Some days I received a fair criticism from a reader because I spoke of open source programs as free programs while it is more correct to say free . Libero means that it can be used for free but also that it does not belong to any commercial company and that its development has no economic or profitable purposes.
Although Windows is not a free operating system, it has become a standard simply because it is pre-installed on most new computers (and also because objectively a good product).
Fortunately, the open source movement and the internet have brought many free programs, indeed free, usable both at home and in the company, without having to pay anything .
Sometimes it is thought that "free" is synonymous with poor quality but in the IT field, those who think that an open source program is less than a paid one only because it is free, has not understood or does not want to understand anything.
Today there are many open source software options and, often, they are alternatives to expensive Windows programs .
In this article I have summarized the 15 most important free and free applications (for Windows Linux and Mac) that are alternatives to replace commercial and professional programs developed only for Windows .
1) Microsoft Office can be replaced by LibreOffice .
LibreOffice was founded by former OpenOffice developers because they were worried that Oracle would turn it into a commercial product.
In April of this year, Oracle announced that it would cease commercial development of OpenOffice by making it a completely open source project.
However, LibreOffice today has become the first alternative for both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office.
LibreOffice comes with a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet calculation program (Calc), a tool to create presentations (Impress), a database manager (Base), and more.
Any file created with LibreOffice is compatible with standard Microsoft Office files even if it is not the default format.
About LibreOffice and OpenOffice, freely downloadable for Windows Linux and Mac, I spoke in two separate articles.
2) Microsoft Project is an Office program not included in the main suite and to be purchased separately.
Project is used to create projects gantt to follow their progress.
The open source alternatives of Microsoft Project are mainly 2 and work identically, without any lack.
As written in an article on alternative programs to Microsoft Project, it is Ganttproject.
3) The third important Office program is Microsoft Visio, widely used by engineers and designers, to create drawings, schemes and flowcharts.
There are several alternative programs to Visio to create flow charts but the most important is DIA which is an open source replica of Visio.
To create UML (Unified Modeling Language) drawings (diagrams), there are other alternative programs to Visio: ArgoUML and StarUML
4) To finish the Office suite we also mention Microsoft Publisher, the editorial printing program (DTP).
Publisher has a single popular open source alternative in the Scribus program, which I mentioned in the post about free programs to replace Publisher .
5) Changing the subject but remaining in the professional and professional sphere, we also replace the very expensive Autodesk from Autodesk .
The free alternatives to Autocad are LibreCad for the Cad and BRL-CAD design that has been developed for 20 years.
6) DreamViewer is the most popular commercial software for creating websites from your computer with WYSIWYG interface (What You See Is What You Get "what you see is what you get" or "get what you see").
We can create websites by drawing them on the computer with the open source program Kompozer to create web pages (heir of the late NVU) to which I dedicated an article some time ago.
7) Alternative to Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator programs is Inkscape, the vector graphics editor that uses the standard SVG file format.
Inkscape is used to create vector images and is powerful and at the same time simple to use and intuitive (however much to study there is for the amount of options.
Another free open source alternative for CorelDraw is OpenDraw included in LibreOffice's OpenOffice or Draw package.
8) GIMP replaces Adobe Photoshop .
GIMP, an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a graphics editor for all computers, which can serve both as a simple drawing program and as a professional photo editing software, image processing or conversion of image formats.
The GimpShop program is the Photoshop clone project created to make Gimp easier.
Another option for Windows users is Paint.NET, easier to use than GIMP, good especially if you don't use advanced features.
9) Blender is the opensource program that replaces Autodesk 3ds Max .
Blender is used to draw polygonal and animated 3D graphics.
The program is not easy to use but on the official website there are many tutorials, guides and videos created with this open source software so powerful that it is not believed that it can be free.
10) 7-Zip best alternative to Winrar and Winzip .
On almost all computers there are commercial programs WinZip and WinRar in expired or pirated versions.
Why pirate a program if there is a free and completely identical version?
7Zip is the best program to open, extract and create archives of files, Rar and Zip.
Another open source alternative to WinZip and WinRar is PeaZip which supports all types of existing archives.
11) Nero is the most popular commercial program for burning CDs and DVDs.
There are several free programs for burning and copying CDs and DVDs but if you were looking for an open source software alternative to Nero you have to download and install Infra Recorder which exists only for Windows.
12) Adobe Premiere Pro is the most powerful program ever that allows you to make professional video montages.
Alternative open source programs may be less advanced but only if professional cinema skills are required.
To make video edits the best open source program is Shotcut, very modern and powerful.
13) Adobe Audition is not the best program to make changes and manipulations to audio files; you can in fact use the popular open source program Audacity .
15) Free and open source alternative to the best Acronis True Image backup program (or even Symantec Norton Ghost ) is CloneZilla to create disk images, which I mentioned some time ago.
16) Mozilla Thunderbird is an alternative email client to the Microsoft Outlook program (included in Office) and Windows Live Mail .
Unfortunately, it is still not an alternative for those who depend on the synchronization of contact data or for mobile devices (such as Outlook).
17) There are many free Antiviruses, even excellent ones but if you were looking for an open source and free antivirus, you must download ClamWin which is the real free alternative to the various antivirus Symantec, McAfee, Eset, Kaspersky and so on.
18) Free and open source alternatives for Adobe Creative programs (Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, Lightroom, Audition, Indesign, Animate) are listed in another article.
19) Keepass is the best open source program to manage passwords safely.
In another article I wrote about specialized sites to look for free alternative programs to the most famous software and the best sites with free and open source programs to download .
