The Freeware and Open Source Software Thread

[Bijo]

Heres
one I've been using with school that sounds the same.

Thanks :)

[Pannonian]

Free Game Downloads

Category: Abandonware/Freeware/Shareware
Homepage: Game Downloads
OS: DOS, Windows, Etc.
Open Source: No
Description: Aside from the popular home of the underdogs here is another site if you're into free games (abandonware, freeware, all that...). It's a good site, I got some stuff here that I didn't get at HOTU.

No joy. It requires a link to their page before they'll let you download.

[Crian]

No joy. It requires a link to their page before they'll let you download.

Oh yeah sorry I forgot to put it in that major detail . Good stuff in there, though...

[Judge]

hi guys, are there any free programmes to speed up the performance of a pc, untill i upgrade mine ??

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Updated! Sorry that took so long. I got lazy.

As well as adding the last dozen programs posted, I fixed Gaim which has been renamed Pidgin.

I also added Spring, a really amazing open source RTS engine. I highly recommend that you take a look at it. It's based on Total Annihilation, and in my opinion it's better than Supreme Commander, TA's "spiritual successor".

[Xiahou]

I also added Spring, a really amazing open source RTS engine. I highly recommend that you take a look at it. It's based on Total Annihilation, and in my opinion it's better than Supreme Commander, TA's "spiritual successor".

Sweet! I loved TA- how playable is it, and how well does it stack up content wise?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

There are a half-dozen TA-based mods, which vary in content and style. It's fairly stable, although sometimes multiplayer has synching errers - though I haven't played enough to say. There are a couple of AI's for bots out there, too, although they aren't Napoleons.

As for content, I don't know how the TA mods compare to TA since I never played, but in general the content is varied and decent looking. A little low-poly, but that's true of a lot of open source games.

[Husar]

I've been playing this with Leet Eriksson aka Faisal some time ago and it was decent, but not overwhelming.
Since it's free, I wouldn't complain though

[Xiahou]

Oh man, Krogoths....

I just had a most awesome skirmish game. My base was almost totally destroyed and under heavy shelling when ole'Kroggy finally arrived on the scene- his gantry was among the last structures still standing. Then, it was payback time.


The crater in the bottom right is their former cloak-able fusion reactorand in the upper right is their commander, who died about 2 seconds after this screenshot.

They've done a really good job with the game- I'd like some more UI improvements though. It'd be neat if someone re-created the original campaigns too.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Which mod is that - AA? Krogoths are so nasty. Multiple nukes don't scare them.

[Xiahou]

Which mod is that - AA?

It's just a standard install with the SpringSP addon to make it easier to start single player skirmish games. The AI is 'AAI'. The standard game already has a zillion units, so I didn't see the need to add more yet- but I could use some more variety in maps.

Krogoths are so nasty. Multiple nukes don't scare them.

It was really edge-of-your-seat stuff at the end. My base was trashed and they were lobbing nukes in at random. I had to reclaim many of my remaining structures for metal to feed the Kroggy and still didn't know if I'd make it long enough. I did.

Edit: If you never saw it before, here is a mirror of the original TA site.

[Xiahou]

Ummm, anyone else have problems with indirect fire? I used to like training my heavy artillery on choke points and just having it constantly fire in an area. But Spring seems really finicky about indirect fire- artillery either won't attack the area at all, will only fire once, ect.

Or am I doing something wrong?

[sapi]

Dead Pixel Buddy
Platform: Tested on win xp/vista; no reason it shouldn't work on unix/mac
Open Source: No
Description: Useful little gadget that runs through a spectrum of colours displayed by LCD monitors to test for dead pixels.

xplanet
Platform: Unix/win
Open Source: Yes
Description: Displays a dynamic image of the earth, or another planet/celestial body, on your desktop. Example output showing a representation of which parts of the earth are currently in shadow (ie my wallpaper from a few days ago ). For Win users, 'xplanet starter' is highly recommended.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

N Ninja
Homepage
OS: Windows, Mac and Linux (requires Flash Player 7)
Open Source: No
Description: Action/puzzle game in which the player is a ninja whom is trapped in a world of evil and homicidal robots.
Courtesy of Bijo

[Bijo]

Hah! You added N! Great

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RootKitRevealer
OS: Windows NT4 and higher
Open Source: no
Description: RootkitRevealer is an advanced rootkit detection utility. It runs on Windows NT 4 and higher and its output lists Registry and file system API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit. RootkitRevealer successfully detects all persistent rootkits published at www.rootkit.com, including AFX, Vanquish and HackerDefender (note: RootkitRevealer is not intended to detect rootkits like Fu that don't attempt to hide their files or registry keys).

