95 Of The Best And Most Popular Open Source Applications and Software Available for Free Download
The promise of Open Source software is best quality, flexibility and reliability. For those who are not familiar with the top applications available from the Open Source projects, this list has to be one of the most comprehensive there is out there! However, the list is constantly growing as more and more apps become available.
Popular Open Source Software
Most PopularFirefox has become a household name for Internet browsing. Already in its 3.1 beta version, Firefox has emerged as the most popular and perhaps fastest web browser available.
Miro “is a free, open source Internet TV and video player that can automatically download videos from RSS-based channels. Features a built-in BitTorrent client.”
Miro claims to give users access to more free HD content than any other player.
Pidgin is an instant messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once – AIM , Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo! and Zephyr.
FeedReader is a news feed solution that provides state-of-the-art features in a user-friendly environment. FeedBurner also offers the most comprehensive podcasting support available today.
Azureus is a BitTorrent client that uses Java script. There are many features crammed into the application including multiple torrent downloads, upload and download speed limiting (globally and per torrent), advanced seeding rules and adjustable disk cache. Azureus only uses one port for all the torrents leaving more room for simultaneously surfing the net.
FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client and server with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface.
OpenOffice from Sun Micro Systems is a multi platform and multi lingual office suite. This free Office Suite is compatible with all file extensions and is as comprehensive as other leading Office Suites.
Thunderbird replaces Microsoft Outlook with a better more user-friendly way to manage your inbox/inboxes.
Pant.Net is an image editing package software for Windows. It features an intuitive interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects plus a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
Audio Tools
MediaCoder “is a free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution. With a flexible and extendable architecture, new codecs and tools are added in constantly as well as supports for new devices. MediaCoder intends to be the swiss army knife for media transcoding in all time and at this moment, it already has millions of users from 170+ countries all over the planet.”Audacity “is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.It allows users to record live audio, convert tapes and records to digital formats, or mix pre-existing digital audio tracks. Supported formats include Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, OS X, Classic Mac.”
HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. It captures video from a variety of sources, including a DVD and a DVD image, and rips audio from sources as well. You’ll then be able to output a digital file in a variety of formats, including MPEG-4, AVI, OGM for video, or AAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis for audio.
LAME “is considered the best MP3 encoder at mid-high bitrates and at VBR, mostly thanks to the dedicated work of its developers and the open source licensing model that allowed the project to tap into engineering resources from all around the world. Both quality and speed improvements are still happening, probably making LAME the only MP3 encoder still being actively developed.”
It is used by many CD rippers, combopacks and so on and its popularity is increasing almost daily. Also, works for great quality DivX encoding.
AC3Filter “is a high quality free audio decoder and processor filter. It allows media players to playback movies with AC3 and DTS audio tracks. Also it can process any audio track, much of processing options allows to adjust the sound in almost any way. It is possible to upmix any audio source to 6 channels. Filter can do multi-channel and digital (SPDIF) output. It can encode any audio source to AC3 on-the-fly and send it over SPDIF to the receiver.”
MP3Gain “analyzes and adjusts mp3 files so that they have the same volume. It does not just do peak normalization, as many normalizers do. Instead, it does some statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear. With MP3Gain you can adjust your songs per file, which makes them all play at the same loudness (radio gain), or per album, which keeps the volume differences within an album but makes the albums play at similar loudness.”
Moosic “is a music player for Unix systems. It focuses on convenient and powerful playlist management. It consists of a server process that maintains a queue of songs to be played and one or more client programs which sends commands to the server. The server continually runs through its song queue, popping songs off the top of the list and playing each with an external program. The client is a simple command-line utility which allows you to easily perform powerful operations upon the server’s queue, including the addition of whole directory trees, automatic shuffling, and song removal according to regular expressions.
The server comes configured to play MP3, Ogg, MIDI, MOD, and WAV files, but can be configured to also play any other file format you want.”
StreamRipper “ is an Open Source (GPL) application that lets you record streaming mp3 to your hard drive”
It allows you to record and save Shoutcast streams and other Internet audio. Its key feature is the ability to find silences and mark them as possible points of track separation. StreamRipper is available for Windows, Linux/Unix.
EasyTAG “is a utility for viewing and editing tags for MP3, MP2, MP4/AAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MusePack, Monkey’s Audio and WavPack files. Its simple and nice GTK+ interface makes tagging easier under GNU/Linux or Windows.”
Databases
Firebird “is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL standard features that runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms.”
PostgreSQL is an “open source and free PostgreSQL has the speed, compatibility, SQL, and features as sophisticated as the number one commercial database.”
It provides online indexing of data and relevance ranking for database searching. Close integration with database allows use of metadata to restrict search results. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, OS X, Solaris.
