Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gregarious Monk]

I've noticed posts from people looking for software for various purposes.

There's a lot of 'shareware' and 'trialware'*(see note below) out there that fits the bill. There's also a lot of software available completely free of charge that is as good as or better than a lot of commercial software available (freeware** or open-source***.)

I'd like to mention a few favourite 'open source' software packages for use on Windows here. If you're a Mac/Linux/Unix user PM me and I'll see if I can find something you need.

I'll start with a few packages and their merits and hopefully others who've found something totally free (not necessarily open-source***) that works well and does something useful (a subjective judgement ) will post their discoveries as well.

cheers,
the monk

*(software given to the end-user as an 'on approval' download with locked features or a limited-time usage with expectation that the user will pay for the full version.)
**(software offered on a where-is, as-is basis maintained by a single entity without any release of rights to the public beyond free use of the program.)
***(software for which, in addition to the program itself, the programming language source-code is available for examination/modification, usually with the benefit that the software is improved by community effort.)

[Gregarious Monk]

Ifranview (freeware):

http://www.irfanview.com/

Windows image file viewer with a huge range of options, including many image editing functions.

[Gregarious Monk]

OpenOffice.org (opensource):

http://www.openoffice.org/

Office suite with all the functions you need. Word processor compatible with MS Word, spreadsheet software, drawing program and more...

[Gregarious Monk]

Dia (opensource):

http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/

A diagramming program with features similar to MS Visio. Good for org charts, flowcharts, logic diagrams, etc.

[Gregarious Monk]

CDex (opensource):

http://www.cdex.n3.net/

MP3 encoding software with many user-configurable options.

[Gregarious Monk]

R (stats package) (opensource):

http://www.r-project.org/

R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.

[Gregarious Monk]

Audacity (opensource):

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Audacity is a free audio editor. You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, and MP3 files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings. It also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Echo, Change Tempo, and Noise Removal, and it also supports VST and LADSPA plug-in effects.

[Gregarious Monk]

PuTTY (terminal program) (opensource):

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

PuTTY is a client program for the SSH, Telnet and Rlogin network protocols.

[Gregarious Monk]

FileZilla (FTP/SFTP client) (opensource):

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client and server with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface.

[Gregarious Monk]

Metapad (freeware):

http://liquidninja.com/metapad/

metapad is a small, fast (and completely free) text editor for Windows 9x/NT/XP with similar features to Microsoft Notepad but with many extra (and rather useful) features. It was designed to completely replace Notepad since it includes all of Notepad's features and much, much more.

[Gregarious Monk]

PDF Creator (opensource):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

(Choose one of ...AFPLGhostscript.exe or ...GNUGhostscript.exe, differences are chiefly academic)

"PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDFs easily from nearly any application. With the PDFCreator Printer driver you turn any program into a PDF-machine."

It allows you to print to a 'virtual printer' that creates a PDF file like Adobe Acrobat would.

[Gregarious Monk]

Shareaza (P2P) (opensource):

http://www.shareaza.com/

"Shareaza is the most luxurious and sophisticated file sharing system you'll find. It can harness the power of up to four separate peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, including EDonkey2000, Gnutella, BitTorrent and Shareaza's native network, Gnutella2 (G2).

Not only that, but Shareaza is completely FREE and won't show any annoying ads or pop-ups. It won't install any unwanted third party programs that can wreak havoc with your computer. No spyware, no registration, no "paid version". Just download and use. Simple."

[jazblanc77]

Good stuff, thanks!

[Demophobe]

Wow....brilliant list! Thanks!

Am I the only one who finds a P2P program included in this list funny?

Thanks again GM.

[Gregarious Monk]

Thanks for the votes of confidence, Dem and Jaz. If anyone is looking for anything else, drop a note here. The stuff I've posted I've tested and used in projects both work-related and personal. Anything else I can think of I'll post. I hope others will too!