The Gimp
What do you do when you want to add a cute caption to a picture of your cat, or photoshop sparkly vampire sparkles onto Mitt Romney*? You could reach for Photoshop, but that's hundreds of bucks. Or you could download The Gimp (Gnu Image Manipulation Program).
It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. And did I mention that it's free? Yeah, it's complicated (like Photoshop), but you can do really cool stuff, like showing where you left your wookie suit.
FreeCiv
I lost a non-trivial part of my life to Sid Myer's Civilization, back in the day. So along comes the Open Source community with a free version that you can play solo or over the 'Net.
It's basically Civ II. Free life-sucking time sink for Windows and Linux (maybe Mac, too). Awesome. Plus, you get that OSS cred at cocktail parties when you say I just downloaded it from Sourceforge ...
OpenOffice
Ever wanted to write something, and Wordpad just didn't give you enough word processor? Or wanted to whack together a quick spreadsheet? Or a slide deck to present you your kid's Scout troop? Well, you can shell our the Benjamins to Microsoft for Office, or you can download OpenOffice.
I did my Should you be a Global Warming skeptic presentation using it. Oh yeah, the word processor can count the number of words in a post (yeah, yeah, too many. I know). Awesome, and free.
Ubuntu Linux
You've heard me talk about this before, but the next time you upgrade to an new computer, consider turning your old one into a studly Unix workstation. You won't get most games (well, other than FreeCiv), but you won't get malware either. Ubuntu is cool in that everything just works one it. May run as fast as your new computer, too.
There you go. Solid, high quality, free software. Thank you, Open Source community! Besides, using Open Source is manly.**
* Mitt is gayer than Twilight, not that there's anything wrong with that.
** Especially when it's The Gimp, and you're adding sparkles to a photo of Mitt Romney.
9 comments:
For Photo Editing. I also like Paint.net it is Free as in Beer as well. It's windows only but for use .net geeks out there it is written in our language.
Another freebie for photo editing http://www.aviary.com/ (they ask for donations but last time I played around with it the basic photo editing stuff was free). Great online editing software designed by folks who do that sorta stuff for a living.
Never tried Gimp, but heard good things about it.
Ubuntu doesn't just work. I've got it on my Dell workstation and every time it does a software update something new breaks. I've been avoiding the upgrade to 11.10 but finally bit the bullet yesterday. Same frustrating UI. You know, if I want to open a new terminal or browser window and have the desktop swirl me back to another VD, I can just get a Mac for that.
And I'm not new to Linux. I've been running it since the days it required a pile of 14 floppy disks and Slackware was considered the cool distro.
Andy, interesting data point. I'm still on version 9.
Another data point:
I have Ubuntu 11.10 on my Asus 1005HA netbook. It seems slightly slower than the previous Ubuntu versions, but it runs quite well on that machine.
I would recommend LibreOffice over OpenOffice. Same basic codebase, different ideas about how often to update and fix code. I started with Open and just had too many compatibility issues with M$Office and it not being updated enough.
For a drawing program as opposed to an image editing program, Inkscape is great. That plus the Gimp covers a LOT of ground for image creation and editing.
If you're doing mechanical or technical drawing, the free version of Google Sketchup is very good. It'll do 2D and 3D drawings.
And if you're a 'tronics geek like me, KiCAD is excellent for drawing schematics and PC board layouts.
Ubuntu seems to be a little more friendly if you go for one of the LTS (long term support) versions. Updates can still potentially break things, but the solution doesn't default to "well, we're pushing out a new version in 6 months."
I'm with Andy. I had this PC setup as dual boot Unbuntu and Win 7, and around early November went to install Ubuntu 11.10. Next morning, it never woke up again. I eventually was able to boot into Win 7 and save all the stuff I really should have been backing up all along.
After a day or two, this has been exclusively Win 7. "It just works". Plus, all the stuff I like to run under Windows is not a dual boot away.
Another geeky recommendation along the lines of DaveH. Linear Tech. gives away a very full featured SPICE simulator called LT SPICE IV. Does everything the "big name" simulators do - but they've pretty much all been sucked up into the integrated schematic capture/simulation/layout tools that Mentor and the others sell.
And while I own Photoshop CS2, I've switched over to the GIMP. And Open Office.
You friggin' rock BP! Merry Christmas.
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