This article was first written in January 2004 for
the BeezNest technical website (http://glasnost.beeznest.org/articles/101)
There's about time relatives of mine don't want to change their operating system to Linux because they fear to be lost, but commonly use a lot of softwares under "test periods" to assist them in Windows because there's a natural lack of some of these functionalities that you would want your computer to have.
Here is a list that will become longer with time of tools from the Open Source Community that run under Win32 OSes like a road-runner would run just in front of the bad and evil coyote.
The
GNUWin II Project tries to do distribute a compilation of such programs and utilities.
The project
Framasoft (in French) gathers Free Software projects in a huge directory.
Internet browsing and communicating
- Mozilla (Firefox/ThunderBird/Sunbird) replaces Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Outlook
- Sylpheed replaces Outlook Express
- GAIM(now called Pidgin) replaces MSN Messenger, Mirabilis ICQ
- Exodus replaces MSN Messenger, Mirabilis ICQ
Office suite & Tools
Imaging & Multimedia tools
- Gimp replaces Adobe Photoshop, Paint, PaintShop Pro
- imgv replaces ACDSee
- Dia replaces Visio
- MPlayer or VLC player replace Windows Media Player, QuickTime, RealPlayer
Backup and Compression
Remote control: SSH, Telnet, X
Relational DataBase Management Systems
- PostgreSQL replaces Access, Oracle, MS-SQL Server
- MySQL replaces Access, Oracle, MS-SQL Server
- Firebird replaces Access, Oracle, MS-SQL Server
Web server
- Apache replaces IIS (prefer version 2.x+)
Programming tools and languages
Network & Security tools
Comparitech also has a nice list of network tools you can check.
