Open Source - How to get more for less

 

The open source movement has been growing steadily over the last few years. It means free software which is as good if not better than the commercial equivalents.

The scope of open source goes from MP3 tagging utilities to corporate web serving software and even full operating systems such as Linux. I’ve created a list of my favorite open source programs which have made my life easier. I hope to write up some tutorials explaining how to use them to full effect and any cool tips and tricks soon, but for now you’ll just have to work out how to use them yourself – though to be honest they are all pretty easy to use and have documentation with them.

 

Music and Video


Lame

This is one of the best MP3 encoders available. It has taken many audiophiles tweaking it since 1998 to get MP3 sounding this good. LAME confusingly stands for “LAME Ain't an Mp3 Encoder, this name was given to it in a much earlier release when it was simply a patch for the ISO dist10 source.


EAC

EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is designed to flawlessly rip audio from CD’s. It includes more options than you can shake a stick at including automatic naming of tunes using an internet lookup service and the ability to pick your encoder (such as LAME). It really makes sense to use LAME and EAC together as the perfect way to back up your CD’s into MP3 with the minimum loss of quality.


Virtual Dub

EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is designed to flawlessly rip audio from CD’s. It includes more options than you can shake a stick at including automatic naming of tunes using an internet lookup service and the ability to pick your encoder (such as LAME). It really makes sense to use LAME and EAC together as the perfect way to back up your CD’s into MP3 with the minimum loss of quality.


VLC media player

If you use DivX files you just have to get this. This program will play ANY video (and audio) file you care to throw at it and runs on virtually any platform. I got really fed up with downloading endless codec’s from the web to play video files and having hassles when I want to use sub-title files with them. This program spelt the end of all that.



Internet


E-mule

This is one of the best P2P (Peer to Peer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer) programs I’ve come across. I find it especially good for finding obscure movies and programs.


File Zilla

After downloading countless FTP programs and having the trial period run out on me I managed to find this gem. It’s a great fully featured FTP program and was used to upload this site!



Miscellaneous


ClamWin

This open source anti-virus program is just as good as many of the commercial equivalents which can cost you dear. The only limitation is that it doesnt do real time scanning though it will integrate itself with outlook and scan incoming e-mails which is were most of the viruses which attack me come from. The next version should include real time scanning.



Creative


GIMP

While not as fully featured as Photoshop this program provides a great alternative if you don’t have £500 to spare. It is particularly good for making weird trippy pictures even if your not artistic (like me).


Open office

This office package is in a similar vein to Microsoft office though without the hefty price tag. Check it out.


Perl

This is a brilliant open source programming language with hundreds of modules which make even complex CGI jobs a doddle. I wrote my dissertation in this language and learned to love it.


Python

Well although I’ve used all the other programs I’ve yet to actually use this one. From what I understand it is an evolution of Perl. Definitely worth checking out.

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