Content Managers
Joomla! “is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.”Drupal is “an open source content management platform. Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal supports a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.”
WordPress “is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.”
Plone “Leading open source CMS for Content Management, Document Management and Knowledge Management”
This Content Management System is built on top of the open source application server Zope and the accompanying Content Management Framework.
XOOPS “is an extensible, OO (Object Oriented), easy to use dynamic web content management system written in PHP. XOOPS is the ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic community websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, weblogs and much more.”
Opencms “is a professional, easy to use website content management system. OpenCms helps content managers worldwide to create and maintain beautiful websites fast and efficiently.”
WebGUI “(pronounced web-gooey) is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) available today. It is downloaded thousands of times per month and is in use as an Intranet application framework in many Global 1000 companies, governments, schools, and universities.”
PHP-Nuke is a “Content management and portal solution featuring web-based administration, surveys, customizable blocks, modules and themes with multilanguage support. “
PhpNuke allows webmasters and editors to easily post new content and comment existing articles. PHPNuke is much for game clan and guild sites. It is free software, released under the GNU License.
Developer Tools
phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields, manage privileges,export data into various formats and is available in 55 languages.
Dev-C++ gives you a full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the C/C++ programming language. It uses Mingw port of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) as it’s compiler. Dev-C++ can also be used in combination with Cygwin or any other GCC based compiler.
EasyPHP is a complete software package allowing to use all the power and the flexibility that offers the dynamic language PHP and the efficient use of databases under Windows. Package includes an Apache server, a MySQL database, a fully PHP execution, as well as easy development tools for your web site or your applications.
XAMPP “is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.” Works with Windows, Linux, OS/X, Solaris.
Notepad++ “is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL Licence.”
jEdit is a text editor written in Java. It supports auto indent and syntax highlighting for 130 different coding languages, as well as dozens of independently developed plug-ins and macros that make programming easier. Operating system: OS Independent.
TortoiseSVN “is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows. Since it’s not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. TortoiseSVN is free to use. You don’t need to get a loan or pay a full years salary to use it.”
DotNetNuke “is an open source web application framework ideal for creating, deploying and managing interactive web, intranet and extranet sites. It is designed to make it easy for administrators, content editors, developers, and designers to manage all aspects of their web assets. Wizards, content-sensitive help, and a well-researched user interface provide a superior user experience.”
AppServ is an Apache/PHP/MySQL distribution designed to be completely installed and configured in less than one minute. While it works on Windows, the developers recommend Linux for Web ordatabase servers that will be used heavily. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix.
SharpDevelop “is a free IDE for C#, VB.NET and Boo projects on Microsoft’s .NET platform. It is open-source, and you can download both sourcecode and executables from this site. In addition, you can find the latest information and changes on #develop, as well as get in touch with the team in the forum.”
wxWidgets “lets developers create applications for Win32, Mac OS X, GTK+, X11, Motif, WinCE, and more using one codebase. It can be used from languages such as C++, Python, Perl, and C#/.NET. Unlike other cross-platform toolkits, wxWidgets applications look and feel native. This is because wxWidgets uses the platform’s own native controls rather than emulating them. It’s also extensive, free, open-source, and mature.”
Hibernate “is a powerful, high performance object/relational persistence and query service. Hibernate lets you develop persistent classes following object-oriented idiom – including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, and collections. Hibernate allows you to express queries in its own portable SQL extension (HQL), as well as in native SQL, or with an object-oriented Criteria and Example API.”
Ultimate++ “is a C++ cross-platform rapid application development suite focused on programmers productivity. It includes a set of libraries (GUI, SQL, etc..), and an integrated development environment.”
DeskWeb applies the iconography and usability of a common Windows desktop system to Web applications. It is familiar and user-friendly and lets users easily learn how-to exploit all of the software’s features. It can be used in various ways, such as a content management system, a company groupware, a wiki, or more. Operating system: OS Independent.
Zile is a small Emacs clone. Zile is a customizable, self-documenting real-time open-source display editor. Zile was written to be as similar as possible to Emacs; every Emacs user should feel at home.Operating system: Linux/Unix.
WAMP5 installs automatically Apache, PHP, MySQL, PHPmyadmin and SQLite manager on any Windows system. It was created in order to make it easy to use the latest version of PHP?PHP5Operating system: Windows.
MiKTeX “is a typesetting system for the Windows operating system. The distribution includes TeX, pdfTeX and XeTeX.” It is a typesetting program with a complete set of fonts, utilities, and macros.
TEA is a GTK+-based text editor that supports a number of different coding languages, but it is especially helpful for writing HTML. It’s very small but includes a file manager, spellchecker, search function, and more. Operating system: Linux/Unix, OS X, Solaris.
