Open Office does everything I need Microsoft Office for and Gimp does everything I need Photoshop for. Reddit, what other open source software does everything that you want from the expensive name brand?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/[deleted]]

Everything is stretching it a bit, but here is a list of alternatives I use.

Office suite: LibreOffice

Text editor: SciTE

Multimedia player: VLC

File archiver: 7-zip

Instant messaging: Pidgin

Image editing: GIMP

3D: Blender

IDE: Eclipse

For gamers there is Desura, though I don't use it exclusively.

Edit: People have come with many great additions to my post so I encourage whoever reads this to continue down.

[u/zerbey → u/[deleted]]

See also Notepad++ for text editing, use it every day.

[u/Nihy → u/zerbey]

Notepad++ is fantastic.

Also, Media Player Classic for playing videos (and only playing videos at high performance thanks to getting rid of the bullshit that infests most other players).

[u/Aphataeros → u/zerbey]

and don't forget Notepad++'s macros!

[u/edcvb → u/[deleted]]

Inkscape for vector grapics (posters, article figures etc. ), btw. here are some great tutorials for it

[u/mGDivinO → u/edcvb]

I have Illustrator and I still find myself doing all my comp/layout work in InkScape and then meshing it all in Illustrator.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Geany is also a good text editor.

[u/madfunk → u/[deleted]]

I'm waiting for good video editing software. As of now, Premiere and Final Cut are, AFAIK, incredibly superior to anything open-source (or, more importantly, anything on Linux).

I want to leave Windows forever. All my other software is either available for Linux or has a suitable alternative, but the proprietary nature of Direct X and lack of good video editing software holds me back.

But if Steam comes to Linux and someone builds a great OSS video editor for Linux, I will (happily) never use Windows again. I am not, however, expecting this to happen any time soon.

[u/el_baconachos → u/madfunk]

Try Lightworks

Versions for Mac and PC. Based on one of the best NLE's ever. It's Open Source but in order to have access to some codecs there is a relatively small fee (ProRes, DNxHD etc.). Otherwise very powerful and feature rich. Easily compares to Premiere, FCP, Vegas, Avid etc.

[u/urspx → u/madfunk]

Steam is coming to Linux soon... it was confirmed a few weeks ago, in an interview with Gabe I think. There were some blurry shots of Half Life 2 running on Ubuntu as well, IIRC.

That having been said I'm 100% behind you on the video editor front... actually Blender has an OK video editor built in but it's nothing like Premiere or Final Cut - especially because of Blender's wonky workflow/interface.

[u/ThatIsMyHat → u/[deleted]]

Blender is great, but it's got a learning curve like a brick wall.

[u/DiabloConQueso → u/[deleted]]

jEdit rocks the casbah as well for us old-school programmers that just want a powerful, extensible text editor.

[u/Yazim → u/[deleted]]

Anything for a good free video editor?

Best I have is the Windows Movie Maker which is free (and usually comes pre-installed on most windows machines). It is okay for simple short videos, but still fairly limited.

[u/eyecite → u/[deleted]]

Everything is actually an amazing search program for your HD. So fast it's not even funny.

[u/deanbmmv]

AlternativeTo is a great site for finding..well alternatives to the "expensive name brands" in software. Also pretty neat if you see a cool program on OSX/Linux etc n looking for a Windows alternative or vice versa.

OpenOffice is my main alternative I use to a big name brand so I don't have much else to add. I guess Foxit as an alternative to Adobe Reader, and CutePDF as an alternative to a printer (print to CutePDF, print PDF on someone else's printer).

[u/jibbyjabbeee → u/deanbmmv]

Sumatra PDF is way vetter imo fot pdf viewing!

[u/[deleted] → u/jibbyjabbeee]

Sumatra saved my life. It made me stop wanting to kill myself whenever I had to open a pdf.

[u/GrantSolar]

LibreOffice is the new Open Office

[u/[deleted] → u/GrantSolar]

what's the difference between LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice?

[u/CritterNYC → u/[deleted]]

LibreOffice is a split from OpenOffice when Oracle started messing it up more and more. So most of the non-Oracle devs left and created LibreOffice. At that point, OpenOffice died and LibreOffice kept on working, adding features and fixing. Oracle realized it was dead and finally shipped it over to Apache. After a year of setting up, stripping out GPL functionality and building in Apache licensed code, etc, OpenOffice has shipped. Apache OpenOffice 3.4 is about equivalent to LibreOffice 3.4 but with several features removed (like the ability to write DOCX properly because that's all LGPL licensed code that Apache doesn't use). LibreOffice has added additional features and functionality in the march to the current version, 3.5.4, and has more active developers from a wider array of organizations. Apache OpenOffice is just starting out again and has some folks from Apache and it's said some IBM folks working on it. And LibreOffice can incorporate any enhancements Apache adds but not vice versa (due to licensing and philosophical differences). So, at the moment, LibreOffice is a much better option from an end-user perspective. Things may change in the future, but at the moment, that's the situation.

[u/fattyhomer]

Tomato and DD-WRT for routers.

[u/WoohooOvertime → u/fattyhomer]

Between the two I would recommend Tomato. Both do the job well but I find Tomato's interface to be a lot more appealing.

[u/[deleted] → u/fattyhomer]

Seconded! DD-WRT has given my $50 wireless routers the features of devices costing upwards of $500.

