Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Free or open source alternatives to commercial software

Leon Rocha

Introduction

You're about to start your PhD, and you've just spent £500 to £700 on a new laptop. You plug it in and switch it on, and find out that apart from the operating system and some essential utilities, pretty much nothing else is installed on the hard drive. If you've bought a PC, then maybe you'll get Microsoft Works, a very basic office suite. Apart from surfing the web and playing Minesweeper, clearly your computer isn't ready yet for everyday work: you must at least get some decent word-processing software, maybe Powerpoint too for your presentations. Maybe you need an image-editor because you're going to work with lots of pictures. You start thinking about buying a copy of Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. So you go online, and discover that Microsoft Office: Home and Student Edition 2007 costs about £85 (the Mac edition is about £90), plus delivery. Adobe Photoshop Elements, a scaled-down version of Photoshop, is about £70. A standalone version of Word 2007 is about £180, and the Upgrade Edition is £90. So you either bite the bullet, pay another £150–£200 for software. Maybe you're lucky, and your funding board or College is willing to reimburse you. But if you're a cash-strapped student, you may well start thinking about downloading what you need off the net, but that's illegal. Borrowing your friends' copy isn't really an option anymore, because commercial software these days usually comes with a single or limited number of licences – if you install Office from your friend's CD, he may suddenly find that the copy on his computer is locked. Or maybe you're a grad student in America, and none of this is a problem because your university most likely has arrangements with software companies, so you can buy Office for $10... this is when having American friends is quite useful!

Free alternatives

Fortunately, plenty of proprietary freeware or free Open Source software out there are excellent alternatives to commercial programmes. Just because they're free doesn't necessarily mean they aren't good quality – in fact most Open Source alternatives accomplish all your tasks just as well. Some have really excellent technical support online (friendly message boards with a solid base of contributors, chats, well-written and easily Google-able manuals and FAQs). Many are designed more sensibly than their commercial counterparts. Almost all free software are less bloated with features which you won't ever touch, and they don't require as many system resources in terms of hard disk space and memory, so you can run them on older computers. The point of producing this document is so that you can save time doing all the searching yourself. This list is by no means exhaustive and I'd very much like to you to add to it. The software I mention here are for PCs running Windows XP. I've never owned a Mac, or used one on a day-to-day basis, but plenty of free software are cross-platform and you can use the links below to find equivalents for your Mac. If you're unsure about anything, try Wikipedia, it often has entries for well-known software. These entries may be extremely detailed and point you to articles written by users or computer experts criticising/supporting the software. Have fun exploring... and saving yourself lots of money!

Freeware listings/reviews websites

The following websites contain lists, links to the developers' websites, users' reviews and recommendations. Oldversion.com is particularly useful: it's an archive of older versions of shareware and freeware – as the motto of the website tells us, 'because newer isn't always better'. OpenDisc offers the best of freeware as a convenient CD image which you can download and then burn onto a blank disc. The most useful websites are probably the Free Software Portal on Wikipedia (which is constantly updated), and 'OpenSource Windows Freeware' on SourceForge.

Office suites

OpenOffice is a comprehensive alternative to Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint). Its design is extremely similar to Microsoft products; thus the learning curve is very shallow and it's a matter of 30 minutes to an hour to get yourself accustomed to it. I can do everything I need to do in Word with OpenOffice Writer. You can save files in Microsoft format (DOC, XLS, PPT etc.) and then open them with Microsoft Office without any problems. In OpenOffice you can also print directly to PDF. If you're an advanced user, you can tweak with absolutely everything (fixing the portion of the page taken up by footnotes, for instance – Word automatically does this for you and you can't change that easily). Meanwhile, AbiWord is a feather-weight word processor that deals with most writing tasks with flying colours. If, for instance, you don't work with foreign languages or special symbols (though AbiWord does support these), and the most complicated thing you're going to have in your essay is a bunch of footnotes and maybe a couple of illustrations, AbiWord is probably all you'll ever need. You can also save your documents in the most popular formats with AbiWord.

  • * AbiWord [http://www.abisource.com/]
  • KeyNote [http://www.tranglos.com/free/]
  • * OpenOffice [http://www.openoffice.org/]
  • TeXmacs [http://www.texmacs.org/] (a 'What-you-see-is-what-you-get' LaTeX editor, for people who want to play with LaTeX for a bit; for more on LaTeX, have a look at Peter Smith's webpage, 'LaTeX for logicians' [http://www.logicmatters.net/latex-for-logicians/])
  • Tiny USB Office [http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Other-Office-Tools/Tiny-USB-Office.shtml] (an office suite that is small enough to fit on a USB key)

Images and photography

GIMP is a great replacement for Photoshop. If the kind of things you need to do with your pictures only include: cropping, size adjustment, changing contrast/brightness/colour, rotating your pictures etc., GIMP is really all you need. Paint.net is another possibility. Google Picasa is an excellent tool for organising your picture collection and doing simple editing. IrfanView is a fast, light-weight picture viewer that has a good deal more useful features than Windows XP's built-in viewer.

