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The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Th...

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Saved by 341 people (-110 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-02-08


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on 2008-02-10 by mactechteacher

Great list of open source alternatives.

on 2008-02-11 by keplerai

comparing proprietary / open source services

on 2008-03-19 by vahidm

goodness Gracious! So much good free stuff!!! Awesome page with clear guides to "standard" software and freeware alternatives. Gottaluvdis!!!!

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The following fifty proprietary programs are listed in no particular order within broad categories along with their open source alternatives. In some cases you could probably write your own book on frustrations with the proprietary programs shown here. In other cases, you’ll discover that the open source alternative isn’t quite up to snuff yet. And, in other cases still, you’ll learn that some proprietary programs are real gems, but that the open source advocate can replace those gems with equally shiny objects from the open source repertoire.

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The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives

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The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives

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The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives

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Internet Explorer Browser to Firefox Browser: Sure, Internet Explorer (IE) is free; but, that’s because it comes packaged with Windows’ operating systems. Free is far different from open source software, where users have more control over how that software works. While you might feel more comfortable with a proprietary operating system, you can still use an open source browser like Mozilla’s Firefox, an exceptional product that expands its use with ‘add-ons‘ created by avid users.

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Microsoft Office to OpenOffice: If the price makes you feel that Microsoft has worked you over, then switch! If you compare Microsoft’s Office with other products, then you’re looking for something that includes an email client, a word processor, a spreadsheet tool, and a multimedia presentation application. The only product that provides a competitive edge against Microsoft is Google (that includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Presentation and more). But, some would argue that Google isn’t truly open source. So, the next best bet alternative would be OpenOffice, an open source project that includes everything you’d find in Microsoft Office except the email client.

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MathWorks MATLAB to Scilab: MATLAB is a highly used application for numerical computing. It provides a programming language that allows users to work with numbers in any possible way imaginable through visualization. Scilab is the open source alternative to MATLAB, and it provides visualization of numerical data just as MATLAB does. Scilab is partly compatible with MATLAB, and both tools are suited for Windows, Linux, and UNIX.

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  • Adobe Illustrator to Inkscape: Adobe’s vector drawing system is one of the best in the industry. However, like Photoshop, the price can be prohibitive for some designers and artists. Try Inkscape instead, an open source vector graphics editor similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X. Inkscape uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format and it supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.). Finally, the streamlined interface is easy to use to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.
  • Adobe PhotoShop to GIMP: Even if you’re paying for upgrades instead of the original package, the price for Adobe’s Photoshop can be prohibitive for some photographers and graphic designers. Try GIMP to see if this open source tool can’t provide you with all the power you need for your photography and graphic design needs. GIMP stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program, and it’s the solution that comes closest to emulating the Photoshop environment.

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    Microsoft Visio to Dia: Visio actually is a great application that allows users to go from complicated text and tables that are hard to understand to diagrams that communicate information at a glance. The only thing that spoils the context is the fact that this software is that it’s not open source. Instead, use Dia, a GTK+ based diagram creation program for Linux, Unix and Windows released under the GPL license. Dia was ‘roughly’ inspired by Visio, which should make this tool easy for transition.

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  • Blackboard to Moodle: Blackboard has been the CMS (Course Management System) ‘industry standard’ for educational purposes for many years. This program allows instructors to build courses, manage student workloads, and more. But Moodle has gained significant ground as an open source alternative to Blackboard, as it helps educators to create effective online learning communities in a scalable package that costs nothing to use.

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  • Microsoft Project to Open Workbench: Microsoft allows users to control project work, schedule, and finances, and effectively communicate project data to other users. But, it costs to do that with Microsoft. Instead, use open source Open Workbench to accomplish exactly the same project details for free. When users need to move beyond desktop scheduling to a workgroup, division or enterprise-wide solution, they can upgrade to CA’s Clarity™ system, a project and portfolio management system that offers bidirectional integration with Open Workbench.

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    Adobe Premiere to Avidemux: Premier is state of the art real-time non-linear video editing for any format including High Definition (HD). Supports 16-bit color resolution, GPU accelerated rendering for faster effects and even advanced DVD authoring. On the other hand, Avidemux provides Windows, Mac, and Linux users with an easy-to-use open source tool for DVD/DivX converting and editing. Avidemux also has scripting support for automation and even offers DVD authoring with the addition of the open source software, dvdauthor.

