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It's an (almost) FREE world! - part 2 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

by Mike McNamee Published

"... Programmers who are actually skilled at programming either start their own companies or retire (and maybe write freeware) - but they don't remain corporate lackeys, struggling to repair the latest version of Windows.... Commercial software is, by definition, built by the lowest bidder. By contrast, freeware (some if it, anyway) is built by people who actually like what they are doing, and some of them are people the big software corporations could not afford to hire."

For this feature we have gathered together a listing of freeware that we have either used or are familiar with. We have also included modestly priced shareware on the grounds that something a professional pays for within their first use of it, is effectively getting it for free! In some cases the ware developer is simply trying to recoup the costs of their Broadband connection (your editor used to provide free tutorials on his website until he started to be charged for bandwidth for people downloading stuff!).

Operating Systems

The archetypal open source code is that named after Linus Torvald and called Linux and fronted by a penguin. It was launched in 1991. Open source is not the same as freeware although a great deal of it is free. Its advantage is that the source code itself is published and available - no chance of not being able to open your RAW files in 2020 because Adobe have fallen out with Nikon (substitute any camera maker or software in this sentence).

The various open source options that emanate from Linux are called distributions' and two common ones (from over 200) are Ubuntu and Red Hat. At Professional Imagemaker we use Linux for the main server, which hosts the web-based things such as email, file transfer, Skype, etc. Mrs Editor is a full-time Linux user with no Microsoft products whatever, relying entirely on Open Office, Picassa and other freeware for her dayto-day computing tasks.

Linux is a little daunting to the novice or newcomer to computing but the rewards are a stable, fast and efficient operating system with few of the foibles of Microsoft products.

Virtualisation

Fed up with Vista not working all your legacy kit? As we explained in some detail in the last issue of Professional Imagemaker the use of virtual machines from within your operating system allows you to run another operating system while keeping your main OS 'clean'. This is particularly useful if you wish to try software from an unknown source either because it is a beta version or because you are unfamiliar with its origin. If it fails to work or corrupts your OS then you simply dump the virtual machine and go upon your way. VirtualBox is obtained from www.virtualbox.org and is a product belonging to Sun Microsystems (no less!). It is free.

OFFICE SOFTWARE
Open Office
Microsoft has cornered the world market for the basic office applications such as word-processing, data-basing, spreadsheets and business presentations. On the way they have all but annihilated Lotus (AmiPro) and Word Perfect (even though many thought that these were (and are in the case of Word Perfect) better products!). Their attempt to corner the market in web browsers landed them in court, but nevertheless Internet Explorer has eventually all but killed Netscape Navigator, a solution that was preferred by many professionals.

"Intel Vice-President Steven McGeady, called as a witness, quoted Paul Maritz, a senior Microsoft vice president as having stated an intention to 'extinguish' and 'smother' rival Netscape Communications Corporation and to 'cut off Netscape's air supply' by giving away a clone of Netscape's flagship product for free. The Microsoft executive denied the allegations."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

Gratifyingly, Firefox, another web browser, has survived the fracas and is available to those in the know! We use nothing else.

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Contact Mike McNamee

1st Published
last update 09/12/2022 14:54:26

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