O.K I have been using Ubuntu Intrepid now for a little while and I have come to the verdict that its really not the desktop for me. I love the idea that its free, I don’t have trouble installing it or with setting up drivers, I like Compiz, I like the fact that I can customise practically everything! I even like the application line up.

So whats wrong with it?

Well for one I think it feels sluggish. When I click on something it always seems to take a moment to respond also when I type stuff I’m always getting double caps at the start of words (whats that about)? Anyway all OS’s have their failings Ubuntu has many!

I have now switched back to Windows XP for the moment and its spurred me on to write this article about free software for Microsoft Windows which I would imagine most people would want all bar a few specialist applications.

Before people say why not just Linux if you want free software… well most people will already have an Operating System with their computer / laptop so why not use it? Its most likely going to be Vista if its a recent purchase. Vista isn’t all that bad and neither is XP!

Firefox

Probably the best web browser out there, made even better by contributing addons such as Foxmarks and Firebug!

Download: www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/

iTunes

Love it or hate it. Personally I love it and its free although I think 80MB+ download is a little excessive.

Download: www.itunes.com

Dropbox

This is a great web service that will backup and synchronize your files between multiple computers. I like the fact thats its cross platform (thats generally a trait of free software).

Download: www.getdropbox.com

Geany

An IDE for programming (I use it for PHP).

Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/geany

Thunderbird

A great email client with some fantastic addons.

Download: http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/thunderbird/

OpenOffice.org 3.0

I don’t care what anybody says about this for 95% of people at home this is the perfect Office suite you really don’t need to buy Microsoft Office

Download: http://www.openoffice.org/

AVG Anti Virus

Free anti virus software. Thats right you don’t have to spend £30 on that copy of Norton that you’ve been told that you need.

Download: http://free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition

Gimp 2

Edit your images with relative ease… If you don’t like the Gimp try… paint.net

Download: http://www.gimp.org/windows/ or http://www.getpaint.net/

Editplus (its kind of free)

Ok this is a 30 trail but it carries on working! I will buy a license one day I promise!

Download: http://www.editplus.com

FFDShow

Install this to deal with most of your multimedia needs.

Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow

Haali Spliter

Want to play MKV’s then you will need this

Download: http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/

Media Player Classic / VLC

An alternative to MS Mediaplayer both are as good as each other in my opion.

Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

Putty

An ssh client for windows it works… arguably I think it works better than native linux clients mainly due to the fact it has a profile manager.

Download: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

WinSCP

A way of connecting to SSH filesystems using Windows

Download: http://winscp.net/eng/download.php

uTorrent

torrents? What are they you ask. Well they are generally associated with illegal music and video downloads. However some organizations actually use it to distribute legit software.

Download: http://www.utorrent.com/download.php

Skype

A great bit of free software to make calls and chat to family and friends.

Download: http://www.skype.com

Pidgin

An alternative to MSN Live Messenger.

Download: http://www.pidgin.im/download/windows/