SiSU is an information structuring, transforming, publishing and search framework. Supported formats include plain-text, HTML, XHTML, XML, ODF, LaTeX, and PDF. Operating system: Linux/Unix.
PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application. It allows users to create PDF files from any printable Windows document. As an added bonus, it can also create PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, or EPS files. Operating system: Windows.
Ghostscript allows users to convert, view, and print PostScript and PDF files. Different versions of the software are available either as open-source or as commercial distributions. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, OS X, Classic Mac.
Emulators
DOSBox the command prompt inside Windows isn’t truly DOS anymore. Many old games simply won’t run from the Windows command prompt. They need true blue DOS. You can get the free DOSBox, which does a great job of emulating it. Install and run the program, then run any DOS game–or DOS application, for that matter–inside it. When you run DOSBox, it automatically sets any sound-system related variables, so that your sound system will work properly with your old games.
ZNES “is a Super Nintendo emulator programmed by zsKnight and _Demo_. On April 2, 2001 the ZSNES project was GPL’ed and its source released to the public. It currently runs on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and DOS. Remember that this is a public beta so don’t expect this to run on your machine.”
Wine “is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available.”
Download Clients
eMule is one of the biggest and most reliable peer-to-peer file sharing clients around the world. Many developers contribute to the project, so the network gets more and more efficient with every new version. Operating system: Windows.Ares “Ares is a free open source file sharing program that enables users to share any digital file including images, audio, video, software, documents, etc.
You may now easily publish your files through the Ares decentralized network. As a member of the virtual community, you can search and download just about any file shared by other users”
BitTorrent is the global standard for delivering high-quality files over the Internet. BitTorrent enables you to publish your own content. If you are a filmmaker, musician, or even a comedian, it?s the perfect place to showcase your work to worldwide audience. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix.
DC++ is an open source client for Windows for the Direct Connect network. “Direct Connect allows you to share files over the Internet without restrictions or limits. The client is completely free of advertisements and has a nice, easy to use interface. Firewall and router support is integrated and it is easy and convenient to use functionality like multi-hub connections, auto-connections and resuming of downloads.”
BBurst! is the BitTorrent client that uses less memory and other resources than the original client. Key features include a torrents manager and super-seeding mode. Operating system: Windows.
BT++ “(bee tee plus plus) is an improved client for the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file distribution solution. It is written, like the offical BitTorrent client, in Python and wxPython for maximum cross-platform compatibility. It should work on any platform that wxPython is available for.”
Shareaza P2P is known by its support for numerous P2P networks, including Gnutella2, Gnutella1, eDonkey2000/eMule, and BitTorrent. And its “Collections” feature allows users to preview albumcovers, song lists, and descriptions from a single screen. Operating system: Windows.
ABC is an improved client for the Bittorrent peer-to-peer file distribution solution. ABC is based on BitTornado which extended from from Original Bittorrent Core System , coded by Bram Cohen. It offers some unique customization options. With this app, you can customize which information is displayed, prioritize the queuing system, and download multiple files simultaneously in the same window. Operating system: Windows.
RevConnect is a file sharing program based on DC++. It is fully compatible with the Direct Connect network. RevConnect is an free open-source, ad and spyware-free client, written in C++ for the Direct Connect protocol that allows you to share files over the internet with other users. Operating system: Windows.
File Transfer
WinSCP “Open source freeware SFTP, FTP and SCP client for Windows.” Allows users to transfer files securely via FTP and SFTP. It incorporates Secure Shell (SSH) technology. Operating system: Windows.cURL “curl is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, TELNET, DICT, LDAP, LDAPS and FILE. curl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user+password authentication (Basic, Digest, NTLM, Negotiate, kerberos…), file transfer resume, proxy tunneling and a busload of other useful tricks.”
Games
ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have their data files. The clever part about this: ScummVM just replaces the executables shipped with the games, allowing you to play them on systems for which they were never designed!”StepMania can be played using the keyboard or a sensor-laden “dance pad”. StepMania has game modes similar to Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution and Andamiro’s Pump It Up, Amuseworld’sEZ2Dancer, and Konami’s Para Para Paradise. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, OS X, Xbox.
Mobility Tools
BitPim “is a program that allows you to view and manipulate data on many CDMA phones from LG, Samsung, Sanyo and other manufacturers. This includes the PhoneBook, Calendar, WallPapers, RingTones (functionality varies by phone) and the Filesystem for most Qualcomm CDMA chipset based phones.”PortableApps aims to make all of your applications portable. “It provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It’s open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use.”
