Examples of free and open-source software/Some major free and open source software projects
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Main Page > Open collaborative design > Free and open-source software > Examples of free and open-source software
This is a list, in no significant order, of good quality free and open-source software that anyone can download and use right away. There is plenty of other high quality open-source software out there, this list is just an introductory sample. Most of these programs cross-platform, meaning they can be installed on MS Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
See screenshots at the bottom of the page
Contents
All links below point to external websites
Operating systems and Desktop environments
- Linux - Operating system kernel
- Ubuntu Linux - Linux distribution with full compliment of software for everyday use. See also Kubuntu that runs the KDE desktop which some people find this easier if they previously used MS Windows
- BSD - Operating system
- Darwin - The core of Apple's Mac OS X operating system
- GNOME desktop environment for Linux (and Unix)
- KDE desktop environment for Linux (and Unix)
- Xfce lightweight desktop environment for Linux (and Unix)
Graphics and multimedia
- GIMP - Bitmap graphics editor, similar to Adobe Photoshop
- Inkscape - Vector graphics editor
- Xara Xtreme - Vector graphics editor
- VNC - cross-platform remote desktop utility. For example it enables a Mac to control a Windows or a Linux PC (or vice-versa)
- Blender - Advanced 3D modelling and rendering application. Gallery
- Art of Illusion - Java-based 3D modelling and rendering application with an intuitive user interface. Gallery
- VideoLAN - cross-platform media player capable of playing most video filetypes
- Democracy player - cross-platform media player that can automatically download videos from RSS-based "channels" and play videos sequentially from a playlist
- Songbird - similar to iTunes with built-in browser. Screencast
- Audacity - digital audio editor
- Ardour - digital audio workstation
- Scribus - Desktop Publishing (DTP)
- F-Spot - Photo manager
Office software
- OpenOffice - office productivity software. Comparable to Microsoft Office. As well as having using an open file format it can read and write Microsoft Office files
- KOffice - office suite for KDE desktop (Unix / Linux)
- AbiWord - word processor
- Evolution - personal information manager
- PDFCreator - creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer (PDFCreater is Windows only)
- Apache webserver - web server
- BitTorrent - distributed file-sharing
- Mozilla Foundation
- Mozilla Firefox - web browser
- Mozilla Thunderbird - mail client
- NVU - HTML composer
- Sendmail - email transfer agent
- Gaim - multiple-protocol instant messaging
Content management systems
- Joomla! - CMS
- Alfresco - CMS
- MediaWiki - wiki content management software. AdCiv.org is powered by MediaWiki
- Drupal - modular content management framework and blogging engine
See more open-source CMS software here
Other
- Celestia realtime space simulation software. For an overview of what it can do select 'Run demo' from the 'Help' menu. Gallery and addons
- NASA worldwind - virtual Earth software
- FlightGear - flight simulator
- FreeMind - mind mapping software
- K3b - CD and DVD authoring application for Linux
- phpMyAdmin - web front-end for MySQL database management system
- Eclipse - software framework and Java IDE
- GTK - Popular widget toolkit for the X Window System, for creating graphical user interfaces
- QT toolkit - cross-platform application development framework
- KDevelop - Programming IDE for Linux / Unix
- PHP - server-side programming language
- PERL - Dynamic programming language
- Python - programming language
- GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)
- MySQL - Database management system
- Java - Programming language
