Tech Talks Today
Open-Source Apps are Great
Are You Living An Open Source Life?
If you don’t know what open source apps are, and you are an active computer user, it kind of means you have been living under a rock.
Let’s start with something I know you are going to like. They are free to use, mostly in any environment. What’s even better is that the source code is available to anyone and everyone to check, modify or contribute.
I’ve started using open source apps more than 15 years ago. These apps have enriched my computer experience and have made it much more enjoyable.
There are open-source apps for which I would gladly pay a license fee. Most accept donations, that way, you can support the actual developers and make the web a better and safer place.
If I wasn’t working in an enterprise environment, I would only use open-source apps. This is not because they are free, but because they are great tools. In my opinion, better than many other paid alternatives.
N.B. I do use and pay for Windows. No matter how much I enjoy using various Linux distros, no single one manages to satisfy my needs. With gaming being another discussion altogether.
In any case, there are hundreds of paid products that are excellent, but I am going to tell you some of the most useful open-source ones that I use every day and fill all my needs.
Mozilla Firefox
I have been using it since version 0.5 or something like that. It is probably the oldest open-source software I use to this day, and I will continue doing so because it ticks all the boxes for me.
Yes, I am not against other web browsers, and I use other daily, but the main one has always been Firefox. It just hasn’t let me down and has always been the right tool for the job. You can give it a try and discover what it’s all about.
Thunderbird
The mail client to go. Again, a long, long-time user here. Mozilla’s Thunderbird is full of features that require payment in other mail apps. Customizable and easy as a breeze to use. If you use a desktop client to manage e-mails and RSS, this should be the first app you check.
You can read more about mail clients here:
Notepad++
The note-taking app Microsoft should have updated a long time ago. To be honest, since this tool exists, I don’t care what Microsoft does with the actual Notepad app.
Notepad++ knows tabs, numerous coding languages, advanced formatting, theming, macros, and even has plugins support.
The only thing it struggles with is files larger than 4 Gb, but that is something of a niche thing that I doubt will affect your running with it.
Keepass
If you are like me, or not, but you have dozens/hundreds of passwords that you need to remember, you require a password manager. I know people that don’t remember two passwords, let’s not even speak about more than that.
Everybody knows by now that our life is very much digital. With great usage comes tremendous responsibility, or something like that, if you know the saying.
Keepass is wonderful for storing sensitive and critical information that you need to remember and keep safe outside of your head. Just don’t forget the password for it.
You might be interested in reading this as well:
VLC
Open-source with included codecs that can pretty much play any video on Earth? Yes, please!
You can also stream, play discs, use capture devices, or convert your media files using this all-in-one media apparatus.
Once you start using VLC, you can pretty much stop using anything else. It is unlikely you will ever need any other tool for watching or streaming video content.
7-Zip
My archiving software of choice. I don’t think there’s much more I can say. If you need a reliable archiving app that comes with a high compression ratio, that is no fuss and all work, all day, then you have come to the right place. You cannot go wrong with 7-Zip.
A few other apps that I use and enjoy the benefits of open-source.
Handbrake for video encoding, LibreOffice for text, spreadsheet, or presentation editing, VirtualBox for virtual machines, Greenshot for screenshot captures, GIMP for the occasional photo edits. I am also sure you have heard of Filezilla, Blender, or Audacity.
Yep!
My heart goes to the people and developers that dedicate their time and knowledge to building open-source applications that are truly useful and secure. Great job guys!
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