Save on software

un_boeuf

Hello all,

I'd like to offer some pointers to useful and legitimately free software that will help you get work done without costing you money, tying you to subscriptions or upgrade programmes etc. By and large, these suggestions do the sorts of things you might be considering buying from people like Microsoft, Adobe, AutoDesk or similar. Just a grab-bag of things I actually use and have found to be at least on a par with the 'commercial' product. The majority of these are freely available for either Windows, Mac or Linux.

• Word processing (think 'Microsoft Office' type software)
  • LibreOffice
• PDF viewer (think 'Adobe Acrobat')
  • SumatraPDF Reader
• Photo and bitmap graphics manipulation (think 'Adobe Photoshop')
  • GIMP
• 'Vector' graphics software (think 'Adobe Illustrator')
  • Inkscape
• 2D CAD (think 'AutoCAD')
  • LibreCAD
• Parametric 3D CAD/solid modeling (think 'SolidWorks')
  • FreeCAD

That's just a small list. If you are looking for other types of legitimately free software, post a followup, maybe we can point you to it. I'm sorry I couldn't include direct links as the forum does not allow it... but google the names of the software and you will find the official download pages easily.
I hope this helps someone save some hard-earned money!