My Grandmother used to tell me “
Never to skimp on shoes or beds – because if you’re not in one, you’re in the other!” I’ve always translated that philosophy to my work life and have specifically tried to ensure that I don’t cut corners when it comes to the provision of the most essential business tools. It is widely accepted that in an IT dependant environment like software development the most sophisticated tools that money can buy should be the norm – but for some instances there are some huge potential cost savings to be gained by adopting Open Source or Free software. Here are the 5 Open Source apps that I cannot work without.
Mozilla FireFox
FireFox is my browser of choice and currently has about 24% of recorded usage share of web browsers second only to MS Internet Explorer
OpenOffice.Org
This is the SUN Microsystem free alternative to the MS Office Suite of applications. Although I use MS Office, I use OpenOffice both at home and with temporary or virtual clients simply because it is free and perfectly adequate for most Word Processing and Spreadsheet requirements. I also find OpenOffice.org essential for format conversion and for cross platform applications.
OpenProj
OpenProj is an Open Source alternative to Microsoft Project which it closely emulates. Buying MS Project for a large project team can be very cost inhibitive especially when there are non-power users involved such as senior management or temporary project members who simply need to occasionally review project files. OpenProj provides a perfectly acceptable alternative in such circumstances and allows .mpp files to be opened and saved.
GIMP
If I were a graphic designer then I’d definitely be using Adobe Photoshop. But I’m not, so I use GIMP. I tend to limit my photo editing requirements to cropping, resizing, web optimization, plus the odd bit of contrast and brightness juggling. For this amount of utilisation GIMP is ideal and free.
WinMerge
WinMerge is a free file comparison and merging tool which is ideal for the typical copy and paste coder.