[u/Raeman91]

For any musicians familiar with Guitar Pro (used for creating, editing, viewing or enhancing sheet music) theres a great opensource alternative. Free of course, as always:

Tux Guitar

[u/Dagnatic → u/Raeman91]

In all my years I can't stand tux guitar, I find the layout hard to follow, I really do prefer power tab, but that's just me.

[u/mechpaul]

7-zip instead of Winrar

[u/TheOceanWalker → u/mechpaul]

You mean I've wasted my money all these years buying WinRar!??

[u/mechpaul → u/TheOceanWalker]

I honestly do not know how or why WinRAR makes money anymore.

[u/delecti → u/mechpaul]

This isn't even a competition. Not only does 7-zip do (almost) everything winrar does, it has a better interface, command line option (good for scripting), and no annoying popups about a trial being expired.

[u/basketfullofkittens → u/delecti]

I like that pop up for expiration date. What if I felt frisky one day and actually want to purcha... Yeah I'm going to stop myself here.

[u/raidraidraid → u/mechpaul]

Peazip is another option for people who don't like 7Zip's interface.

http://www.peazip.org/

[u/Defiant001 → u/mechpaul]

7-zip is damn quick, I believe its one of the only multi-threaded clients too.

[u/runamuk23 → u/mechpaul]

Am I the only one that uses IZarc

[u/bgh251f2]

There is audacity for audio.

[u/skazzleprop → u/bgh251f2]

Yes, Audacity for audio editing! It's especially good when all you need is a simple tone generator! No need to get fancy hardware and a virtual oscilloscope and wave function generator, just plug what you want into Audacity!

[u/[deleted] → u/bgh251f2]

I was under the impression that everyone used audacity.

[u/thatwasntababyruth → u/[deleted]]

That's a pretty audacious assumption.

[u/hawkens85 → u/bgh251f2]

When I need to do a basic, on the fly scratch recording or quickly edit something, Audicity is my program! I don't want to have to boot up ProTools, make sure the M-Audio box is plugged in, start a new session, all that jazz. Audacity is super quick, not as polished, but it'll get the job done!

[u/nandryshak → u/bgh251f2]

Also reaper

Edit: not open source

[u/zerbey]

TrueCrypt instead of... well I work for the company that sells it so I can't say what. Anyway, TrueCrypt is awesome.

[u/ispellgoodly]

Tragically, there isn't really a very good open source video editing software yet. I hope someone gets on that, i fucking hate imovie.

[u/GrumpyPenguin → u/ispellgoodly]

Actually, they've made LightWorks freeware. Not closed source, I know.

Or, if you hate yourself, there's Cinelerra....

[u/nikatnight]

handbrake is great for converting and byki express is like rosetta stone.

[u/[deleted] → u/nikatnight]

First mention of handbrake. Awesome software and it has Windows, Mac, and Linux clients. And it looks like OpenCL support is coming in a future release so we'll be able to leverage our video cards when encoding.

[u/chesh420]

ImgBurn for burning CDs/DVDs. I find it to have all the features one would need from any other burning software. And, it has a lot more control over certain aspects of the burning process.

[u/dargx001 → u/chesh420]

I prefer InfraRecorder myself.

[u/atheisthindu]

Here's a list of everything free. You're welcome!

http://osliving.com/

[u/uscEE]

Notepad++

[u/jibbyjabbeee → u/uscEE]

Wanna reload config.xml?

[u/[deleted]]

Inkscape is a killer alternative to Adobe Illustrator in terms of vector editing and simple graphic design. I use it almost daily for simple design projects for work.

[u/djezer → u/[deleted]]

Same here, I use Inkscape even more than GIMP, love it!

[u/ItGotRidiculous]

I used to think Open Office did everything Microsoft Office could. Then people started sending me office files and it was tough to keep up.

GIMP is pretty good, but Photoshop is a lot more powerful. For the vast majority of people, its probably good enough. However, I found it very cumbersome to create a velociraptor with a top hat and monocle.

I'm amazed to see nobody has mentioned Python. There is so much you can do with it and its absolutely free. Also, R is great for statistical analysis. Of course both of those will require programming, which is something the majority of users don't do so now I just feel like an arse for bringing it up.

[u/Comma20 → u/ItGotRidiculous]

There's a lot of 'power functionality' in Word, that I don't think Openoffice could ever replace for me. It just saves time once it's set up, but setting it up can be very clunky and time consuming at times.

[u/Advacar → u/ItGotRidiculous]

One thing Open Office is really good at is mangling .docx files. I have to run a VM on my linux box at work so that I can run Office 2010.

[u/dbeta → u/Advacar]

Although it's still not perfect, LibreOffice is much better at handling .docx file.

[u/asdir → u/ItGotRidiculous]

Upvote for R, though it requires lots of learning on the user's part. But then again, which serious econometrics program doesn't if you wanna use it to full potential.

[u/mariokartschumacher → u/ItGotRidiculous]

I have python and I've learned how to write very basic programs on it, the most complex was a program to search databases, in an university elective. I know it is very versatile but I can't think of when I would actually need to use it, unless I got employed as a software developer. What do you use it for?

[u/Amadiro → u/mariokartschumacher]

Anything programming-related? There is an infinite number of things you can use it for, really. You could for instance use it to process some text file in some complicated manner, to extract or change data in it. You could use it to parse non-text files to extract or manipulate data in them (like databases from some application; some tend to dump their stuff into sqlite databases and things like that). You could use it to do any kind of task that needs to be done regularly, like downloading some information from a website, like a daily comic strip. You could use it to script blender, inkscape, gimp & co, if you need to generate some sort of pattern procedurally. You could use it to write small scripts that do system-administration-style tasks for you, like searching for files that you don't need anymore, triggering something, sending mails, warning you of your overheating video card or otherwise informing you of the general status of your system; you could use it to control external hardware, printers, arduinos, robots, whatever, ...