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    Macromedia Flash Professional to OpenLaszlo: Developers use Flash to create multimedia events on the Web. Since the program utilizes vector-based graphics, it provides a venue that goes beyond the Web. As an open source product, OpenLaszlo provides developers with a platform to create zero-install Web applications with user interface capabilities of desktop client software. In other words, OpenLaszlo applications developed on one machine will run on all leading Web browsers on all leading desktop OS. These applications, like Flash, provide animation, layout, data binding, server communication and more.

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    WinZip to 7-Zip: Some of us grew up with WinZip, so it’s sad to say goodbye. But, we all gotta leave home at some point, and when the open source 7-Zip beckons, maybe you should heed the call…

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    McAfee VirusScan to ClamWin: McAfee is well known as one of the oldest companies in the anti-virus market. Many individuals need to deal with this software company, as its tools come packaged with many new Windows OS computer systems. The plus side to McAfee is that it is reliable and that it offers 24/7 support. The downside is that it’s not open source. ClamWin, on the other hand, is a free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. It features high detection rates, scheduler, automatic download of virus database updates and a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. As noted above, ClamWin doesn’t provide on access realtime scanning, but when combined with WinPooch, this capability is added.

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  • iTunes to Songbird: If you’re accustomed to the equation where “Apple + iPod + iTunes” equals a ton of money, then you might consider a switch to Songbird. Songbird is an open source player and a platform committed to “playing the music you want + from the sites you want + on the devices you want.” Songbird thereby challenges the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet.

    • Highlighted by gholker

    Nero Burning Rom to K3b: Nero Burning Rom is a popular tool to burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. This software includes backup, cd copying, audio features and more, and it’s easy to use. But, it’s not open source like K3b (Windows). This latter program creates and burns CDs and DVDs, including ripping with DivX/XviD encoding, DVD copy, ISO burning, Video CD (VCD) creation, Audio CD creation for almost any audio file, CD-TEXT support for audio CDs, support for DVD-RW and DVD+RW and much more. Oh, and did we add that it was easy to use?

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    iBackup to ZManda: Who can you trust with your backup files? It’s difficult to decide, as price alone means nothing. You want safe, reliable servers or tools that can keep your backups available and intact. iBackup has proven to be worthy of that task, but you might want to look at ZManda as well. This open source solution protects more than half a million of servers and desktops running various versions of Linux, UNIX, BSD, Mac OS-X and Microsoft Windows operating systems worldwide. Not only do they backup information, they’re into recovery as well.

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    Rational Purify to Valgrind: IBM’s Purify is a well respected and much used debugging tool. It uses topnotch memory corruption and memory leak detection to keep hard-to-find bugs from any application. As an open source alternative, Valgrind also detects leaks and other memory related programming errors. But, it also detects threading bugs and includes a call-graph profiler that detects bottlenecks in code. as well as threading bugs. A user might say that Valgrind is better than Purify, even if it is open source.

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    Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal to Winpooch: Kaspersky Anti-Virus probably is among the top products on the market for Windows-based anti-virus tools, mainly because it’s well known for its outstanding detection rates. It commits to multiple tasks as it protects against viruses, script viruses, checks file archives (such as zip files) and removes viruses from mail. It also provides protection against spyware as well as adware. As an open source alternative, however, Winpooch also scans files on your computer, detects malware, and prevents all the viruses, trojan horses and other problems that Kaspersky hunts down as well. Winpooch, by the way, adds a real-time scanning capability that ClamWin (noted below) lacks.

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    Norton Personal Firewall to WIPFW: Many people could work with Norton in their sleep, as this company has been around that long. The Norton Personal Firewall for Windows will monitor and check all Internet traffic and it will reject any attack or intrusion attempt. Ubiquitous popups and permissions are part of the game, as it seems that each new Website carries its own set of Norton no-nos. As an alternative, WIPFW is a firewall for Windows based on IPFW for FreeBSD UNIX. It provides virtually the same features, functionality, and user interface as Norton Personal Firewall. The big difference? WIPFW is open source.

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    Authorize.net to OpenSSL: Granted, Authorize.Net’s preferred payment gateway connection, Advanced Integration Menthod (AIM), provides the highest level of customization and security to merchants for submitting transactions online. But, why pay for a secure SSL when you can get an open source product for free? The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. A worldwide community of volunteers uses the Internet to communicate, plan, and develop the OpenSSL toolkit and its related documentation manages the project.

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