows

[1] http://gcc.gnu.org/
[2] http://www.cygwin.com/

[+5] [2009-08-31 06:15:06] Craig

AutoHotKey ^[1] - Mouse and Keyboard Macro Program

[1] http://www.autohotkey.com/

Fugly language - brilliant functionality! - Matthew Lock

[+5] [2009-07-25 02:38:05] acidzombie24

virtualdub ^[1] Video Editing tool (avi).

[1] http://www.virtualdub.org/

[+4] [2009-08-21 11:30:30] DisgruntledGoat

Sumatra PDF ^[1]

Open source PDF viewer or Windows. Really fast and lightweight and no crapware.

[1] http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/index.html

[+4] [2009-08-21 12:11:46] Blam

Notepad++ ^[1] or Kate ^[2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad%2B%2B
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_%28text_editor%29

Notepad++ answer is a duplicate. - Lee

[+4] [2009-08-21 09:27:10] community_owned

FreeMind ^[1] for mind mapping

[1] http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main%5FPage

[+4] [2009-07-25 02:37:00] acidzombie24

ffmpeg ^[1] and its Win32 Build ^[2] video/audio encoding. Command line tool, there are shells out there.

[1] http://ffmpeg.org/
[2] http://ffmpeg.org/

[+3] [2009-08-19 02:44:18] nbolton

Synergy+ ^[1], it's a fork of Synergy, with some bug fixes and new features.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/

[+3] [2009-09-02 14:12:28] Donny V

Paint.NET ^[1] - image and photo editing software

[1] http://paint.net/

(4) this is a duplicate answer - Sorin Sbarnea

[+2] [2009-10-10 00:35:21] alpha1

Songbird ^[1]! It is an absolute must-have music manager. It gives iTunes ^[2] the bird :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_%28software%29
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes

Agree, but they ditched the Linux version :( - nedm

[+2] [2009-11-08 18:09:25] Wagnarock

ClamAV ^[1] or ( Clamwin ^[2] for Windows.)

According to the site it's "...designed especially for e-mail scanning on mail gateways" so it might not fit the bill for Home PC OSS, but I seem to remember reading that Clamwin is becoming a viable AV for home PC's too. I could be wrong.

[1] http://www.clamav.net/
[2] http://www.clamwin.com/

[+2] [2009-09-11 04:02:41] TomB

Chicken of the VNC ^[1]

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/

One of the best names for software! - Andy White

[+2] [2009-07-26 20:27:17] Toby Allen

Ditto ^[1] Clipboard Utility

[1] http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/

[+2] [2009-08-21 19:06:49] whs

ShadowExplorer ^[1] to recover lost files and folders.

[1] http://www.shadowexplorer.com

[+2] [2009-07-21 20:38:52] voyager

Amarok: The best Music Player in the block!

[+2] [2010-02-09 18:19:22] Thierry Lam

vi, Vim ^[1] or gVim ^[2]. I use that editor across Windows, Linux and Mac for both development and non-development stuff.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_%28text_editor%29
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_%28text_editor%29#Interface

[+1] [2010-01-24 09:25:37] hkda150

One more that is missing in the actual listing: OpenOffice ^[1]

[1] http://www.openoffice.org/

[+1] [2009-08-21 19:18:06] KenB

Taskbar Shuffle ^[1] - Windows taskbar rearranger for XP.

[1] http://nerdcave.webs.com/

Not open-source. - Kevin Panko

[+1] [2009-08-21 18:47:16] Cliche7

MPlayerWW ^[1]

GUI for MPlayer. Plays any HD video fine on my 7 years old PC.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/mplayer-ww/

[+1] [2009-08-03 13:05:23] martani_net

Kaxaml ^[1]

for WPF and Silverlight designers, Free, 2Mo size, and soo cool!

[1] http://www.kaxaml.com/

oops, that's not open source but it's free :) - martani_net

[+1] [2009-08-18 09:31:45] Jason Miy

Definitely Poderosa ^[1], a tabbed terminal emulator for Windows.

[1] http://en.poderosa.org/

[+1] [2009-08-19 02:55:53] rogelio

woof ^[1] - is a small simple webserver that can easily be invoked on a single file (or directory).

