fifty, nifty, freefty

[housetier]

Jimmy Atkinson has done a great job and found replacements for fifty proprietary yet important programms:

The following fifty proprietary programs are listed in no particular order within broad categories along with their open source alternatives. In some cases you could probably write your own book on frustrations with the proprietary programs shown here. In other cases, you’ll discover that the open source alternative isn’t quite up to snuff yet.

-http://whdb.com/2008/the-top-50-proprietary-programs-that-drive-you-crazy-and-their-open-source-alternatives/

I found it easy to read, and he seems quite hones.

Short: one should give FOSS a try.

[f0dder]

I just wish OpenOffice wasn't so unstable, and FileZilla had a better user interface...

[Darwin]

Hmm... interesting list. A bit conventional - or perhaps I should say predictable - though there are some surprises. An interesting read none the less - thanks for sharing this with us, housertier 

[lanux128]

quite an interesting article. here's another useful resource for hunting down open source alternatives.

• Open Source Freeware : 400+ free applications and utilities

[phillfri]

Mathematical: MATLAB <> SciLab?  SciLab can't hold a candle functionwise to MATLAB. The opensource SAGE package is what you want for MATLAB equivalency.

[Curt]

-> http://www.sagemath.org/index.html ?

[Curt]

I am not too sure Mr Atkinson recently updated this list.

Adobe Dreamweaver to NVU: While this tool is a powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor, other options exist that can save money. NVU (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) is a complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Use NVU to create Web pages and manage a Website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

-Atkinson

To my understanding NVU was abandoned 2005. One can say it was replaced by KompoZer, "Nvu's unofficial bug-fix release", but I would expect Mr Atkinson to tell so, if his work had been just a little updated.

[40hz]

I just wish OpenOffice wasn't so unstable, and FileZilla had a better user interface...

-f0dder (February 07, 2008, 08:29 PM)

Just curious, what FTP client are you using that you feel has a better interface? I'm always looking for a better user experience when I use FTP.

Also, I'm not aware of any significant instabilities in OpenOffice and I use it routinely. Has anybody else experienced this. If so, maybe this would be a good subject for a new thread?

[f0dder]

The FTP client interface I've liked best is definitely FlashFXP - pretty clean and elegant. FileZilla is a cluttered mess, too thick borders, et cetera. But I don't use FTP->FTP (aka FXP) and FlashFXP doesn't seem to cope very well with gigabit LAN speeds, and FileZilla is free and does handle gbit pretty well, so...

As for OpenOffice instability, it's spreadsheet often locks up on me for no good reason - and it's not like I'm doing anything complex. Sometimes it'll wake up from the hang, other times I have to kill the process and repair the documents that were open. That has always worked so far, but I obviously lose any unsaved changes.

[justice]

I am not too sure Mr Atkinson recently updated this list.

Adobe Dreamweaver to NVU: While this tool is a powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor, other options exist that can save money. NVU (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) is a complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Use NVU to create Web pages and manage a Website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

-Atkinson

To my understanding NVU was abandoned 2005. One can say it was replaced by KompoZer, "Nvu's unofficial bug-fix release", but I would expect Mr Atkinson to tell so, if his work had been just a little updated.

-Curt (February 22, 2008, 12:49 PM)

Yep and editing html in dreamweaver is only a fraction of what dreamweaver is capable of.

[Paul Keith]

Again, I apologize for necro-posting. This topic has just recently been included in the DonationCoder Newsletter so I thought I'd put a shout out to people who want a single place for looking for open-source alternatives.

http://www.osalt.com/

As far as I know, this is generally THE site to go to when looking for such applications.

[trm2]

He should do a little better on his research regarding Kexi - it can't hold a candle to Access and even the Open Office version is better - besides, Open source for Windows has a cost of $72.00 whereas Open Office IS Freeware.

[housetier]

trm2, what open source software costs $72?