Great Free Software Hunt

Addytude

Anybody tried MusikCube at http://www.musikcube.com/ ?

It's like iTunes, only smaller! I've always found that iTunes slows my PC down to a crawl, but Musikcube uses very little in the way of resources and memory.

It's been termed 'iTunes Lite' by many, as it works in a very similar way with a searchable library maintained of all your tunes, and has a built in CD-ripper.

And best of all - unlike iTunes - it natively supports OGG files, which are a free alternative to MP3. (MP3 is a bit dodgy on the licensing issues, as users of Red Hat and Ubuntu Linux will confirm!)

Only works on 2000, XP and 2003 server.

EdCov

A few freeware that I use that I find worth it

CDex
A great converter for ripping CDs, and can get the song titles from internet databases (if I remember correctly those settings might need changing because the standard ones on the one I downloaded were out of date).
However the reason I recommend it is that it uses winlame 128 to convert MP3 and this gives you a lot better quality MP3s than many other converters.
http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

Print any document to PDF
CutePDFWriter
http://www.acrosoftware.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

More technical
MP3 Direct Cut
Every wanted to take just a sample or chop up a recording from a tape into tracks, a great little utility.
http://www.mpesch3.de

Peadar_2

Hi all,

Just to say that the current 'version' of OPen Office being given on magazine cover disks is a Beta version, and as such has more features, but is not yet fully tested. Certainly I have been bombed out by the database. Older versions should be ok

Peadar

gerryg_2

sproo wrote:

I would be grateful if anyone could recommend any software that resembles Publisher

Any frames based word processor will deliver decent DTP. Yet another opportunity to mention FOSS. Get Knoppix (see post) or MEPIS (see post) and try KOffice* (a lightweight full office suite soon to add OpenDocument also supported by OpenOffice - and a W3C/OASIS or something like that published standard or Scribus or Abiword or the already mentioned Latex - a full-on document processor (as GIMP is for images)

* take a squint at https://www.kde.org for a list of productivity, messaging, calendaring, stuff or https://www.gnome.org for similar alternatives

jbellj

Are the any Linux operating systems that are similar to Windows Media Center? I've had a look but can't find anything? :dance:

33pelter

I am looking for a free alternative to microsoft office, please someone tell me were to get it via pm.

BlueVinney

One piece of free software that saved my sanity when I was on dialup Internet access was the download manager from https://www.freedownloadmanager.org

All this free software takes lots of bandwidth to transfer. My dialup isp would time out my link if I wasn't browsing at the same time so when that happened I had to restart the download. Grrrrr!

Fdm automatically continues a download from the break point when you log in again if you have lost your connection during the file transfer. It also splits the download file into multiple streams so that your network performance is optimised. Takes all the frustration out of getting the free software covered in this thread. It has lots of features and facilities including creating scheduled download lists to perform unattended downloads.

I find it so useful that even though I'm now on 2Mb broadband I still use it to manage my downloads.

seoras_2

Here's a great site http://www.theopencd.org/ which offers a fee open source CD which contains many applications in one well presented package.
You can either buy the CD, download the CD (disk image) if you have broadband or just download individual applications. I have used this for 2 years now as a free CD at training sessions run by my charity (http://www.clacksnet.org.uk)

Seoras

Software includes:
* OpenOffice 1.1.4 * AbiWord 2.2.8 * PDFCreator 0.8* GIMP 2.2.8* TuxPaint 0.9.14* NVU 1.0* FireFox 1.0.4* Thunderbird 1.0.2* Gaim 1.3.1* Audacity 1.2.3* Celestia 1.3.2* Really Slick Screensavers* 7-zip 4.23* Notepad2 1.0.12* Sokoban 1.187* Battle for Wesnoth 0.9.3

crossleydd42

Many people swear by Open Office, but I find it has its shortcomings, not least of all problems with its 'printing envelopes' facility, pretty elementary stuff you'd think.
I like the free version of commercial software easyoffice available at: http://www.e-press.com/downloads_comparison.asp

It even has an email platform.

Victor_Delta

Further freeware suggestions:

ACID XPress - a free version of the award-winning music creation tool - http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/SonicFoundryAcid/

Avast! Anti-virus software - although I always swear by AVG Free edition, which I have used for years, Avast! is another very good alternative - www.avast.com

LeechGet - excellent Download Manager, which doesn't come with spyware etc - www.leechget.net