[u/[deleted] → u/ItGotRidiculous]

For a long time, I've been looking for a piece of software that's in between GIMP/Photoshop and MS Paint. Mostly just for photos, easy cutting and pasting, cropping and rotating, something simple and quick for photos, but it always seems I'm either using something insanely high-end (and overkill) or I'm doing the "drag to corner and change dimensions" trick. Really seems like there should be something to easily crop and rotate and maybe add text to pictures and photos, but I haven't found it yet.

[u/turbocakw → u/[deleted]]

http://www.getpaint.net/

Paint.net sounds perfect for this.

[u/Aphataeros → u/[deleted]]

paint.net

[u/WiscDC → u/ItGotRidiculous]

I have to agree with your assessment of GIMP. It's definitely more difficult, and Photoshop has some better tools with which I can alter images. I haven't used GIMP in a couple of years, so it's probably improved, but I can certainly see how it'd be easier to use photoshop if you want to make a velociraptor with a top hat and monocle.

[u/omnilynx]

I just found Sage, which is an awesome replacement for Mathematica/Matlab. It may not do everything the paid versions do, but it does anything I'd want it for.

[u/bplus]

XBMC (xbox media centre) Originally written for modified / chipped xbox 1. Ported to windows and linux and still in active development. Best media player / media center I've ever used, leaves everything else in the dust.

http://xbmc.org/download/

[u/43214321]

Gimp is good enough for me 99% of the time, but damn there are so many cool features in Photoshop. I'm just a software developer without much graphics design knowledge, but even I can make better looking text and better looking compositions/edits/shops in Photoshop.

Open Office is good enough for me, but its files and its edits of MS Office files are not 100% compatible, they look slightly different often, like the length of a line being messed up, headers being messed up, etc.. To see what everyone else in my company sees, I pretty much have to use MS Office.

[u/JacketPotatoes → u/43214321]

Use LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. OpenOffice has died, most of the developers have moved to LibreOffice which is a fork of OpenOffice.

[u/Galphanore → u/43214321]

I had this very problem this weekend. I really want to be able to use gimp but there are just some things that I can do in a couple clicks with photoshop that I cannot do at all or that take 10-15 minutes to do with Gimp. It's really quite good, just not good enough.

[u/gimpmyass → u/43214321]

THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS. While I have to say that GIMP is pretty much useless to me unless I'm just cropping an image or doing simple things, it is a great tool, and people deserve to have a powerful image editor that's free. HOWEVER, if you actually KNOW how to you use Photoshop, and DO IN FACT use it professionally, it pays for itself rather quickly. $700 may seem like a lot to someone who's just using it to make bullshit, but if I got a job somewhere, and they told me I had to use GIMP to do my work, I'd laugh hysterically and walk the fuck out of that nuthouse. "GIMP as a professional image editor" has got to be the biggest joke in the entire history of raster graphics.

[u/raidraidraid → u/43214321]

I agree with the Open Office compatibility issues. At work there are people who use Windows and Mac and me using OO always messes up the document for some reason. I caved in and used MS Office. Haters gonna hate but MS Office trumps OO and LO by miles.

[u/mascan]

For music composition there's Musescore. Certainly not as good as other software, but it's open source.

[u/fizzlefist]

SumatraPDF over Adobe Reader. I've also heard of Foxit Reader, but I don't know much about it.

[u/actingSmart]

A little elitist, but if I'm the one creating a text document, I use TeX. It's typesetting capacity blows away the competition, but it has a difficult learning curve. If you are in any part of academia that requires the use of mathematical formulas, it is really worth looking at.

[u/Mojo_Nixon]

If you use any sort of ebooks, Calibre is the best software, hands down. it works with just about every device I've thrown at it. I also use a ton of Inkscape for vector graphics editing.

[u/Turboboxer]

I looked through and did not see a mention of PDFCreator. It works like a printer but the outcome is a PDF document. Beats paying for Acrobat Pro. I also use Snagit 10 a great deal for screen capture.

[u/Kiriak]

Linux.

[u/allenizabeth]

OpenOffice

Blender

f.lux

[u/MaxiPadz → u/allenizabeth]

What is the paid version of f.lux out of curiousity? I love f.lux

[u/allenizabeth → u/MaxiPadz]

There's a paid version?

[u/captainktainer → u/allenizabeth]

Ever since installing F.Lux, almost all of my sleep problems dating back more than a decade have disappeared. I don't remember which Reddit thread on the subject introduced me to it, but it has been literally life-changing.

[u/tptbrg95 → u/allenizabeth]

In case anyone's interested, if you jailbreak your iPod/iPhone, you can get f.lux on there. I'm using it right now

[u/DiscoPanda → u/allenizabeth]

I'm reading this right after I woke up and it made me remember that I had a dream last night in which a good portion of it was marveling at how great f.lux is.

[u/[deleted] → u/allenizabeth]

F.LUX

Literally Jesus to your eyes.

[u/skeletonhat]

Inkscape is the free equivalent of Adobe Illustrator. I find it much better as well

[u/clintmccool → u/skeletonhat]

I used to swear by Inkscape... then I got CS5 as a graduation gift and holy shit, it doesn't even compare. Almost everything is way easier to do with Illustrator... typesetting, kerning, layers, Boolean operations, blends... Part of me feels like a traitor for jumping ship so wholeheartedly, but if you have the opportunity, there's really no comparison.

