Free High Quality Open Source Software In One Disc – OpenDisc

I come across friends & family who are forking out big bucks for everyday software like anti-virus, Office, spyware, photo editing, etc. They do so, not because they like to spend the money but because they have no idea that there are excellent, free, open source alternatives available. Today. Right now.

I have nothing against paying for excellent software or services that provide value. But, if there is a quality free alternative for your everyday needs why not save that money you would have spent for a better product/equipment that you wouldn’t have been able to afford before?

In fact, one of the most popular (all time number 3 .. if you looked at the footer) posts here has been about Free Software for your Computer. I should update that post soon with my new finds.

I recently wrote in a guest post at Techie-Buzz about a very cool project called WinLibre. WinLibre was a project where they put together some of the best in breed open source software available for free into one downloadable package.

A reader (thanks MechMike) quickly pointed out that WinLibre hasn’t been updated in a while and told me about the OpenDisk project. Here is an excerpt from their About page which summarizes this cool project!

OpenDisc is a high quality collection of open source software (OSS) for the Microsoft Windows operating system.
The two main goals of the project are:

To provide a free alternative to costly software, with equal or often better quality equivalents to proprietary, shareware or freeware software for Microsoft Windows.

To educate users of Linux as an operating system for home, business and educational use.

OpenDisc project gathers some of the best free & open source software out there into one easily downloadable CD image. They also list the programs in the cd image with description and link to the individual software home page if you’d like to get them A la carte.
Here are the list of programs that are included in the OpenDesc project categorized by its function:

Design

Blender – a 3D graphics modeling program

Dia – a Visio like drawing program

The Gimp – Adobe Photoshop alternative

InkScape - Adobe Illustrator alternative

Nvu – WYSIWIG Web page editor

Srcibus – A professional desktop publishing program

Tux Paint – Free drawing program for young children

Games

The Battle of Wesnoth – Turn-based strategy game

Enigma – A puzzle game

Neverball – A fun game where you tilt the floor to get the ball in a puzzle

Sokoban YASC – Yet Another Sokoban Clone

Internet

Azureus – A cool bit-torrent client

Filezilla – FTP client

Firefox – An excellent Internet Explorer alternative

Httrack – Offline web browser utility

Pidgin – Multi-protocol IM client

RSSOWL – A Feed reader client

Seamonkey – Web browser, IRC client, newsgroup client and HTML editor in one

Thunderbird – A modern email client

TightVNC – A remote control software

WinSCP – Full featured SFTP client

Multimedia

Audacity - Sound editing program

Celestia – Simulation of entire universe

Really Slick Screensavers – Collection of some cool screensavers

Stellarium – Planetarium in your computer

Sumatra PDF – Lightweight alternative for Adobe Reader

VLC Player – Media player supporting numerous audio & video formats

Productivity

GnuCash – QuickBooks alternative

MoinMoin Wiki Engine – A wiki building software

NotePad2 – Windows Notepad alternative – with syntax highlighting and other features

OpenOffice – Full featured alternative for Microsoft Office

PDFCreator - Generate PDF documents from any Windows program with the Print button

Utilities

7-zip – Packing & unpacking archives tool with support for a lot of formats

Abakt – A backup tool

ClamWin – Powerful anti-virus program (misses an on-access scanner – so it can’t replace a full time scanner yet)

GTK+ – Toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces

HealthMonitor – System monitoring tool

TrueCrypt – Powerful encryption software to protect your private data

WorkRave – Protect yourself from Repetitive Strain Injury

Whew.. isn’t that an excellent collection of free software? There are a few in here like InkScape & WorkRave I haven’t tried yet.

Download OpenDisc iso image | bit-torrent

OpenDisc uses a K-Meleon interface in the cd image so far and is experimenting with a Kiwix interface that’s supposed to be leaner and better for the next release.
Also, OpenDisc has a pretty active forum if you have questions about any of these or if you’d like to see something included to this list. I have downloaded OpenDisc and I am going to make copies and give it to friends who have an open mind about trying new things. I am sure some of them are going to chase me away but hey it’s worth a try, isn’t it?