5 Essential Pieces of Free (and Open) Software for Windows

These 5 software packages will help you supercharge your Windows experience. Free and open source software (FOSS) is seen by some as a free and inferior alternative to the paid and proprietary commercial software. Some see the open software as restricted to the Linux community. However, both of these viewpoints are wrong. There are some exceptionally good examples of free and open source software packages available for Windows. Let us take a look at some of these excellent softwares available on Windows which can give their proprietary counterparts a run for their money.

Mozilla Firefox

This is the second most popular desktop web browser by usage. This was developed by the Mozilla Foundation in 2002 and released in 2004 as a competitor for Internet Explorer. It was widely known for superior performance, speed and customisability and quickly gained popularity to overtake Internet Explorer’s market share until it was dethroned by Google Chrome. Mozilla Firefox is available on virtually any platform, from Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android to even Linux on ARM and other processor architectures. It is the browser of choice for those who swear by open source software. Firefox got major updates including a new engine late last year, boosting its performance and bringing it ahead of the competition at that time. There are few other examples of successful open source software as good as Mozilla Firefox.

VLC Media Player

Some Windows users may know this media player as the one which can play any media format that Windows Media Player does not recognise. However, the functionality of VLC Media Player goes far beyond just playing unknown media formats without the need to download additional codecs. This media player also has powerful media streaming options. It can play streaming media as well as create video streams. It can be used to capture desktop as a video. It can be used to create and manage playlists. It can play media files from ZIP files without the need to decompress them. It can boost the volume if the audio is too quiet. It also supports internet media streaming such as Icecast and Jamendo. It can also be infinitely extended and customised by using plugins. And you get all this in a tiny package with a small footprint.

LibreOffice

Every office needs a suite of office software to handle tasks such as preparing documents and spreadsheets. This suite is also essential at home and in school. The defacto option for most people is Microsoft Office. However, it is very expensive, especially for personal use. LibreOffice is a lucrative alternative to Microsoft Office. This free and open source office suite contains equivalents such as Writer for word processing, Calc for spreadsheets and Impress for presentations among others. LibreOffice also has limited support working with Microsoft Office file formats. You will have to miss a few features and the ribbon interface, but other than that, LibreOffice can easily replace Microsoft Office in most cases.

GIMP

GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. GIMP is the most popular free and open source image editing software. It has come a long way from its early days as a mediocre free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Today, GIMP has a matured user interface and a very powerful set of image editing tool that easily put it head to head with Photoshop. There are some features exclusive to Photoshop which you will miss if you use GIMP. However, for some applications, such as running external image processing algorithms, the open source nature of GIMP puts it well ahead of Photoshop.

VirtualBox

This is the best known free and open source hypervisor software and is often the first choice for hobbyists those who like to experiment with computers. VirtualBox can help anyone make a virtual machine very easily. It runs well enough on most modern computers and allows amateurs to tinker mess around with virtual machines. It is even used in some professional testing environments. It gets the job done, and can be heavily customised. VirtualBox by Oracle is not merely a hobby tool, but a cut-down version of their flagship virtualisation offering for enterprise clients.

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