Russell Bateman’s free and open software information site...

Links to my own pages for open software

• OpenOffice.org productivity suite FAQ
  
• Open Office productivity suite links
  
• The GIMP graphics software FAQ
  

Raw links to open software

• OpenOffice.org: office productivity suite
• Firefox the hit Internet browser and the only one I use.
• Thunderbird: new e-mail client the only one I use.
• Sunbird: calendaring software project I now recommend Google calendaring.
• The GIMP: graphics manipulation application (like PhotoShop) I use this on Linux; PaintShopPro, now defunct at the hands of Corel (what else?), works much better, but is Windows-only.
• Inkscape: vector graphics application (like Adobe Illustrator®)
• WinSCP: free SFTP, FTP and SCP client better than FileZilla and the only one you can use to maintain pages on my web server.
• FileZilla: fast and reliable FTP client and server I don't recommend using FTP anymore: use SCP instead.
• Nvu: webpage layout application
  Nvu down-loads:
  • nvu-1.0-win32-installer-full.exe—Windows full installer
  • nvu-1.0-win32-full.zip—Zip version of above file for those behind restrictive firewalls.

Additional free or low-cost software links

• avast! anti-virus software (best)
  
• Burn4Free® (great CD/DVD creation software, easy-to-use)
  

List of software that I use everyday

• Firefox (ALL of my browsing at home and at work)
  
• Thunderbird (all my personal mail)
  
• OpenOffice (home and work—even when I have
  Microsoft Office!)
  
• WinSCP (to maintain all my webpages from my Windows host)
• avast! Note that you have to be very clever to get the absolutely free version of AVG, the anti-virus I used to recommend. Moreover, I had some trouble (resolved) once installing it on Windows XP and, even after considerable searching and playing around, never found a solution that would work for the new Windows Vista box in my kitchen. So, I've abandoned recommending AVG and now recommend avast! for which I found much support during my research to figure out how to solve the AVG nightmare. I'll be migrating all my Windows computers over to this product.
• The GIMP (on Linux) I have to use this on Linux and it's pretty gimpy to be sure: the tool controls aren't as accurate and useful as those of PaintShopPro or Adobe PhotoShop, but it's free.
  
• Burn4Free (at home and at work)
  
• (I don’t use Nvu because I write all my HTML, CSS and JavaScript by hand. I can’t recommend it, but then I can’t recommend any software, like FrontPage or Dreamweaver that writes
  HTML for you.)