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!

10. WebKit

This is the open source engine used in Safari and some other browsers. It is a KHTML-based engine, which makes it differ from the Gecko engine used by Firefox. However, it is very standards-compliant, on a level that competes with the Gecko engine.

You can download nightly builds that allow you to use Safari with a more up-to-date engine.

Firefox is a great contender, and it is higher on the list (see below).

9. FileZilla

FileZilla is an open source FTP “solution” — that is, both a client and server are available. It is powerful and customizable, though it lacks the user-friendliness that I enjoyed with the SmartFTP program, which was, until recently, available for free for non-commercial use.

However, it is still the best open source FTP client for Windows.

Does anyone know any other great FTP clients out there for Windows? I am not entirely satisfied with FileZilla.

8. Audacity

This is a great sound recorder and editor, which many podcasters and other audio enthusiasts will find extremely useful. Unfortunately, the current beta version seems to crash a lot (on my x64 machine), and Audacity in general doesn’t seem to work as well as the trial of Adobe Soundbooth that I tried.

By the way, did you notice that the icons/images for the top 10 projects are generally larger? I want them to be appealing!

7. TrueCrypt

Best. Encryption. Tool. Ever.

There isn’t any real competition out there for TrueCrypt in terms of whole-disk encryption or encrypted containers. The software supports AES and other industry standards for encryption.

Their release cycle is also extremely quick, fixing issues and adding new features at least every month.

Sorry, I don’t have a large logo or image available for this software.

6. MediaCoder

Best. Multimedia. Converter. Ever.

Out of the box, it supports most of the multimedia formats anyone would use. The creators of MediaCoder have really outdone themselves in creating a great product that competes with commercial solutions like QuickTime Pro.

It also makes use of many open source libraries, but because of its limited compatibility with Linux, Mac, and 64-bit Windows, it just isn’t as high on the list as Java.

5. OpenOffice.org®

This is a “good” alternative to Microsoft Office if you don’t have Microsoft Office. However, from experience, I would say that OpenOffice.org is better on Linux than it is on Windows, and seems to look better as well. Personally, I have grown accustomed to the Office 2007 Ribbon look, and I only now use OpenOffice.org on Linux.

4. Java™ platform

This platform is so crucial to so many open source projects (including OpenOffice) that it just has to be in this list. Unfortunately, the Java platform and Java applets seem to run slowly on computers with limited RAM.

It was recently made open source.

3. VLC Media Player

This is a multimedia player. VideoLAN uses many open source libraries, making it so powerful it can essentially replace Windows Media Player and (shudder) RealPlayer. It is far more capable than most of these commercial products, including QuickTime, which has its uses. Unfortunately, even with skins enabled, it doesn’t look as good as some of the proprietary software out there.

Still, if you’re looking for one multimedia player that does it all (and more), VLC Media Player is the best choice, which makes it my number 3 pick.

2. Mozilla Firefox®

The popular Web browser is an obvious item, but not necessarily the best, and thus not my top choice in this list.

It would be better if it was even more standards-compliant and had a better designed interface like that of Safari. It would also be better if there was a 64-bit edition. I wouldn’t say it’s the best browser ever… not to mention the memory leaks.

If you don’t know what Firefox is, you’re probably not keeping up with the times. (I’m sorry to be so blunt.) But it is a great browser, and I fully recommend it to you, alongside comparable products like Opera and Safari.

It might be shocking for you to find Firefox not at the very top, but you’re free to express your opinion in the comments section.

1. 7-zip

Best. Archive. Tool. Ever.

Supports a variety of formats (it can open just about any format) and has a fast, simple and intuitive interface. It is an amazing product that completely blows WinZip out of the water.

There are other people who tell me that WinRAR (shareware) is great because its format is efficient. There are also those who tell me that StuffIt (commercial closed source) has great compression rates.

So what? Neither WinRAR nor StuffIt are open source. And their formats aren’t public, either. I’d much rather stick with open source projects like 7-zip, and open formats like ZIP, LZMA (great!!!), gzip (also great!!!), and bzip2 (which is slow!!!).

Also, props to 7-zip for supporting 64-bit (both IA64 and x64) as well as having ports to Unix.

Final Note

OpenOffice, OpenOffice.org, Java, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla, their logos, and all other trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Geekie.org and FreddyWare are not affiliated with any of the organizations owning such trademarks. The logos of the products mentioned here are used according to Fair Dealing / Fair Use and in compliance with their trademark guidelines where applicable. Any trademark owner may contact me to request removal of their trademark from this list.

What was the purpose of this list? Well, I wanted to share my favourite programs with anyone else who was reading. Hopefully, if you like this list, you can Digg it or add it to StumbleUpon (see the links below) and share it with others, or link to it from your Web site or blog.

But really, I did this partially as a reference for myself. It’s a list of programs I’m likely to install on any new computer, like the one I’m putting together today.

So, comment, share this, or be on your way to installing the top 15 open source programs for Windows!

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