This directory was made to help you find quality alternatives to for-profit, feature-poor, or low-quality software. Most of this software is open source, but all of it is free (as in "free beer"). We have recommended most of this software to our customers where it seemed to fit their needs, and we even make regular use of most of it ourselves in our business. If you know of an excellent piece of software that isn't included, let us know!
| Free Software | Equivalent software | What it's used for | Summary |
| avast! Antivirus | Norton/Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, AVG | Antivirus, antispyware, security package | Our security software of choice, avast! has a 100% free home edition available and beats out so many other security packages that you pay for, it's ridiculous to run anything else. It catches lots of nasties, gets updated daily, runs boot-time scans (most don't do that), and best of all, it doesn't slow most computers down at all, unlike its competition. GET IT NOW. |
| OpenOffice.org | Microsoft Office | Integrated office suite | OpenOffice.org includes many of the types of applications expected in an office suite, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database, and more. |
| GIMP | Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paint Shop Pro | Professional image editor | GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) has the same general features found in programs such as Adobe's Photoshop. GIMP is not an "end-all be-all Photoshop replacement," but for 100% free software that is less memory-intensive as the comparable Adobe products, the flexibility and power of GIMP is staggering and it can easily hold its own against Photoshop. |
| Inkscape | Adobe Illustrator | Vector graphics editor | Inkscape is a vector graphics editor. Vector graphics are images that consist of a series of drawing instructions instead of a grid of dots (called "raster" or "bitmap" graphics). The big advantage of making images as a set of drawing instructions is that the images can be scaled without loss of quality, from the size of a business card to the size of an Interstate highway billboard. Tritech's logo in the top-left corner is a raster image that was rendered from the original vector graphic. We could put our logo on the side of a box truck without it looking jagged or blocky because we created the original as a vector graphic. Having access to a free cross-platform vector graphics program like Inkscape is an invaluable resource for any graphic artist. |
| FileZilla | CuteFTP, WS_FTP | File transfer protocol client | FileZilla sports many of the features found in CuteFTP, including access to protocols such as Secure FTP (SFTP). The interface is easy to understand and use. |
| Mozilla Firefox | Internet Explorer, Safari | Internet browser | While not technically the type of software you pay for, Mozilla Firefox is superior to Internet Explorer in every way, including security, usability, and extensibility. It is the browser of choice for people who are sick of getting infected so easily while browsing the Internet. |
| Mozilla Thunderbird | Outlook Express, Windows Mail | Internet E-mail client | Thunderbird beats Outlook Express for the same reasons that Firefox beats Internet Explorer, plus one: it sports junk mail filtering that "learns as it goes." Thunderbird separates perceived spam into a "junk" inbox to keep it out of your "regular" inbox. The themes and extensions available are enormous, and it has features that are not in Outlook Express such as color-coded message tagging, search folders, and message filter rules. |
| Evolution | [WinXP version] | Microsoft Outlook | Business-scalable E-mail and calendar application | Evolution has been nicknamed "the Outlook killer." Evolution is a free-software solution that serves the same purposes as Microsoft Outlook. It can connect to Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise servers, supports calendars (both local and department-wide calendaring), LDAP capabilities, and much more. It is such an awesome replacement for Outlook that a lot of time and energy was put into developing a Windows XP port of Evolution, so Windows-based companies could enjoy the benefits of using Evolution as Linux-based companies have for years. |
| Audacity | Adobe Audition | Audio file editor | Audacity is essentially a free audio manipulation program. It supports multiple tracks and a variety of effects, as well as importing and exporting to many common audio file formats. |
Copyright © by Tritech Computer Solutions. All rights reserved.
No portion of this site may be reproduced without our express permission.
(In other words, don't be an anti-social jerk, write your own friggin' website!)
No portion of this site may be reproduced without our express permission.
(In other words, don't be an anti-social jerk, write your own friggin' website!)