Top 15 Open Source Items (For Windows)

I decided to let you know what my top 15 open source items are for Windows computers. All of the items below are free, both in the monetary sense and the intellectual property sense.

Only programs that I use or have used are in this list. I’m sure there are plenty of great programs not in this list, but I believe this list will suit the various needs of most Windows users. (I have excluded PuTTY, as it is a program intended for use by a small group of users — those with Linux/Unix servers.)

15. Handbrake

This is an excellent program for backing up (a.k.a. “ripping”) DVD’s, converting them to formats like H.264 MPEG4 for playback on computers. Leo Laporte has recommended this program to many callers on The Lab With Leo Laporte, but it may not be legal much longer if the proposed copyright reform in Canada is passed. From what I can tell, it is a powerful program.

This program is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

14. PDFCreator

I used to use this for converting any printable document to PDF, but now I have Office 2007 which has built-in PDF capabilities. I no longer have a need for this open source solution. Mac users, of course, can convert to PDF in a simple fashion when printing. With PDFCreator, it leverages other GPL/LGPL things like ghostscript in order to convert whatever you’re printing to PDF. There are commercial and non-open source solutions, but this is by far the best of them — aside from Adobe Acrobat.

13. Pidgin

This is a good instant messenger that consolidates multiple IM accounts from Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo! and more. It doesn’t look as intuitive as a free (but closed source) product like Windows Live Messenger or Google Talk, but it is a powerful application. I used to use this before I found out how to install Windows Live Messenger on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Other notable IM clients for Windows include Miranda IM.

12. DVD Flick

DVD Flick is a really good program that creates DVD’s that can be played in most modern DVD players. It doesn’t match up to iDVD on the Mac — it only converts the video/audio to the DVD standard format and creates titles & chapters — but it is an easy-to-use solution for average Windows users that don’t need a menu. There is another open source solution for menu authoring, though.

11. Notepad++

Notepad++ is an interesting program that is so much more than a Notepad replacement. It can even replace some coding programs, given the plugins available for it and code highlighting, even though I think Dreamweaver still beats it in terms of usability and user-friendliness for Web designers and developers.

I would appreciate the authors of Notepad++ more if they didn’t have a large, ugly, and ineffective banner at the top of their site advocating the boycott of the Beijing Games. Guess what? Not a single country decided to boycott the Games! But that’s a matter for another time and another blog…

10 more programs after the jump, including (in no particular order here) Firefox, 7-zip, VLC Media Player, Audacity, MediaCoder, and more!

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(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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NASA Uses Linux

A long time ago (sometime around the current month last year), I was talking to some people about how the International Space Station was running on Windows 95 and old versions of Windows NT. Apparently they were later moving to Linux.

Interestingly, NASA also uses Linux - that is, two flavours of Linux: RedHat Enterprise Linux and Fedora.

More after the jump.

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(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Screencast: Safari 3.1

Well, it took me a few days, but here’s the Safari screencast. It also compares Safari 3.1 with Mozilla Firefox 3.0 beta 4.

Since it didn’t convert to Flash on blip.tv, below is a link to the original QuickTime movie. It is about 58 MB in size, and was created using the H.264 (great resolution but smaller file size) codec. You will need Apple QuickTime Player to view this.

Click to play

You can download Safari from Apple’s web site.

If you prefer Firefox and don’t have it yet, .

(6 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)

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Disadvantages of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

The title may seem a bit biased, given that I’m not going to even list the benefits of computing on a 64-bit or amd64 PC. However, I’d like to talk about how using Windows XP Professional x64 Edition sucks.

I’ve used this operating system in the past, but ultimately decided to switch over to 32-bit Windows because of numerous incompatibilities. It is the same incompatibilities which are causing me grief now, after I switched back to it following a virus infection. Though Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (I’ll just refer to it as x64 Windows from now on) comes with 32-bit editions of the same DLL’s in order to support most 32-bit programs written for “normal” Windows, many programs simply do not run on x64 Windows.

Highly complex applications like Google Earth and iTunes come with bundled DLL’s that are necessary for the application to load. These libraries can include audio codecs, compression libraries, and even DLL’s for interacting with the graphics card. Unfortunately, these are also (usually) 32-bit libraries which CANNOT be loaded by a 64-bit program.

That, of course, is an over-simplification of the various troubles, but to put it bluntly: quite a lot of good programs don’t work on x64 Windows. It’s why I can’t use Google Earth on x64 Windows, and why I can’t install iTunes on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition — though iTunes is available for x64 Vista.

A further incompatibility is Macromedia / Adobe Flash. There is no Flash ActiveX control available for the native 64-bit edition of Internet Explorer on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. Though one can download the ActiveX control for the 32-bit edition of IE, this loses a great deal of the security offered by x64. (But I’m not going to get into that, given what I’ve said about not listing benefits.) I don’t know if Sun offers a native 64-bit edition of the Java Virtual Machine.

The same incompatibilities have slowed the adoption of 64-bit computing, and due to that unwillingness to switch to this vastly-superior structure, companies are simply NOT making drivers and programs for native 64-bit execution.

A great example of this is Microsoft’s webcams; webcams are one of the many gadgets that do not come with 64-bit drivers, but it stands out in particular: companies rarely release 64-bit drivers. Microsoft’s webcams do not come with drivers that can work on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

That means that I can’t use my current webcam or the software for my wireless mouse.

If you are considering using x64 Windows — for whatever reason — make sure your devices come with drivers for or support x64 Windows. Also try to ensure that the companies that produce your favourite or most valued software also make native 64-bit editions that do not need to be run in an emulated mode (known as Windows on Windows in XP Pro x64). Fortunately, Microsoft Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (8.1), and major peripheral manufacturers like Epson and Brother do come with 64-bit libraries that install perfectly on x64 Windows.

In any case, you will run into a lot of incompatibilities if and when you try x64 Windows.

Update: I am back on 64-bit Windows and compatibility has improved drastically. 64-bit is becoming mainstream.

(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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Downloading YouTube files

How to download YouTube videos without installing any software, even when the entire YouTube domain is blocked

There is a simple process, one which results in a downloadable video file. Every step of the way, if you find that you can access the video you want, there is no need to complete the process unless you want to actually download a video that you can store and keep on your own (or school/corporate) computer.

Here is a scenario in which you might want to follow this guide:

You are on a corporate network which blocks YouTube and all of its subdomains. Any time that you attempt to access it, you receive a warning screen.

You cannot use proxies because anoonymizers have been blocked as well.

You know the URL of the video you want to watch or download.

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Zune comes to Canada

According to a report coming from CES 2008, Microsoft will release the Zune in Canada this spring. It is presented as an iPod alternative and Microsoft’s integrated portable multimedia device.

My first reaction is, so what? People can get the Zune in the U.S. and bring it over the border.

But the Zune just isn’t what people are looking for.

Two points I have to make: stick with software, and you should have done it earlier.

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