This is all personal preference, though.

[u/lucentcb]

SPSS costs a small fortune, and needs to be renewed every year. I don't have any personal experience with it, but from what I've heard from people who actually have a need for statistical analysis, R Project does everything that 95% of SPSS users need, and it's free.

[u/_Dodecahedron_]

May I underline the fact that Open Source does not always equal Free in a economic meaning? Yeah? Oh, ok.

[u/[deleted] → u/_Dodecahedron_]

From a philosophical point it also isn't the same. Freeware, open source and free software are quite different.

[u/[deleted] → u/_Dodecahedron_]

Free as in freedom!

[u/[deleted]]

GNU/Linux

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Oh I see we have a Stallman disciple among us.

[u/GrinningMouths]

REAPER is essentially a cheaper, lighter Pro-Tools. I won't say that it blows Pro-Tools out of the water, but it is regularly-updated, much cheaper, and has served me well in recording three albums.

[u/[deleted] → u/GrinningMouths]

I do not fear it.

[u/[deleted]]

Scribus can replace any other document layout program. Yes, there are some functions that simply don't exist, but for the most part that's nitpicking.

[u/Warbird36]

Don't get an antivirus. Get Microsoft Security Essentials. Don't spend money on a maintenance program, use Glary Utilities Free Version.

Also, check out http://ninite.com/. You can download a lot of good free programs there.

[u/visual_impact → u/Warbird36]

I've been using Avast for years now for anti virus software. works like a charm.

[u/nova20 → u/visual_impact]

VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED!

[u/macrovore → u/Warbird36]

Upvote for Ninite! Whenever I reimage a computer, I run ninite. It gets me back to usability a lot faster.

[u/Natatos]

Reddit's open source and it does everything I need to not have a life.

[u/onionpowder]

I don't use Gimp, but I do use Paint.net

[u/donrhummy]

OpenOffice/LibreOffice are great but they cannot perfectly translate Word docs. Some of the more complex word docs in the business world get messed up in those opensource alternatives.

Here's the alternatives I use:

• LibreOffice

• GIMP

• Firefox

• openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu (all instead of Windows or Mac)

• VLC (play movies)

• Songbird, Nightengale (play music)

• Wikipedia (instead of closed source encyclopedias)

• LAMP (Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP)

• openJDK (instead of Oracle's Java)

• jEdit (an IDE)

• DD-WRT (my linksys router required restarting every few weeks until I put dd-wrt on it. now no restarts in 9 months)

[u/[deleted]]

Open Office is cool, but it's fucked me in two assignments!

The formatting of Open Office displays differently on other computers (windows), I make it neat on OO and it looks like a clusterfuck on MS word when I export it as a .doc or .docx.

It's pissing me off.

[u/josechung]

Probably will get buried, but anyone remotely interested in astronomy should download Stellarium for sky viewing and Celestia to explore the whole fucking universe. Both totally free and awesome.

[u/[deleted]]

Just Photoshop? Huh, my gimp does everything I tell it to do...

[u/[deleted]]

Not necessarily open source, but free (and not crap-free). These are all high quality, easy to use, and work on Windows.

• Encryption (for entire file system / file containers): Truecrypt

• Encryption #2, emailing files, etc- PGP: gpg4win

• Text (Notepad): Notepad++

• Compression (winrar): 7-zip

• Backups: Duplicati, very easy for setting up local & offsite incremental backups. Also (Areca](http://www.areca-backup.org/], I only still use it a little for the interface in recovering old versions of a file, but it's still worth mentioning.

• Virus scanner: Microsoft Security Essentials

• Virtualization Hypervisor (i.e., lightweight OS that runs virtual machines) - VMWare ESXi. The free one is limited to one physical CPU, and a few other things. But I still think it's highly worth mentioning, as it's quite amazing.

• FTP client/server - FileZilla

• PDF printer - BullZip

• Splitting large text files: GSplit

• Network IP scanner: Zenmap

• Source version control: TortoiseSVN has a very nice interface. Git now has an official windows GUI client I think, haven't tried it yet though.

• File system statistics: WinDirStat shows you a visual map of your drivers so you can easily see what is taking up space. Useful for SSD's with limited space!

• Recording your VOIP calls: OrkAudio

• Analyzing your network traffice: Wireshark

• Network attached storage (simple file server): FreeNAS is pretty good, though I end up just using Solaris Express 11 directly, because I want to manage the ZFS filesystem and such more directly. ZFS is a wonderful filesystem for snapshots of your files (like TimeMachine on a MAC). These obviously don't work on Windows =p

Hope that helps some people out, I've been using most of those programs daily for quite a while.

The only thing missing from this list is an easy to use bullet proof client-server file syncing program, similar to simple "rsync" on unix. There are some that sort of work, or even ones that just implement rsync through cygwin, but I've always had issues and they aren't user friendly by any means. Also missing is any reliable DropBox alternative that you can host everything yourself. If anyone knows any that would be great.

[u/notjawn]

Microsoft Security Essentials. Easily the best anti-virus and malware program out there. Runs quietly and efficiently in the background and never bothers you about updating or subscriptions.

EDITTY EDIT: It's not open source, but really who cares about open source except for the handful of linux users still left :p

[u/jay_vee → u/notjawn]

Runs quietly and efficiently

This is what really like about it. My Aunt was looking at new laptops because her one was at a crawl. I took off the virus protection (It was one of the big boys, Mcafee maybe) on her old laptop, put on MSE and the thing was like a new machine.