Photo Tools
Gallery “is an open source web based photo album organizer. Gallery gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own website whether you’re running a small personal site or a large community site.”Coppermine Photo Gallery is a multi-purpose fully-featured and integrated web picture gallery script written in PHP using GD or ImageMagick as image library with a MySQL backend. It offersa huge lineup of features including multiple languages, e-card creation, thumbnails, and many more. In order to use it, you need a Web server running Apache, PHP, MySQL, and either GD or ImageMagick. Operating system: OS Independent.
Instant Messaging
aMSN is an open source MSN Messenger clone. It allows you to communicate with users on multiple networks. a MSN also allows you to display pictures and emoticons and add skins to yourchat window. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, OS X.Miranda “IM is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Windows. Very light on system resources and extremely fast, Miranda IM requires no installation and can be made to fit on a single floppy disk or USB drive. Featuring a powerful plugin-based framework and boasting over 350 plugins, Miranda IM is one of the most flexible and customisable messaging clients on the planet.”
Security
PeerGuardian “is Phoenix Labs’ premier IP blocker for Windows. PeerGuardian 2 integrates support for multiple lists, list editing, automatic updates, and blocking all of IPv4 (TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc), making it the safest and easiest way to protect your privacy on P2P.”
Eraser “is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 2003 Server and DOS.”
ClamWin Free Antivirus “is a Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and 2003. With Clam Win you can scan individual files manually or you can use the Microsoft Outlook add-in to find and remove infected attachments automatically.”
IPCop Firewall provides a good option for home users and small offices. It?s stable, secure, and easy to configure and maintain. Operating system: Linux.
Remote Desktop
UltraVNC “is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location. If you provide computer support, you can quickly access your customer’s computers from anywhere in the world and resolve helpdesk issues remotely !”TightVNC “is a free remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer.” TightVNC offers additional features like file transfers, video mirror drive support, scaling of the remote desktop, support for two passwords, and more.
System Administration Tools
Webmin “is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. Webmin removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files like /etc/passwd, and lets you manage a system from the console or remotely.”Wireshark is the world’s foremost network protocol analyzer. It supports hundreds of different protocols, multiple platforms, and can analyze VoIP traffic. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, OS X, Solaris, All BSD Platforms.
Nmap “(“Network Mapper”) is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and both console and graphical versions are available.”
TrueCrypt is an open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux. It is a software system for establishing and maintaining anon-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention.
GLPI is the Information Resource-Manager with an additional Administration- Interface. You can use it to build up a database with an inventory for your company (computer, software, printers…) Operating system: OS Independent.
Video/Multi-Media Tools
VirtualDub “is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images.”MediaCoder “is a free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution. With a flexible and extendable architecture, new codecs and tools are added in constantly as well as supports for new devices. MediaCoder intends to be the swiss army knife for media transcoding in all time and at this moment, it already has millions of users from 170+ countries all over the planet.”
FFDShow “ffdshow is DirectShow and VFW codec for decoding/encoding many video and audio formats, including DivX and XviD movies using libavcodec, xvid and other opensourced libraries with a rich set of postprocessing filters.”
Xine “is a free multimedia player. It plays back CDs, DVDs, and VCDs. It also decodes multimedia files like AVI, MOV, WMV, and MP3 from local disk drives, and displays multimedia streamed over the Internet. It interprets many of the most common multimedia formats available – and some of the most uncommon formats, too.”
MPlayer OS X “is binary distribution of MPlayer (The Movie Player for Linux) and comes with native GUI in MacOSX. After installation you can simply (by Drag&Drop) play almost all 3ivx, DivX 3,4,5 and other codecs files in the window or fullscreen mode. Rendering of very nice antialiased text-based subtitles is also supported.”
WDM is a Video Capture driver for Bt848, Bt849, Bt878 and Bt879 based video capture boards. It tries to take the most of the hardware, using all the features the chipset has to offer. It is also implemented as a WDM driver, so the same driver works under Win2000,Win98SE, WinXP and WinMe without modifications.
MediaPortal “is an Open Source application ideal for turning your PC / TV into a very advanced Media Center. MediaPortal allows you to listen to your favorite music & radio, watch and store your videos and DVDs, view, schedule and record live TV as a digital video recorder and much much more. You get MediaPortal as Open Source software. This means you can help in developing MediaPortal or tweak it for your own needs with lots of innovating plugins from our great community.”
LiVES “began in 2002 as the Linux Video Editing System. Since it now runs on more operating systems: LiVES is a Video Editing System. It is designed to be simple to use, yet powerful. It is small in size, yet it has many advanced features.”
VLC Media Player “is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network”
Wikis
MediaWiki “is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It allows collaborative editing on documents within a familiar interface. It was designed to be run on a large server farm and requires Apache, PHP, and MySQL.”
