OpenOffice.org: office productivity suite    Firefox: Internet browser    Thunderbird: e-mail client    The GIMP: graphics manipulation    Inkscape: vector graphics application    avast! anti-virus: antivirus software for PCs WinSCP: free SFTP, FTP and SCP client   

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


Links to my own pages for open software

Raw links to open software

Additional free or low-cost software links

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.)

Important note on the Java Runtime Environment (JRE)

Before downloading OpenOffice and other open software, it’s not a bad idea to ensure you have the latest JRE installed on your workstation. It is free for download and use. Click here and then in the center of the page click the link titled, Download J2SE JRE.