Dealing with PDFs

If you just want to convert your Word files into PDF, you don't need to buy Adobe Acrobat. Just download one of these free tools, pretty much all of them install themselves as an additional 'printer' on your computer. When you want to convert something in PDF, simply choose that 'printer' under print options/menu in your programme. Koolwire is a web-based service; you upload a PDF to it and you can get it back as an RTF. Obviously, if you're concerned about security/privacy, don't use web-based conversion services. PDFtoHTML converts PDF to HTML and it's a programme you can get from Sourceforge. If Adobe Reader is irritating you because it loads far too slowly, experiment with Drumlin, Foxit Reader, Sumatra or Cool PDF Reader. Cool PDF Reader can convert PDF to TXT. Sometimes you want to do this because the Copy function on Adobe Reader can be quite temperamental; you can't select the chunk of text you want without selecting another part of the document.

  • Cool PDF Reader [http://www.pdf2exe.com/reader.html]
  • * CutePDF Writer [http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp] (free version)
  • Drumlin [http://www.drumlinsecurity.co.uk/]
  • Foxit [http://www.foxitsoftware.com/]
  • Koolwire [http://www.koolwire.com/Default.aspx] (web-based, PDF to RTF)
  • ** PDFCreator [http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/]
  • PDFtoHTML [http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdftohtml/]
  • PrimoPDF [http://www.primopdf.com/]
  • Sumatra [http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/]

Reference and bibliography

I haven't played with these at all, but they may well be alternatives to EndNote. From what I've heard, Zotero is an extremely good programme. It's a plug-in for the web browser Firefox and it saves information from OPACs, Google Scholar, Google Books and other sources; you can build up a database and I think it can automatically generate a bibliography for you following MLA, Harvard or a format of your choice. If you've a bit of time, I highly recommend you play around with it. You may well dramatically increase your efficiency; there's nothing worse than forgetting a random reference and then spending hours chasing it up.

  • Aigaion [http://www.aigaion.nl/]
  • Bibus [http://bibus-biblio.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page]
  • CiteULike [http://www.citeulike.org/]
  • Connotea [http://www.connotea.org/]
  • EasyBib [http://www.easybib.com/]
  • JabRef [http://jabref.sourceforge.net/]
  • ** Zotero [http://www.zotero.org/]

Languages and dictionaries

The following are free dictionaries you can download from the web. They can never replace real dictionaries or OED online, but are convenient if you just want to check a word very quickly. There are plenty of foreign language dictionaries available to download. AllChars is an extremely sweet little tool: it gives you a quick way of creating special characters or accents in Windows using keyboard shortcuts (which I think you can customise), so you don't have to go through the table of symbols every single time or memorise those ridiculous ALT+Numpad codes (like ALT+0165 on the Numpad for the Japanese Yen sign ¥).

Internet

Firefox is probably the best internet browser. Opera is also good, though it seems to eat up more memory. Either is vastly better than Internet Explorer in terms of security, efficiency and functionality. I highly recommend the AdBlock Plus plugin for Firefox, which automatically blocks advertisements and banners from most websites – you'll notice how fast websites load when you don't have to waste time and bandwidth downloading all these animated advertisements anymore. Delicious (or del.icio.us) is an excellent tool for saving and sharing all your internet bookmarks ('social bookmarking'); you register for this free service, then you install a plugin for your favourite browser, and next time you want to save a link, just click on the delicious button, assign a tag for your link so you can search it more easily later on, and you're done! Your bookmarks then appear on a website, and you can share your links with your friends easily online. Miranda Instant Messenger is a replacement for all popular messenger programmes (Yahoo!, MSN, AOL). Thunderbird is probably the best email client out there if you're sick of Hermes Webmail. A bare but fast HTML editor can be found in SeaMonkey, an all-in-one Internet suite from the people at the Mozilla Foundation. NetMeter is a useful tool for monitoring your upload/download traffic. Finally, Google Reader is a great free RSS reader.

Security

Anti-virus and security software has always been a tricky issue. Depending on your computer setup, an anti-virus programme can either run smoothly and silently in the background, or it can be a major memory-hog. You'll notice when your computer takes more than a minute to open a programme. You just have to experiment: get one of these software I mention below, try it for a week, if you notice a drop in performance, uninstall it and try another one. When I bought my new laptop, it came with Norton Anti-Virus and Firewall, and for me it was the most bloated piece of junk ever. AVG Free used to be really good, but it has gone downhill with Version 8. If you do go for AVG, please make sure you do a Custom Installation, and choose not to install the 'Link Scanner' feature or any toolbar. Avira and Avast! are very competent anti-virus programmes: I think they do have a 'helpful' upgrade-to-full-version reminder/nag, but there's a way to switch that off. (For Avira, please refer to www.elitekiller.com/files/disable_antivir_nag.htm to see how you can disable the nag screen.) In any case, if you're on the Cambridge network (or have a Raven password), you can download McAfee's VirusScan Enterprise from the University Computing Service for free. Note that McAfee can significantly slow your computer down, depending on your configurations. Finally, UltraShredder is a file deletion tool that makes sure your file is wiped from a disk – useful if it contains sensitive information and you want to prevent identity theft. If you want to erase your hard drive entirely until all data is permanently removed and no longer unrecoverable (e.g. if you're selling your computer, recycling it, or doing a fresh installation), try DBAN.