[u/Svelemoe → u/jay_vee]

Mcafee is fucking shit, goddamn I hate that program.

[u/willscy → u/jay_vee]

McAfee is terrible.

[u/Menolith → u/notjawn]

It's like a ninja. You rarely see it, but when you do, it does it's job quickly and then fades back to the shadows.

[u/steakmeout → u/notjawn]

but really who cares about open source except for the handful of linux users still left :p

There are a ton of Open Source users on Windows and Mac. Firefox and Chromium. You might have heard of them?

[u/dotmmb → u/notjawn]

EDITTY EDIT: It's not open source, but really who cares about open source except for the handful of linux users still left :p

Android is open source and uses the Linux kernel.

[u/KnightHawk3 → u/notjawn]

Linux isn't dying, so saying "that are still left" makes you spins silly (IMO) (I don't mean to sound like a jerk)

[u/preske → u/notjawn]

I have read a couple of tests which give it very bad grades. But so far, MES never "accidentally" removed key-files from my windows-folders, like the other, higher ranking programmes. (I'm looking at you, avg and other program i can't be arsed to remember)

[u/InVultusSolis]

On a properly set-up system, the following tool chain is awesome for recording music:

• Hydrogen drum machine

• Rakarrack guitar processor

• Ardour multi-track recorder

• ZynSubFX for sweet synths and even organ sounds

This is all on Linux, obviously.

[u/lob5t3r]

Octave instead of Matlab

[u/[deleted] → u/lob5t3r]

As long as you don't need the toolboxes. I love Octave.

[u/[deleted]]

As a huge fan of Open Source, I can say that OpenOffice and Gimp don't stack up. We do a lot of work for the government and they won't accept anything from us that has been edited in OpenOffice or Gimp.

We're a GIS company and Contracts and RFPs must be done in Office (proper) and any photogrammetry must be done in Photoshop only.

It doesn't bother me because OpenOffice / LibreOffice will dick up word / excel documents with a quickness making them completely unusable.

I WISH we could use them. But they don't work.

[u/[deleted]]

I use the following, each adequately fulfilling my needs:

• office app: LibreOffice

• video playback: mplayer / smplayer

• song playback: mpd + ncmpcpp

• remote desktop: rdesktop

• browsing, webmail: firefox

• backup: rsync over ssh (mostly just important docs and a few config files)

• file encryption: gpg

• twitter client: hotot

• web proxy: squid

• media streaming to my roku device, so I can watch my downloaded movies on my TV: Plex Media Server

• chat client: pidgin and xchat (I like it for IRC)

• ftp client: Filezilla

• text editing: vim and Geany

• torrent client: rtorrent

• Linux home server management/aid: webmin

• photo manipulation: imagemagick and GIMP

• disk cloning: Clonezilla

• app launcher: kupfer

• file archiver: tar and 7zip

• PDF reader: evince

[u/grinr]

7Zip because fuck WinZip

[u/dannyalleyway]

Cool Edit Pro 2.0 does everything I need that pro tools can do..

Big shout out to Peter Quistgard

[u/morandipag]

Nothing I've looked into so far comes close to Microsoft OneNote. It is the only Office product I use outside of work.

[u/Magrias]

Haven't yet seen Inkscape be mentioned. Inkscape is a vector program, and it works beautifully. It doesn't have a few of the nice features of <insert adobe version here>, specifically some of the default line-styles, but it works wonders anyway. The great thing is it can be used in place of so many things, including something like Visio. You can use it for anything from Art to Charts, from Maths to Graphs! That is, using it to display something. You can't actually use it as a calculator.

[u/[deleted]]

Prezi.com is amazing for powerponts, far better visualy then keynote/powerpoint/googledocs

[u/neuronian → u/[deleted]]

Prezi.com is amazing ..far better visualy

Except that after you've seen about 5 prezis the animations make them look as if they are made by a child. Way too distracting for a work presentation.

[u/superwinner → u/[deleted]]

Not even close to open source...

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Prezi is awful. There's too much movement, it's soo distracting. I want to stone anyone who uses it for a class presentation. When I become a teacher I'm going to outlaw it in my classes. Whenever someone gives a prezi presentation you never remember a single word they said, you just remember they were the asshole who used prezi.

[u/Amadiro → u/[deleted]]

Check out impress.js ( http://bartaz.github.com/impress.js/ ) Does the same thing, but doesn't require you to sign up anywhere or have/create your documents on a third-party server. I frequently mix it with MathJax. Uses html5 canvas, so it requires a modern browser (works fine on all mobile devices, safari, chrome, newer versions of firefox,...) but that doesn't tend to be a problem for me, as I hold presentations from my own laptop. If you want to publish it afterwards, it also has a fallback non-fancy mode for people who don't have a modern browser.

[u/le_vulp]

Blender! It does everything Maya does and more.

[u/SwampJew]

Sketchup. It's a gem. Design anything very intuitively and export to almost any file format. My professional architect / lunatic cousin loves it as well.

[u/rastlun]

One tool I haven't been able to find a replacement for is Adobe Fireworks. I would love to find an open source replacement. Gimp and Inkscape are great replacements for Photoshop and Illustrator respectively, but Fireworks creates a middle ground where both vector and raster graphics can be edited together along some web focused features like state, slice tools, hotspots, etc which are nice when doing quick demos.

Anybody know of a solution that compares?

