Free and Open Source Software Recommendations from Informians for Informians.

Below are recommendations of Free or Open Source software for fellow Informians if you would like to add a recommendation send it in …@informian.com (Click to show address) (why put me through this?).

Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus

Ad-Aware by Lavasoft [Free] - I basically only use this adware removal software when attempting to revive a badly ad wared system, but for that its one of the best.

AVG Anti-Virus [Free] - A very good very frequently updated anti-virus if I used an anti-virus this would be it.

HijackThis [Free] [Advanced] - Very advanced registry analysis tool, recently purchased by TrendMicro read about it here.

Rootkit Revealer [Free] [Advanced] - Written as freeware by Mark Russinovich (formerly Sysinternals now Microsoft). The only way to find some types of rootkits.

Spybot Search & Destroy [Free] - The first spyware removal tool I remember seeing and still among the best. With “immunization” tricks that help keep the spyware at bay.

Windows Defender [Free] - Microsofts anti-spyware tool comes with Vista so will soon be unnessisary to have a download page. The download link is from filehippo because the Microsoft site asks you to validate your windows install before download.

Audio and Video

Audacity Audio Editor [Open] - The best free light weight easy to use audio editor I have used.

Media Player Classic [Free] - Sometimes when something is done its done. The earlier versions of Windows Media Player where fast and light it didn’t get any better than this. Future versions of media player just got larger and slower.

VLC Player [Open] - VLC player is the only video player you need. It can handle most formats even the pain in the ass formats that don’t want to be played by anything. No need to install Real Player or Quicktime again. Sure VLC is ugly but at least you can use Classic Winamp skins to pretty it up a bit if your into that kind of thing.

CD and DVD Tools

CDBurnerXP [Free] - Their site slogan says it all “CDBurnerXP burns CDs and DVDs for free!”. It does a fine job easy to use and free, what more do you need.

CDex [Open] - The easiest way to rip CDs to MP3 using CDDB it tags the MP3s properly and allows you to set up your own naming conventions. If you need to rip all your CDs to MP3 this is how you do it.

Daemon Tools [Free] [Advanced] - Daemon Tools allows you to create a virtual disk drive and mounts disk images. *Warning* Even tho this is great software it does come with some annoying adware in the form of a toolbar during instillation go custom and unselect the toolbar.

ImgBurn [Free] - ImgBurn is light and easy to use for burning all kinds of disk images.

File Management

7zip [Open] - 7-zip is my pick for best compression tool. For developers it even is available in .dll version and has an exposed API.

AxCrypt [Open] - The perfect mid scale encryption solution (see TrueCrypt for more robust file system encryption).

Picasa [Free] - Picasa was the greatest personal photo handeling software around before Google bought it. It seems to to have gotten even better.

TrueCrypt [Open] [Recommendation]- The ultimate piece of encryption software offers features that allow for plausible deniability of even the existence of your most secret files. Suitable for the most sensitive of data offering the highest level of data security.

Messaging and Chat

Google Talk [Free] - Google talk is the chat client of choice for the Informian community. …@gmail.com (Click here to show Jon’s Gmail address)

mIRC [Free] - Mikes Internet Relay Chat client is a full featured IRC client that supports a very complex scripting language. As a side note this script language was the gateway drug for me as a young programmer.

Mozilla Thunderbird [Open] - When I use an e-mail client this is it. It is full featured and a great competitor to outlook, lotus notes and the rest.

Network Utilities

Hamachi [Free] [Advanced] - Easy free Virtual Private Network software.

TightVNC [Open] [Advanced] - Easy to use light weight Virtual Network Client.

WireShark [Open] [Advanced] - Previously know as Ethereal. WireShark is an advanced packet sniffer/network protocol analyzer.

Office and News

Feed Demon [Free] - I strongly recommend Google Reader for your RSS needs if you simply must have a traditional PC side reader Feed Demon should do the trick nicely.

OpenOffice [Open] - OpenOffice.org (a Sun property) has created a MS Office clone with 99% of the features you need. It even allows editing of MS Office file formats.

Tech Tools

ClipX [Free] [Recommendation] - Brilliantly simple clipboard extension a must have on nearly any computer I lay hands on.

DriverMax [Free] [Advanced] - Allows you to export and then latter import all the drivers from a system. A real life saver at times. Although the program is very sloppy I don’t know of any better.