Open-Source (and free) software that is a must for any user!

Open-Source software is software that is "free as in speech" and it can be edited to take out bugs, make a spin-off piece of software, or just to modify the software slightly to better fit what it is needed for. Often you can redistribute your changes as long as you somehow offer or link to the original source code. Though check the software license to make sure.

I am taking "free as in beer" software, which means it necessarily doesn't have the source code available but it may, but it is at least completely free for the user to use.

Though the software I am talking about here is open-source and free meaning it's free as in both speech and beer.

My list of great Open-Source and Free software is as follows:

OpenOffice.org - This is a complete Microsoft Office replacement suite. It is based on Sun's StarOffice which in turn is based on OpenOffice. StarOffice is essentially the same except it has a different spell checker, clipart, you have to pay for it, and some other various differences. This suite has a word processor (called Writer and replaces Microsoft Word), slideshow creator (called Impress and replaces Microsoft Powerpoint), spreadsheet program (called Calc and replaces Microsoft Excel), and a database program (called Base and replaces Microsoft Access). This program is so advanced that it even opens and saves Microsoft Office formats. So you can easily and without much effort, share between users who use Microsoft Office, while you use OpenOffice.org. This program runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and UNIX.

Mozilla Firefox - The popular web browser that is slowly replacing Internet Explorer. This web browser has proven to be less annoying and more secure then it's rival. It has so many addons that make browsing fun. CoolIris, which allows you to see your news or YouTube videos in 3D is just cool. It even has ad filtering addons to even make your web browsing cleaner and safer. This program runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and UNIX.

Mozilla Thunderbird - This program is a really nice replacement for Microsoft Outlook Express or even Microsoft Outlook. It supports more then the two previous mentioned in the sense that it does RSS feeds and make it easily to add GMail email accounts. This program runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and UNIX.

Linux - Linux it self, the operating system is free and open-source software itself. Linux is technically the kernel and the distributions are collections of the Linux kernel and other software mixed together in to one nice working system.

UNIX - UNIX it self, the operating system is free and open-source software itself. It comes in various flavors says as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. This is a truly great OS just like Linux. Since they both basically do very similar things, it's up to you to decide with OS you truly want to use all the time.

If you have any other software that you believe that should be added to this list, please add a comment or get a hold of me, and I will see what I can do about adding it.