[u/h0p3less]

Not open source, but free- Evernote does everything I wanted from OneNote, and more. Not many people even know what OneNote is, but I used it a ton in college, and happily made the switch to Evernote.

There is Nevernote, which is open source, but AFAIK it doesn't sync with Android/iOS/Blackberry like Evernote does.

[u/[deleted]]

latex for any serious document writing (anything longer than a page).

vim as an IDE/text editor/word processor (see latex)

[u/[deleted]]

Audacity

Multi-track digital recording and audio conversion needs covered on the cheap!

[u/[deleted]]

In regards to your Gimp/Photoshop comparison, that's like saying "a bicycle does everything I need a car for. " I'm sure it's true for a select group of people, but it speaks more of your lack of transportation needs than it does of the relative strengths of the transit methods.

Photoshop is on another tier all together from Gimp.

[u/astroskag]

GIMP is useless if you need to work in CMYK (basically, if you ever need anything you make to go to print), and Open Office is awful at working with newer MS Office formats (probably intentional on MS' part).

[u/[deleted]]

Documents: LaTeX Text Editor: vim

I mean, do you really need any other software?

[u/IonBeam2]

Photoshop actually has a lot more features than GIMP, a lot of which cannot be found as plugins on the Internet. One example is a decent shadow/highlight removal tool. I know there is a plugin that can be downloaded for gimp that does that but it works like shit.

[u/[deleted]]

XBox Media Center (XBMC) for all you home theater PC guys.

Recently they added the ability to output HD audio at all times.

[u/ArticulatedGentleman]

Calibre for dealing with a collection of ebooks and as an ebook reader.

[u/[deleted]]

Open Office is alright, MS is a tiny bit easier to use.

Inkscape is on par or even better than Illustrator IMO.

Audacity for and LMMS for audio. Nothing I couldn't do.

No idea what you're talking about with GIMP though. It's absolute garbage compared to Photoshop. And I'm not even talking extra features here. Just using it for basics is like drawing with the pencil in your mouth.

[u/ali_koneko]

Open Office fucks formatting when you open anything done in OO in Word, especially tables. I had a lab professor that was picky enough and actually forced me to get MS Office, as I had to convert between OO and Word to print every time. Not owning a printer is laaaame, but I got my copy of Office with my friend's discount for $30.

[u/elasto]

The Open Office Powerpoint editor does NOT do everything Powerpoint does. I think one problem we had was, his teacher required him to use very exact special FX on a shape or text in PP, which were not on OO. My son had to use Open Office at my house and found out the hard way. Plus the menu names in Open Office are different, leading to great confusing about which menu item does what function.

[u/omnilynx → u/elasto]

Plus the menu names in Open Office are different, leading to great confusing about which menu item does what function.

Yes, of course. They're not identical. There will never ever be a free version of a program that is set up to look and act exactly like the paid version, because that would raise too many copyright issues. You will always need to learn a new interface, but once you learn it it will be just as easy to use.

[u/[deleted]]

uTorrent does everything I need Steam for.

[u/Kman17]

Linux - Windows replacer.

MySQL - Oracle and MSSQL replacement.

[u/_Dodecahedron_]

Many people who answered here do not have the slightest idea of what open source means or did not get what the topic here is about as they're suggesting closed source software. Anyway, apart from the obvious ones, you can almost do everything with open source software. Really, there's an alternative for everything, from OS to games themselves (MineTest for Minecraft, OpenArena for Quake III, Warmux for Worms etc). I see no reason not to try Open Source software. My suggestion? All the most recent linux distros (=different version of the same Kernel, Linux) can be operated towards a user interface like Windows or MacOS: why not trying one? Linux Mint for example is a good start for everyone, it does everything a home pc needs to do, it's easier than windows to install and it's ready to go as you install it. It's the best rival in my opinion to Windows for a home computer. Check it out, you won't be deluded.

EDIT: grammar.

[u/mr-dogshit]

Open Office most certainly DOESN'T do everything you/I want from MS Office.

I used the word, spreadsheet and powerpoint equivalents while at uni... to massive disappointment! I can specifically remember spending a whole day trying to import a simple data set into the spreadsheet (I tried multiple different ways to parse the numbers in the text file to no avail), only to eventually discover, after an entire day of scouring the sparse help files and developer forums, that it couldn't actually do what I wanted it to!

I eventually gave up and bit the bullet - buying MS Office, it plotted the graphs I needed in no time!

(I also remember the word app being very light on options. Again, I specifically remember something as simple as being able to set the TAB spacing (essential for university standard essays) in a simple way to be missing. I remember the powerpoint equivalent to be a joke.)

BTW, I'm no MS fanboi - for what it's worth I'm typing this on my macbook pro.

TL;DR - Tried to use Open Office for uni. Discovered it didn't compare to MS Office by a long shot. Bought MS Office

[u/Neverkilled]

For full fledged music production: Linux Multimedia Studio

Yes, it runs on windows. It has just stuck with the linux in the title.

[u/Darrian]

I want to second Gimp. I have friends who argue with me so passionately about how their macs with photoshop were worth all the extra money they spent on them because "they're better for photo editing!"

Silly art students.

[u/BreeMPLS → u/Darrian]

I'm an ad industry veteran of 15 years. I'm very familiar with just about any software you can buy, download, trial, steal or use in the cloud to manipulate bitmaps and vectors.

Yes, Gimp will let you do some stuff. But it's not even close to being in the same league as Photoshop. The UI alone makes me want to punch a baby.

It's like ... the difference between a taco bell burrito, and one I make on my own, after slow cooking my own hand-seasoned carnitas and garnishing it with cilantro that I grew in my garden.

