What are your favorite open source programs for Windows?

Question

I've tried OpenOffice, and while it seems ok, I figured it wasn't worth spending time learning because I have Microsoft Office. But I'm curious to know what are some other open source programs and how do they compare with their popular Windows counterparts.

I would be especially interested in programs like PhotoShop, FreeHand, Publisher, and others.

For what it's worth, I already use Filezilla for FTP.

I guess I should add that I use Firefox and Thunderbird as well.

I also use a text editor on a regular basis. I'm currently using EditPad.

Answer 1

Photoshop > GIMP

http://www.gimp.org/

Publisher > Scribus

http://www.scribus.net/

Adobe Reader > SumatraPDF (less features, but much smaller and faster)

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

Nero > InfraRecorder

http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/

Windows Media Player > Media Player Classic, VLC

http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Answer 2

Since you mentioned EditPad, that made me think, yeah, I replaced Windows Notepad a long time ago with an open source text editor called AkelPad. It's like Windows notepad with a tabbed interface.

Overall, my favorite open source software is a browser called K-Ninja. It's a super fast, minimalistic browser. It's capable of everything most other browsers are, but most things are done through the context menu instead of cluttering the interface with buttons, so you get lots of screen space. I like it because you cannot slow it down, no matter how many tabs are open at once or how poorly written the pages you view are. It's a Gecko based browser, so it renders pages as well as Firefox. But unlike Firefox, it never uses more that 20MB of memory, even with 150+ tabs open. Literally. It has AdBlock Plus and Flashblock, which are my two favorite Firefox extensions. The only drawback is that it only runs on Windows. Good luck finding K-Ninja, though, due to a licensing dispute it's only available from an invitation only Google Group, or I could send it to someone if they wanted it.

And I can't leave out Debian GNU/Linux when I talk about my favorite FOSS, Debian is like the granddaddy of all open source projects.

Answer 3

My Favorite Open-Source Programs:
P2P: Ares Galaxy http://aresgalaxy.sourceforge.net/
Compression: 7-Zip http://www.7-zip.org/
Imaging: The Gimp http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

Answer 4

if it is your first linux OS, and % to maintain a somwhat residing house windows feeling, you may desire to attempt LINdows, or my popular, ubuntu "linux for human beings" merely google them. they're the two very consumer friendly, and could be run alongside with residing house windows, so which you would be able to boot into the two, have the gameing of residing house windows, with the unfastened application from linux. oh additionally you may EMULATE a residing house windows atmosphere in ANY distro of linux by ability of utilising a residing house windows emulator pronounced as WINE.

Answer 5

In response to Rabbits answer regarding K-Ninja - I managed to down load it from here:

http://download2.freewarelist.net/K-Ninja_v2.1.4.5.exe