Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock in Madagascar for the last few years, you undoubtedly already know about the All-Star open-source applications for Windows. I’m talking about applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, OpenOffice, and VLC.
However, there are hundreds of lesser-known but highly-useful open-source applications available for Windows. A few of my favourites are below.
These applications range from moderately popular to downright obscure, but all of them are open-source and FREE. All of them are worth the install time if you have never tried them. As a side bonus, many of them are cross-platform as well.
Here they are, in random order:
1. ZScreen
ZScreen is an open-source screen capture program that quietly resides in your system tray until needed. It can take screen shots of a selected region, the active window, or the entire screen. It can even send screen captures via FTP and copy the URL to your clipboard, all with just a single keystroke. Oh yeah, it can also interface with image editing software, such as Photoshop or Paint.net.
If you frequently take screen shots, ZScreen is light years faster than pressing Print Scrn and pasting into MS Paint.
2. PDFCreator
PDFCreator allows you to create PDFs from any program that can print. Once it’s installed, simply “print” to the virtual printer that it creates, and the resulting document can be read on any computer with Adobe Reader (or comparable software).
There are several similar programs, but if you dig open-source software, PDFCreator trumps many of the others.
3. KeePass
KeePass is one of those applications that you don’t realize how badly you need until you start using it. It securely stores and manages the login information that you use for e-mail, web sites, banks, etc. Unless you always use the exact same login information (a terrible idea!), you need KeePass. It’s even available in a portable version.
I use KeePass to manage hundreds of usernames and passwords. I’d go crazy without it.
4. HandBrake
HandBrake is a DVD to MPEG-4 converter that allows you to stick a DVD in your drive and have the video converted to a digital file for convenient viewing. It’s great for minimizing wear-and-tear on DVDs, plus it’s handy if you travel a lot and want to watch movies on your laptop.