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Is there any free software -- with many options and such if possible (such as triggering to open a port when needed and closing it when not needed) -- that allows one to simplify port-forwarding (in regard to programs that need it)?

(Reading through guides bloated with terminology and long texts and having to do so many things require too much time and effort and what makes it worse is when you can't find a guide for your specific router model. Arrrgh... if success doesn't arrive soon they won't have to try to kill me in the future because I will have already died trying to figure out port-forwarding without the proper resources. Can you say bullet? )

[Ciaran]

I don´t know whether this has already been mentioned:

Ashampoo Clipfinder
http://www2.ashampoo.com/webcache/ht...t_2_0055__.htm

A handy tool for searching for and downloading video clips from a range of sites.

[Bijo]

I came across a few file managers. I thought I'd share my findings with you.


FreeCommander
OS: Windows
Open Source: No
Description: FreeCommander is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager. The program helps you with daily work in Windows. Here you can find all the necessary functions to manage your data stock. You can take FreeCommander anywhere - just copy the installation directory on a CD, USB-Stick or even a floppy disk - and you can even work with this program on a foreign computer.

xplorer² lite
OS: Windows
Open Source: No
Description: The lightweight version of xplorer² is not a crippled unusable salesman of the professional version. It shares the same browsing and management engine, and gives many rival professional file managers a run for their money — literally! It is a complete little file manager, albeit lacking a bit in bells and whistles.

[Xiahou]

I'm surprised this one isn't in here yet:
JkDefrag
OS: Windows
OpenSource?: Yes

Free (released under the GNU General Public License) disk defragment and optimize utility for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies and USB disks/sticks. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version (for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), and versions for Windows X64.

I just started using this less than a week ago, but so far, it completely pwns the built-in Windows defrag on many levels.

[Bijo]

Some more stuff.

AxCrypt
OS: Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2K/XP
Open Source: Yes
Description: AxCrypt is free and easy to use open source strong file encryption for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2K/XP, integrated with Windows Explorer. Encrypt, compress, decrypt, wipe, view and edit with a few mouse clicks. Cryptographic primitives are AES-128 and SHA-1.

WinMerge
OS: Windows
Open Source: Yes
Description: WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.

[Bijo]

What is a good freeware ISO editor?

[Bijo]

Seems a good free defragmenter.

UltraDefrag
OS: Windows NT
Open Source: Yes
Description: UltraDefrag is powerful Open Source defragmentation tool for Windows NT. It is very fast, because the defragmenting is done by kernel-mode driver. They are three interfaces to them: graphical, console and native. The GUI is very useful, because it represents your filesystem visually as a color coded cluster map. The console is another option for those that prefer the command line. It is also allows you to run UltraDefrag from the task scheduler and scripts. Finally, the native executable will run at boot time in a manner similar to chkdsk.

The design of UltraDefrag is very simple. There are no skins, localization, or animations. It is a small and powerful program!

It can be used on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003,Windows Vista and all of the 64-bit editions of Windows.
----


Why is the first post of the thread not (being) updated?

[Bijo]

Audacity
OS: OS X, Windows, Linux
Open Source: Yes
Description: Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more! See the complete list of features.

A decent program. I would personally recommend professional stuff but since this is free it is not bad.

[Bijo]

iZotope Vinyl
OS: OS X, Windows
Open Source: No
Description: The ultimate lo-fi weapon, iZotope Vinyl uses 64-bit processing and advanced filtering, modeling and resampling to create authentic "vinyl" simulation, as if the audio was a record being played on a record player.


A very good and popular audio plugin available to Pro Tools 6.1+ (RTAS/AudioSuite/HTDM), VST, MAS, Audio Unit, DirectX. One of my favourites due to its high-quality nature, ease of operation, and... price.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
My stuff here... Sorry, haven't read the whole thread so there will be possibly plenty of reposts:

• avast! Antivirus. Personal Edition is free and enough.
  
  
• DOS Box
  
  
• Open Office
  
  
• Google Earth
  
  
• ImgBurn. I've dumped Nero for it thanks to fellow ORGahs!
  
  
• Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. Free for MS customers, that is users of an MS OS. I've used it to create customized Q (my default) and Arabic keyboards. More will follow.
  
  
• Mozilla SeaMonkey and Firefox. With many extensions such as BB Code, Password Generator, text/plain, Flash Got and more...
  
  
• PDF Creator. Installs as a printer and creates PDF documents from anything that can print! No tags, bookmarks or stuff though. Plain PDFs. Setting permissions, passwords and fiddling with output quality is possible. Apparently the only thing it can't do is adding bookmarks and tags sort of stuff.
  
  
• Spybot - Search & Destroy. AdAware is garbage. This one does its job.
  