Music and video

If you ever need to do sound-editing (for your interviews, perhaps?), Audacity is your friend. If you're sick of Real Player and QuickTime Player, see if Real Alternative and Quick Alternative work for you. Winamp is probably the best music player if you don't want to use iTunes; foobar2000 is even better and takes up less space. Finally, to view videos and DVDs on your computer, VLC Media Player is your best bet. One extremely useful feature of VLC is that it ignores regional codes on DVDs. Media Player Classic is another feather-weight programme. It doesn't even require any installation: you simply download it and then run it.

  • Audacity [http://audacity.sourceforge.net/]
  • AVI2DVD [http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareAvi2Dvd.php]
  • CDex [http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/] (music CDs to MP3)
  • DVDFlick DVD creator [http://www.dvdflick.net/]
  • * Foobar2000 [http://www.foobar2000.org/]
  • ID3-TagIT [http://www.id3-tagit.de/] (MP3 tags editor, for the efficient organisation of all your music and sound files)
  • Juice Podcast [http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php]
  • * Media Player Classic [http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/]
  • Miro [http://www.getmiro.com/] (Internet TV viewer)
  • QuickTime Alternative [http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm]
  • Real Alternative [http://www.free-codecs.com/download/real_Alternative.htm]
  • Vibe Streamer [http://www.vibestreamer.com/] (music streamer)
  • ** VLC Media Player [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/]
  • Winamp [http://www.winamp.com/]

Miscellaneous tools

Various neat little programmes. If you need a CD/DVD burner, try CDBurnerXP or ImgBurn instead of buying a copy of Nero. 7zip is an archiver/decompressor and an excellent replacement for WinZip or WinRAR. If you find yourself losing track of where you're saving your files, maybe Copernic Desktop Search or Google Desktop will be useful. Areca Backup is a tool that lets you synchronise the files on your hard drive, and those saved on your USB key or an external disk – now you won't lose track of different versions of your thesis! A short aside on backup – a 500GB external drive costs only about £50 these days. You can dump your entire laptop on it, and this is by far the most convenient way of backing up your precious data. With Areca Backup, an external drive, and a good backup schedule, your life will be so much easier if your laptop decides to die when you're in your third year (as it's already happened to me). You can even schedule Areca to run automatically in XP: see support.microsoft.com/kb/308569.

  • µTorrent [http://www.utorrent.com/] (Bittorrent client)
  • 7zip [http://www.7-zip.org/]
  • AceMoney [http://www.mechcad.net/products/acemoney/] (finance manager)
  • * Areca Backup [http://areca.sourceforge.net/index.php]
  • BanShee Screamer Alarm [http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Business/Time_and_Clock_Tools/Banshee_Screamer_Alarm.html]
  • Blender [http://www.blender.org/] (3D content creation)
  • ** CDBurnerXP [http://cdburnerxp.se/]
  • ** Copernic Desktop Search [http://www.copernic.com/]
  • Google Desktop [http://desktop.google.com/]
  • Google Pack [http://pack.google.com/] (various free software)
  • Evernote [http://www.evernote.com/]
  • FreeDOS [http://www.freedos.org/] (free MS-DOS...)
  • Gadwin Printscreen [http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/] (replacement for the 'PrintScreen' button, though not as good as SnagIt, which is unfortunately commercial)
  • ImgBurn [http://www.imgburn.com/]
  • nLite [http://www.nliteos.com/] (unattended Windows Installation)
  • Post-it Notes Lite [http://www.download.com/Post-it-Software-Notes-Lite/3000-2351_4-10060027.html] (sticky notes for your desktop)
  • SIW [http://www.gtopala.com/] (system information)
  • SiSoftware Sandra [http://www.sisoftware.net/] (system info)
  • Total Organiser [http://www.konradp.com/products/organizer/]
  • TurboCash [http://www.turbocashuk.com/] (finance manager)
  • Unlocker [http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/]
  • Workrave [http://www.workrave.org/]

Linux distributions

Should you ever want to use something other than Windows... it is possible to have a Ubuntu computer for your entire graduate career: OpenOffice runs on Linux, and almost all Open Source software have Linux versions. In any case, the Live CDs for Ubuntu or Knoppix are extremely useful to have in your disc collection – if Windows suddenly becomes corrupted or you're experiencing problems with your hard drive, you may be able to get into your computer with a Live CD and recover your data.

Just for fun

And in case you find yourself needing a short break, and are bored with Solitaire...

Addendum from Eleanor Robson on Macs

NeoOffice is the Mac version of OpenOffice. For writing HTML and LaTeX, try Aquamacs. Papers can organise your PDFs into a library.