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Mainly because I'm fed up with sites that list dozens of programs
for every imaginable category, when all I want is to find the best one,
I decided to create this page. Your opinion is welcome :-).
Ideally this page is the only one you visit when looking for the best
piece of free software, no need to browse for hours and try lots of stuff,
just get the program that's listed here.
Yes, there are no links, to find a piece of software type its name in Google.
Some of this software is only available for Linux and Mac OS X, a lot of it also
for Windows.
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InternetBest web browser: Firefox (but check out the very fast Opera! Recently, Firefox has become a bit of a resource hog..)Best bittorrent client: Azureus Best chat client: Pidgin (also get the Guifications and OTR plugins) (for Mac: Adium, and Growl plugin) Best usenet news reader: Pan Best web server: Apache Operating SystemBest operating system: FedoraBest small operating system: Slax (fits on USB key) Best operating system for the Asus Eee: Eeedora MultimediaaudioBest sound editor: Audacity Best music player: Xmms Best commandline audio processing: sox (general processing) normalize (volume normalization) id3tag (edit MP3 tags) Best CD "ripper": cdparanoia Best CD burning frontend: K3B Best PVR/Media system: MythTV Best MP3 encoder: lame (best front-end for these last two: grip ) images Best image viewer: Xnview (compact: Qiv) Best photo editor: Gimp Best photo organizer: KPhotoAlbum (Picasa is better except for its tagging options) Best image converter: ImageMagick Best image metadata editor: Exiftool image creation Best paint program for children: Tuxpaint video Best video editor: Kino Best video tool: Avidemux Best video player: Mplayer Best video converter: Mencoder (and Transcode, really) Best CD/DVD burn quality tester: qpxtool |
User InterfaceBest window manager: EnlightenmentOffice/ProductivityBest calendar program: IcalBest word processor: Abiword Best spreadsheet program: Gnumeric ProgrammingBest general editor: Emacs (for a coding color scheme, try zenburn)Best scripting language: Perl Best database software: MySQL Best programming system (IDE): Bluefish Best debugger: DDD ( Totalview !, not free unfortunately) Best memory checker: Valgrind ScientificBest graph plotting program: Gnuplot (online: Jpgraph )Best scientific word processor LaTeX System/general toolsBest keyboard tester: XKeyCapsBest text file comparison: xxdiff Best MBR/boot sector analyzer: BootMaster Best disk fragmentation visualizer: Davl Network toolsBest network mapper/port scanner: Nmap (best front-end: Umit)Best traffic monitor: iptraf Best packet analyzer: wireshark Best wireless network detector/sniffer: kismet 3D GraphicsBest 3D modeller: BlenderBest ray tracer: Povray MappingBest GPS transfer/converter: Gpsbabel |