  
• VLC Media Player. Great little-looking giant that can play anything... Almost anything except Real Media, for which I use:
  
  
• Real Alternative. Plays Real Media without all the ads and rubbish. Buggy though, and has a clumsy interface, but does its job well most of the time.
  
  
• Winamp. With the widest range of supported formats, internally or via hundreds of plugins, it's still my preference for playing audio.
  
  
• Trillian. Has a free version which, the last time I looked, was enough for all instant messaging needs, and a pay version that is different in heaven knows what. Nothing concrete on their website. You can use it for ICQ, AIM, MSN, YIM and multiple IRC channels all at once. Too bad I got too much used to MSN's pretty smileys and all, and neglected this baby.
  
  
• dBPowerAmp Music Converter. The free version does everything you want and you don't even know you would want, except for MP3 en/decoding. Who needs MP3 anyway, when you have FLAC (lossless) and OGG (lossy)? However, I'm a proud paid customer for something like $20 and free lifetime upgrades.
  
  
• Scala. For music nerds only! You can analyse, build, edit and do many things you wouldn't imagine yourself doing with all kinds of musical scales, tunings and more. The author is one of the very few lucky online friends who has had the chance to meet Mouzafphaerre in real life. Proof that I really exist and am not a bot. He would make a good ORGah 'coz he's Dutch!
  
  
• μTorrent. What has lured me into the world of bit-torrents.

.

[Bijo]

Voxengo SPAN
OS: Windows (VST or standalone)
Open Source: No
Description: SPAN is a real-time FFT spectrum analyzer plug-in. For the most part it was derived from GlissEQ and CurveEQ professional equalizers and it reproduces their spectrum analysis functionality.

[R'as al Ghul]

I highly recommend this Mp3 tag tool for all who copy their CD's to HD and need a way to easily tag them or to organize their Mp3 collection. I've used this to clean up the tags, batch rename files, batch tag files, load and write covers to tags, etc.

Mp3tag

OS: Windows XP
Open source: No
Description:
Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata (ID3, Vorbis Comments and APE) of common audio formats. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. The program supports online freedb database lookups for selected files, allowing you to automatically gather proper tag information for select files or CDs.

Main features:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Write ID3v1.1-, ID3v2-, APEv2-Tags and Vorbis Comments to multiple files at once
Full Unicode support
Support for embedded cover art
Automatically create playlists
Recursive subfolders support
Remove parts or the entire tag of multiple files
Rename files based on the tag information
Import tags from filenames
Format tags and filenames
Replace characters or words from tags and filenames
Regular Expressions
Export tag information to user-defined formats (like html, rtf, csv, xml)
Import tag information from online databases like freedb or Amazon (also by text-search)
Import tag information from local freedb databases
Support for ID3v2.3 (ISO-8859-1 and UTF-16) and ID3v2.4 with UTF-8
and much more ...

[Mouzafphaerre]

I highly recommend this Mp3 tag tool for all who copy their CD's to HD and need a way to easily tag them or to organize their Mp3 collection. I've used this to clean up the tags, batch rename files, batch tag files, load and write covers to tags, etc.

Mp3tag

OS: Windows XP
Open source: No
Description:
Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata (ID3, Vorbis Comments and APE) of common audio formats. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. The program supports online freedb database lookups for selected files, allowing you to automatically gather proper tag information for select files or CDs.

Main features:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Write ID3v1.1-, ID3v2-, APEv2-Tags and Vorbis Comments to multiple files at once
Full Unicode support
Support for embedded cover art
Automatically create playlists
Recursive subfolders support
Remove parts or the entire tag of multiple files
Rename files based on the tag information
Import tags from filenames
Format tags and filenames
Replace characters or words from tags and filenames
Regular Expressions
Export tag information to user-defined formats (like html, rtf, csv, xml)
Import tag information from online databases like freedb or Amazon (also by text-search)
Import tag information from local freedb databases
Support for ID3v2.3 (ISO-8859-1 and UTF-16) and ID3v2.4 with UTF-8
and much more ...

.

.

[LeftEyeNine]

Mouza, our council has just decided to ban you from browsing Babe Thread for suggesting the same programs for the 146th time.

Further restrictions will apply such as changing your avatar to a pic of the green teletubbie in case we're not understood well enough.



Regards,

Demonic invincible sexy techie LEN, Org Inc.

P.S. We have also spotted that you didn't recommend FireFox in that list of yours. I guess I'll make a recommendation to the council about extenuating your sentence such as banning you from viewing the latest 3 pages for a specific amount of time.

They may think of aggravating the sentence since they may end up thinking "how the heck could he forget naming it in such a list?" though. I'll do my best.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.

you didn't recommend FireFox

Didn't I?
.

[LeftEyeNine]

.

Didn't I?
.

Ah yes.

So you save me..and your sentence.