Today is
Software Freedom Day. It's a worldwide celebration of free software and its importance in business, government, education, and everything else.
As I try to keep away from proprietary software (except now, I'm typing this on Windows :() I'm used to integrating free software in my daily life. Today I'll be making a couple of CD's containing free software and distributing them to friends and family so they can also be introduced to free software.
To help spread the message, here is a list of some of my favorite free software that works on Windows:
-
Firefox: The popular web browser
-
Pidgin: Instant Messenger. Supports MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, and Facebook chat!
-
VLC: Probably the best media player out there.
-
GIMP: An excellent graphics application
-
Inkscape: A vector graphics editor, this has saved my life at work more times than I care to admit!
-
Vim: One of the best text editors ever created, I live inside this program!
If you want to run a completely free system, consider a GNU/Linux distribution like
gNewSense.
So enjoy Software Freedom Day, use some free software and tell us about your favorite programs in this post. Maybe next year, we can organize an event on this day.