Saugus.net: Some Free Software

A Guide To Free Software

This page is meant to serve as a guide to free (and almost free) software. For those unfamiliar with the concept of free software, one of the first thoughts might be "Sure, you get what you pay for...". In the case of free software, this is not true. There are numerous free software packages maintained by people who do it for the love of the science. There are also numerous free software packages maintained by universities and various educational facilities. There are even free software packages maintained by non-profit organizations set up for the purpose of creating, maintaining, and distributing free software (the most important of these is the Free Software Foundation headquartered right in Cambridge; their site is a good visit with lots of information on the principle of free and open source software). In all of these cases free software packages are often better than similar commercial versions costing hundreds of dollars. In most cases the maintainers of free software are also users, so they have good reason to keep the software bug free. The next question might be "Why haven't I heard of them before?" The answer is that since they are free, they don't spend money on advertising -- it is not a reflection on their quality.

In any case, the Internet is full of freeware, shareware, and software that is available for just the cost of the media, shipping, & handling. Other variants exist, too; some software authors provide their software freely but request that users make a donation to a particular charity. Other authors just request that users send them a postcard or a coin from their local area. Other variants (like crippleware & nagware) also exist.

This page will focus primarily on high quality freeware. If you know of something that we're missing, please let us know by . You may also find our Saugus.net open source software collection to be of interest.

Operating Systems

The first stop in obtaining free software is picking up an OS. Sure, your computer probably came with one pre-installed, but it was hardly for free -- typical pre-installed OSes actually cost you well over $100 in the machine purchase price. Plus, the free OSes are often more capable than the ones pre-installed. Finally, unlike some of the commercial OSes still being purchased, the free OSes are all Y2K clean. What do you do? Either request one of the free OSes be pre-installed when you initially buy your computer, or follow the instructions on your computer's software agreement to get a refund for the price of your pre-installed OS prior to using your computer. The following are some free (or nearly free) OSes:

OpenBSD: Yet another free variant of Berkeley's UNIX, OpenBSD supports more hardware platforms than FreeBSD but fewer than NetBSD. It supports x86, PowerPC, SPARC, Alpha, 6800, and more. It is similar enough to Linux, FreeBSD, and NetBSD that typical users would find it hard to tell which is which.
See also: http://www.openbsd.org/

Browsers

One of the most useful things to put on any machine is a browser. After all, much of the documentation for free software is available online on the web! Fortunately, there is a bevy of free browsers available.

Opera: Opera runs on Linux, Windows '95 / '98, Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Solaris, Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, FreeBSD, and more. It is quite possibly the fastest of all the graphical browsers.
See also: http://www.opera.com/

Office Software

Most people need at least some of the software traditionally used in the office. Such software includes word processors, spreadsheets, text editors, and database programs. (Note that simple drawing programs will be covered elsewhere.)

Oleo: Oleo is the GNU Project's original speadsheet program and will easily run on most UNIX-like machines.
See also: http://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/
OpenOffice: OpenOffice (originally StarDivision's StarOffice but acquired and modified by Sun Microsystems) is completely free, offers 100% binary compatibility with MS-Office data files, and works on far more machines than MS-Office does. It currently runs on Windows '95 / '98, Windows NT / 2K, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Solaris, Mac OS X, Linux, JavaOS, OS/2, etc.
See also: http://www.openoffice.org/,
http://www.neooffice.org/

Games

One of the most popular types of applications for computers, games entertain both the computer novice and pro alike. Not all games are expensive; some of the best available can be found for free.

OpenRPG: A program that will allow the playing of essentially any role playing game over a network. Runs on any machine with Python.
See also: http://www.openrpg.com/

More coming soon...

The above list should get you started. More will be coming soon; we'll be adding in some games plus a few general sites offering all manner of software. What else would you like to see? Don't be afraid to let us know and we'll try and add it to the list.