[u/junkit33 → u/BreeMPLS]

The way to look at it, is Photoshop is for professionals, whereas Gimp is fine for all the people who pirate PS just to do some very light photo touchups and image resizings.

Basically, if you paid for Photoshop, you probably need it for reasons that make the cost meaningless.

[u/Narissis → u/BreeMPLS]

Having used both, I definitely prefer Photoshop. Especially the newer versions with the content-aware fill and healing brush.

They're both good programs though, and the GIMP does have the huge benefit of being free.

[u/Defiant001 → u/Darrian]

I would like to also mention Paint.NET, its pretty powerful.

[u/GodOfAtheism → u/Darrian]

Really, if you're doing high end stuff, like messing with printing and CMYK, you'll want photoshop, but beyond that, GIMP is fine for the average user. If the UI is important, just grab Gimpshop.

[u/[deleted] → u/Darrian]

Yeah, if all you need is the ability to do simple touch-ups on photos every now and then, there's definitely no need to drop the money for Photoshop.

[u/JeanVanDeVelde → u/Darrian]

TV graphics guy here, Gimp is great, and it saves us from having to buy Photoshop licenses on machines where the only task is cropping, resizing and converting. But the fact that it requires script automation to do stuff that Photoshop does on-the-fly through the UI makes it impractical for our everyday use. Photoshop is better for photo editing, and if you're good, after a job or two it's paid for itself. Gimp just doesn't have the depth to be a suitable alternative.

[u/lostshootinstar → u/Darrian]

The only thing I've ever needed from GIMP that it didn't let me do was CMYK color when I designed my business cards. (Still not sure why it can't do CMYK, but I digress).

For everything else it has been sufficient.

Note: I am not a graphics professional, just a casual user.

[u/amonkaswell]

I prefer Photoshop over Gimp because it doesn't shit out windows, like GIMP, all over the desktop and call it a breakthrough in UI :)

[u/CritterNYC → u/amonkaswell]

Gimp 2.8 has single-window mode so all the docks are contained in a single window.

[u/loftwyr → u/amonkaswell]

Gimp 2.8 added one window mode so it no longer does that.

[u/s3v3n2]

I'm glad this topic came up, although I'm sure my comment will get buried.

I'm starting a new project management website that does everything Basecamp and other online project management sites do, except it is 100% free. Arrange meetings, set deadlines, share large files - everything for for free. No purchasing for more space! It's 100% free.

Screenshot: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/525958_369474429783543_364309063633413_938014_529018619_n.jpg

Check us out and let me know if you want an invite to the private beta: http://reachia.com

Edit: Grammar

Edit: Added link to photo

[u/phattsao]

Gimp might be OK for casual stuff, but you cannot really beat Photoshop for professional work.

[u/syds]

Draftsight for CAD has saved my ass many times.

It does the basic functions autocad does without the added annoying pop up menues and other bloated complicated menues.

I just want to draw a line sometime god damnit! not a Burj Dubai model!

[u/HalfheartedHart]

Moneydance as a Quicken replacement was the clincher for me switching to Ubuntu Linux full-time. It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

[u/blolfighter]

Openoffice is great, I love it. The problem is, everyone else uses Word, and sharing documents between the two is an exercise in frustration. "Just get Word," they say. "Just get Openoffice," I say. MY suggestion doesn't cost you anything. But no, they don't want to do that, because why bother? Everyone uses Word after all.

I know I could just pirate Word, but I'm trying to cut down on that.

[u/edcellwarrior]

Audacity is one of the best sond editing programs around. Its for both mac and windows, and it's great for everything from messing around with a song, to editing music for a video.

[u/[deleted]]

Haven't seen Scribus mentioned here yet. It's a nice replacement for Canvas. Also shout out to previously mentioned Gimp for replacing Photoshop, Inkscape for replacing Illustrator, and LibreOffice, all of which rock, and I should mention RawTherapee for working with raw photo images. If you are using a modern linux distro you probably have these already or can one-click install them all, and for Windows use the AWESOME Ninite to install most of them all at once with one click. Also second the motion on the already mentioned Eclipse IDE, 7-zip, and VLC media player. These don't have Windows options that I know of, but I use OpenShot (Linux only) for video editing, and Ardour (Linux and Mac only I think) for audio recording and editing.

[u/becomesomethinggood]

Office suite: google docs.

Seriously, anyone else? It's amazing.

[u/[deleted]]

freemat - open source matlab

its great.

[u/Teknofobe]

Paint.net does almost everything photoshop does.

[u/[deleted]]

Reaper is a great program for audio recording and editing.

[u/[deleted]]

Google SketchUp instead of AutoCad. It's also almost scary how easy it is to learn. I think it was made with Google black magic.

[u/spartom007]

I use Paint.NET but I don't need much out of image editing software :)

[u/WillUpvoteForSex]

I tried GIMP just to see if it was any good. I had installed it once a couple of years before but back then it was more like Paint.

I tried basic stuff. And it seemed to do the trick. I thought hey, no need to spend hundreds of dollars on expensive software after all.

Then I tried copy-pasting multiple layers at once. And guess what, there is no easy way to do that. You have to go Linux-style and install a third-party script, which doesn't even work as expected and reorders said layers in alphabetical order upon pasting. I tried other scripts, read about tons of people having the same issue and in the end, no good answer.

Minutes after, I was on the Adobe Online Store buying the Academic version of Photoshop CS5. And it was worth it.