$ woof filename

Now serving on http://10.0.1.39:8080/

[1] http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/woof.html

[+1] [2009-08-19 04:40:27] STW

Miro ^[1]

It's an all around media guru with a slick interface. It's a vdeo player and podcast player with built-in RSS and BitTorrent support--just to name the high-level points.

[1] http://www.getmiro.com/

[+1] [2009-10-10 00:01:07] Xavierjazz

MuseScore - music notation http://www.musescore.org/

[+1] [2009-10-10 00:04:20] Xavierjazz

Greenshot ^[1] - Screenshot utility

[1] http://greenshot.sourceforge.net/

[+1] [2009-10-10 00:33:57] alpha1

WinSCP ^[1] for SSH, FTP, SCP ^[2]. It also acts as a dual pane file manager.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinSCP
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_copy

[+1] [2009-08-24 14:13:58] community_owned

StExBar, grepWin and CommitMonitor ^[1]

[1] http://tools.tortoisesvn.net/

[+1] [2009-11-13 15:41:25] community_owned

FAR ^[1] - the best File Manager ever!

[1] http://farmanager.com/

[+1] [2009-09-03 06:43:48] Vinayak

Keynote ^[1] Personal Information Manager

Keynote

[1] http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html

[0] [2009-09-07 14:57:35] galacticninja

IceWeasel ^[1] (browser)

Windows version: sourceforge.net/projects/iw4win

More info ( from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel ) :

Mozilla Foundation owns the trademark “Firefox” and claims the right to deny the use of the name and other trademarks to unofficial builds. Unless distributions use the binaries supplied by Mozilla or else have special permission, they must compile the Firefox source with an option enabled which gives Firefox the codename of the release version of Firefox on which it is based, and which doesn't use the official logo or other artwork.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla%5FCorporation%5Fsoftware%5Frebranded%5Fby%5Fthe%5FDebian%5Fproject

(2) I fail to see why you should use IceWeasel over Firefox. It's the same thing...the only difference is that the Debian-Guys didn't wanted to use the FireFox-Icon, and the Mozilla Foundation went like "Official Icon and Official Name or none of both". Which I completely understand. - Bobby

[0] [2009-10-24 11:03:20] Roberto Aloi

Inkscape ^[1] for vectorial graphics.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkscape

[0] [2009-12-18 17:52:19] Alexandre Jasmin

Tomboy ^[1] For taking notes

[1] http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/

[0] [2009-10-26 23:47:56] randy melder

phpMyAdmin ^[1]

[1] http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home%5Fpage/index.php

[0] [2009-09-02 13:24:02] community_owned

WebKit ^[1] (ships in the bundle version with an special version of the non-open sourced browser Safari.)

I just love it!

WebKit is maybe mostly known to be web browser engine behind Safari, but it also used in Apple's Mail, Google's Chrome, Microsoft Entourage ^[2], Palm's WebOS, Nokia's S60 browser, Shiira ^[3], OmniWeb ^[4], iCab ^[5], Epiphany ^[6], Iris ^[7], etc. And it runs on platforms and with toolkit such as Mac OS X, Mircosoft Windows, iPhone OS, Symbian operating system, Adobe's AIR ^[8], GTK+ ^[9], Qt ^[10] toolkit, KDE ^[11] 4.1, Syllable ^[12], Haiku ^[13], AROS ^[14], Morph and AmigaOS.

[1] http://webkit.org
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Entourage
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiira
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OmniWeb
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICab
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_%28web_browser%29
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Browser
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Integrated_Runtime
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK%2B
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28toolkit%29
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllable_Desktop_%28operating_system%29
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_%28operating_system%29
[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AROS_Research_Operating_System

It's also used in Chrome and Chromium. - Mark Szymanski

[0] [2009-08-19 03:59:16] kpierce8

xnview ^[1]

A really nice lightweight photo viewer.

[1] http://www.xnview.com/

This is not open-source. - Kevin Panko

[0] [2009-07-23 20:33:24] Adam Bronte

Xming ^[1] - An X Server for Windows

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/

[0] [2010-02-19 20:32:10] Trx64

K3B - Best CD/DVD Burner.

Kaxaml [1]

Kaxaml ^[1]