These days, in every corner, you can find people advocating about open source software and its benefits. I was reading a survey recently which says that companies and government organizations are saving millions by using Open Source Software. I also feel that open source software are boon for people who can not afford the cost of expensive software programs but would like to use the same kind of features available with commercial software. However there are many people who still believe that it is not possible to create a complete machine using open source software. For those, here is the list of top open source alternative of commercial software against ten categories which will help you to get a kickass system running completely on open source software without spending a single penny on commercial software.
1. Operating System: Linux
Linux is the de-facto standard of operating systems for servers and it is gaining popularity as desktop operating system as well. The Ubuntu distribution of Linux is getting popular as more hardware vendors are supplying it as OEM versions. As per wikipedia:
Linux can be installed on a wide variety of computer hardware, ranging from embedded devices such as mobile phones, smart phones and wristwatches to mainframes and supercomputers. Linux is predominantly known for its use in servers; In 2007 Linux’s overall share of the server market was estimated at 12.7%, while a 2008 estimate suggested that 60% of all web servers ran Linux. Most desktop computers run either Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, with Linux having only 1–2% of the desktop market. However, desktop use of Linux has become increasingly popular in recent years, partly owing to the popular Ubuntu distribution and the emergence of netbooks and smartbooks.
Typically Linux is packaged in a format known as a Linux distribution for desktop and server use. Linux distributions include the Linux kernel and all of the supporting software required to run a complete system, such as utilities and libraries, the X Window System, the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and the Apache HTTP Server. Commonly-used applications with desktop Linux systems include the Mozilla Firefox web-browser and the OpenOffice.org office application suite.
There are many Linux distribution packages available. More details about the available Linux distributions can be found here. You can find the distribution you are interested in by using the form to the left. Each distribution has a link to a list of locations where it can be downloaded.
2. Office Software Suite: OpenOffice.org
Open Office is an open source office suite and is available for number of different computer operating systems including Microsoft Windows. It is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and currently supports almost 110 languages. It supports the ISO/IEC standard Open Document Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others which enables it to store all your data in an international open standard format. By using Openoffice, you can also read and write files from other common office software packages like Microsoft Office. As of today, the latest stable version of OpenOffice is OpenOffice.org 3.2 and the same can be downloaded from here.
3. Antivirus: Clam AntiVirus
Clam AntiVirus is an open source anti-virus toolkit for UNIX, designed especially for e-mail scanning on mail gateways. It provides a number of utilities including a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner and advanced tool for automatic database updates. The core of the package is an anti-virus engine available in a form of shared library.
Clam Antivirus has two versions, one for the mail servers running under the Unix and related environment and another i.e. ClamWin which puts a graphical user interface over Clam so that it can run under windows. It uses modified and custom built Clam antivirus engine and is completely dependent upon it.
Clam antivirus for mail servers has many good features, some of them are:
- command-line scanner
- fast, multi-threaded daemon with support for on-access scanning
- milter interface for sendmail
- advanced database updater with support for scripted updates and digital signatures
- virus scanner C library
- on-access scanning (Linux® and FreeBSD®)
- virus database updated multiple times per day (see home page for total number of signatures)
- built-in support for various archive formats, including Zip, RAR, Tar, Gzip, Bzip2, OLE2, Cabinet, CHM, BinHex, SIS and others
- built-in support for almost all mail file formats
- built-in support for ELF executables and Portable Executable files compressed with UPX, FSG, Petite, NsPack, wwpack32, MEW, Upack and obfuscated with SUE, Y0da Cryptor and others
- built-in support for popular document formats including MS Office and MacOffice files, HTML, RTF and PDF
The features of ClamWin, the free antivirus for windows are:
- High detection rates for viruses and spyware
- Scanning Scheduler
- Automatic download of regularly updated virus database
- Standalone virus scanner and right-click menu integration to Microsoft Windows Explorer
- Addin to Microsoft Outlook to remove virus-infected attachments automatically
Clamwin does not have an on-access scanner and does not monitor files in real- time. You need to manually scan a file in order to detect a virus or you can use Winpooch to add this feature to ClamWin. Together with ClamWin anti-virus it even protects your PC from virus by adding the real-time scanning capability that ClamWin lacks.
The latest stable version of Clam Antivirus for mail servers available for download is 0.95.3. You can download it from here.
The latest version of Clamwin Free Antivirus is 0.95.3 and the same can be downloaded from here. You should also download Winpooch from here to add the functionality of real time scans to ClamWin.