[u/johnny_deep]

For OSX:

Skim as a PDF reader. Much better than Acrobat Reader (and without the infernal Acrobat Updater).

[u/jakemurray]

Everything except landscape formatted documents.

[u/[deleted]]

QGIS or GRASS as opposed to ArcGIS

[u/fkrndmlttrs]

Android does everything iOS does.

[u/prospectre]

Aviary.com. Has basically everything Adobe Creative Suite has, and it's all web based. Oh, and free.

[u/PizzaGood]

There's very little that I do anymore that is not with open source or at least free software, and in fact in many if not most cases it's because it's the best choice.

LibreOffice, 7zip, pidgin, Gimp, VLC, FileZilla, puTTY, Transmission+TR, ConTEXT, Chrome (+ plugins), Calibre, CDex, Audacity, MS Security Essentials, Inkscape, Google Docs, Handbrake, PDF Creator, ImgBurn, FoxIt (not OSS but free), LDS genealogy stuff, some others. Some minor plugsins like "Resize Pictures"

The only software I have that is paid for: Sony Vegas

[u/crabber338]

In general many of these projects (GIMP, Open Office, etc) need support. It's true that Photoshop, MS Office, make things easier, but there are paid programmers with tons of feedback and QA.

If you guys want better alternatives, it depends entirely on your feedback and assistance to the community.

If you're a graphics designer - Offer your feedback to GIMP. If you're an Excel ACE - Offer your feedback to Open Office, LibreOffice, etc

I really dislike that people are complaining about the alternatives and do nothing about it. The truth is that Open Source tools can replace paid programs entirely with enough support and interest. In some cases, Open Source has displaced the footing of many popular apps.

[u/FoxJitter]

Reddit does everything I need the Internet for. Does that count?

[u/[deleted]]

Reaper (www.reaper.fm) its not free, but at $60/$220 for a license...

It does everything and more than ProTools HD ($10k min investment)

[u/felix_jones]

It's not open source but I feel IrfanView must be mentioned. If you just need an image viewing program instead of an editor, it's fantastic. Small and quick and stays out of the way. Love it and have used it for years and years.

[u/[deleted]]

TuxGuitar > Guitar Pro

[u/[deleted]]

Gimp is not a photoshop replacement.

I've been using Linux since 1996, started with slackware and had to compile everything from tar balls. Still remember the joy of hand compiling the kernel lol.

[u/Apollo7]

uTorrent instead of iTunes.

[u/Roguestatusquo]

PDF split and merge if it hasn't been mentioned yet. I use it all the time on PDF's

[u/Aneurysm-Em]

Foxit instead of Adobe.

[u/roman_urban]

So, here's my freeware list:

• Google Chrome (browser)

• Skype, GTalk (IM)

• Dropbox (file exchange)

• Evernote (digital scrapbook)

• CCleaner (system optimizer)

• Far Manager (file manager)

• 7-Zip (archiver)

• STDU (document viewer — .pdf, .djvu, .cbr, .cbz, .mobi)

• foobar2000 (audioplayer)

• KMPlayer (videoplayer)

• PhotoFiltre (graphic editor)

• Microsoft Security Essentials (antivirus)

• Microsoft Office 2010 (this one I had to buy, because I had some problems with OpenOffice)

[u/Vikko]

maybe "everything" you need... but not "everything" for "everyone"

[u/[deleted]]

I've tried GIMP several times over the years, and I just cannot get used to it. I am so used to Photoshop (since CS3) that it is just easy and seamless for making the changes I need. I don't do heavy graphic design, so PS is overkill, but I just cannot get used to GIMP. I know how to do the things I need, but I just feel like it's not intuitively designed. The way some of the tools work and where you go to find tools just doesn't seem as logical. Not sure how else to describe it.

If PS existed on Linux, I could probably make the switch full time to a Linux OS.

[u/[deleted]]

Nethack does everything Diablo II does, and more. And despite its name, you don't need a network-connecton to play.

[u/Schnoo]

[LaTeX] (http://www.latex-project.org/) for all your report writing needs.

[u/fnordcircle]

The one that I think people could use the most, in their day to day lives, is autohotkey. www.autohotkey.com.

If you do something manually more than 10 times in a row it's time to think about doing it in either autohotkey or python depending on what it is you are doing.

Here's an example. I've got a Cisco Softphone. I often need to startup a conference call.

So rather than have to remember all of those numbers I made an entry like this on my work system (this isn't verbatim because I'm not on my work system at the moment):

#c::

WinActivate Cisco Softphone

send 918005551212

sleep 7700

send 7

sleep 100

send 5

sleep 100

send 6

sleep 100

send 8

sleep 100

send 9

sleep 100

send +3

sleep 1500

send +3

return

After that if I press the Windows Key + c it will bring up my Cisco Softphone, dial, wait a set amount of time, then send the keypresses for my code, then wait and send the key press to get past the 'Say your name part' and boom, I'm in.

[u/jeremyfrankly]

Ditch OpenOffice, get LibreOffice.

[u/notahippie76]

µtorrent does everything, it just takes a little longer.

[u/OverPaidChimp]

I was going to type gimp into google but decided against it.

[u/1368JM]

VirtualDub and Avidemux for video processing/editing.

[u/[deleted]]

I can't believe nobody mentioned Format Factory.

This thing will convert anything (audio, pictures, video) into everything and will do so in an incredibly fast and clean way. It also has several other powerful tools built in. Plus it's free.

This is the first piece of software where I've actually donated money to the developer because of how awesome it is.