By Martin Jansen, Owner of Jansen-PCINFO
Windows users can spend hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars a year on software. However, there are free alternatives to many paid software packages, if one is willing to learn.
I am breaking down the free software packages by task for your convenience. Let’s go.
Browsing the Internet
If Google Chrome would disappear tomorrow, I would turn to Brave Browser. It is a complete, fast and secure browser that has an advertising blocker built in. Like most browsers it offers DuckDuckGo as a search engine.
Reading Email
I like Mozilla Thunderbird to read my email. Google conveniently organizes your inbox into categories: Primary, Social and Promotional. Most of the time, however, I just like to read and delete emails regardless of category. Thunderbird strips away the categories and has a large delete button to get rid of unwanted email quickly.
I do use Google mail to mass delete any remaining Social and Promotional email every month or so.
Listening/Viewing Music and Videos
VLC is great for opening all kinds of media file formats. Frankly, I haven’t found a format that it could not open. Although the default viewing is not exciting, skins can be added and customized to suit the user. Extensions can also be added further expanding the capabilities of the media player.
Writing the Next Novel
I’ve already reviewed LibreOffice in my last article, comparing it to Microsoft 365. LibreOffice has all the tools needed to create documents and can read and write documents made by other vendors – regardless of format. It’s a complete office suite completely free to use.
Composing Music
MuseScore is completely free music composition software with capabilities similar to Finale and others. I use MuseScore to recreate music that I have to learn for the musical groups in which I sing. I can break down the music into parts and then use the mixer to focus on my part. Then I share the score with the other members of the group. The files are quite small and easily sent via email.
Normalize Data
When I was working at an insurance company as a Salesforce Administrator I often received data in unconventional formats. I use Notepad ++ to say, search and replace tabs with commas for .CSV files which can be imported into spreadsheets or databases. Notepad ++ can handle large amounts of data and can be run in Linux with the help of WINE.
Photo Viewing and Minor Editing
IrfanView has been my go to photo viewing app for many years. Besides viewing, however, IrfanView can convert to other formats and crop images. IrfanView is the pet project of Irfan Skiljan, hence the name of the photo viewer.
Image Creation and Photo Editing
There is quite a learning curve for GIMP, but it is so worth it to learn. Adobe’s Creative Cloud will cost an individual $60 per month. That would be OK, maybe, if you made a living creating content for a large corporation, but for most of us, the cost is too high. There is plenty of online help with GIMP via YouTube and tutorials.
Video Editing
OpenShot Video Editor is great for creating personal and professional videos. It’s pretty easy to get started, all you need is content. I’ve used it to create slideshows with background music, but that is just scratching the surface of this wonderfully free software.
Want More?
I’ll refer you to Fosshub. It is a website with links to the latest software from various sources. If you need to get things done on a computer, there is most likely a free software solution. Please comment if you know of other free software.