4. Mail Client: Thunderbird
Thunderbird is an open source email client from Mozilla. I started using it primarily for my Gmail account as it was surprisingly easy to configure it in Thunderbird. The mail account setup wizard of thunderbird is so easy that configuring a new email account is a cake walk. You do not need to remember your IMAP, SMTP or SSL/TSL settings. What you need to know is your name, email address, and password. Once you have updated all these details into Thunderbird, the new email account set up wizard will check it’s database and find the email settings for you. Apart from this, Thunderbird latest version has so many other useful features:
- Tabs: Thunderbird lets you load emails in separate tabs so you can quickly jump between them. This is very useful when you’re responding to an email and need to refer back to an earlier email. Tabbed email lets you keep multiple emails open for easy reference. Double-clicking or hitting enter on a mail message will open that message in a new tab window and unlike other email clients, you not have to browse through several windows.
- Search: The search interface of Thunderbird has filtering and timeline tools to pinpoint the exact email you’re looking for. Thunderbird also indexes all of your emails to help you search even faster. Your search results are displayed in a tab so you can easily switch back and forth to your search results and other email.
- Message Archive: If you think you’re going to need an email in the future but want it out of your inbox without deleting it, archive it! Archiving helps you manage your inbox and put your email into a new archive folder system. Selecting the Archive button or hitting the ‘A’ key will archive your email.
- Add-ons Manager: Thunderbird supports Addons which help you to get additional features within Thunderbird. Using the inbuilt Add-ons manager, you can find and install your favorite Add-on directly from Thunderbird.
- One Click Address Book: Adding a new contact in thunderbird is super easy. Add people by simply clicking on the star icon in the message you receive. Just two clicks and you are done with adding a new contact in your address book.
The latest version of Thunderbird as of writing this article is 3. To find out more about Thunderbird, please visit the Mozilla Messaging website and to download the latest version, please click here.
5. HTTP Server: Apache
Apache needs no introduction. I am sure you must have heard about it if you are anywhere related to internet and web technologies. Apache is an open source HTTP server which is very much responsible for the huge growth of internet over the last few years. Last year (2009), it crossed the 100 million web site milestone. 
Apache is primarily used to serve both static content and dynamic Web pages on the World Wide Web. Many web applications are designed expecting the environment and features that Apache provides. It is also used for Intranet based web applications and for many other tasks where content needs to be made available in a secure and reliable way. The latest stable release of Apache is 2.2.15 and same can be download from here.
6. Database: MySQL
MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) which run as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is the de-facto standard database for the web these days. It’s popularity has increased heavily because of being a important database component of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and WAMP(Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) software packages. Its popularity for use with web applications is closely tied to the popularity of PHP, which is often combined with MySQL as a part of the above mentioned packages.
Many popular and high traffic websites are using MySQL for data storage and logging of user data. Facebook, Wikipedia, WordPress and YouTube are some of these high traffic and extremely popular websites which are using MySQL.
MySQL is a RDBMS and hence does not comes with any GUI . There are several GUI tools available from third parties as well as from MySQL which can help you to manage your MySQL database. The GUI tool available from MySQL is known as MySQL Workbench but my preferred choice is SQLyog. you can read more about it in my previous articles here.
7. Graphics Editing Software: GIMP
The GNU Image Manipulation Program or GIMP is an open source graphics editing software capable of tasks such as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.
GIMP is expandable and extensible by using plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted. To know more and to download the latest version, please click here.
8. Vector Drawing Program: Inkscape
Inkscape is an open source SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) editor which has features similar to the popular commercial vector drawing software like CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator. It uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics (SVG) file format.
Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features like markers, clones, alpha blending, etc. and it’s interface is also very nice and streamlined. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.
The latest stable version as of writing this article is 0.47 and can be downloaded from here.
9. Media Player: VLC Media Player
VLC media player is an open source cross platform multimedia, framework, player and server. VLC media player can read most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac …) as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a media converter or a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on networks.
VLC media player is available for Windows, Linux and Mac and can be downloaded from here.
10. ZIP Program: 7 ZIP
7-Zip is an open source file archiver with a high compression ratio. The main features of 7 ZIP are:
- High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
- Supported formats:
- Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
- Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.
- For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
- Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
- Self-extracting capability for 7z format
- Integration with Windows Shell
- Powerful File Manager
- Powerful command line version
- Plugin for FAR Manager
- Localization for 74 languages
7-Zip works in Windows 7 / Vista / XP / 2008 / 2003 / 2000 / NT / ME / 98. There is a port of the command line version to Linux/Unix. The latest version of 7 ZIP can be downloaded from the Sourceforge website.
I hope that you like this article. Do post your comments and let me know your views /suggestions. Don’t forget, you can always be in loop by subscribing to the site feed or by following me on twitter.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hmm.. I knew abut every application you listed, but didn’t know that there is a free open source anti virus is too available. Gonna give it a try. :)
I am glad to know that you found something useful. Keep visiting!
Hi,
I just want to comment on the Clamwin AV, I’ve been using it for a year now and I don’t have any regrets. Though it doesn’t do real time checking however you can use Clam Sentinel.
Ed
Ed recently posted..How to counter a spying program
Hi Ed! ClamWin is indeed a good open source AV solution…
nice info….
Thanks gopal!
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