1. WordPress
WordPress is an open source blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL which can also be used for content management. It has many features including a workflow, a plugin architecture and a templating system. Used by over 2% of the 10,000 biggest websites, WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today.
2. Magento
Magento is an open-source ecommerce web application launched on March 31, 2008. It was created by Varien, building on components of the Zend Framework. Any community member can upload a module through the website and is made available once confirmed by a member of the Magento team. Modules are installed by entering a module key, available on the module page, into the web based interface.
3. Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. A Net Applications statistic put Firefox at 24.23% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of February 2010, making it the second most popular browser in terms of current use worldwide after Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and the most used browser independent of any one operating system.
4. Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser. On December 7, 2004, version 1.0 was released, and received over 500,000 downloads in its first three days of release, and 1,000,000 in 10 days.
5. FileZilla
FileZilla Client (also referred to as FileZilla) is a free, open source, cross-platform FTP client. Binaries are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS). As of 5 March 2009, it was the 5th most popular download of all time from SourceForge.net.
FileZilla was started as a computer science class project in the second week of January 2001 by Tim Kosse and two classmates. Before they started to write the code, they discussed on which licence they should release the code. They decided to make FileZilla an open-source project, because there were already many FTP clients available and they didn’t think that they would sell even one copy if they made FileZilla commercial.
6. GnuCash
GnuCash is a free and open source accounting software program that implements a double-entry bookkeeping system. It was initially aimed at developing capabilities similar to Intuit, Inc.’s Quicken application, but also has features for small business accounting. Recent development has been focused on adapting to modern desktop support-library requirements.
7. Audacity
Audacity is a free software, cross-platform digital audio editor and recording application. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and BSD.
Audacity was created by Dominic Mazzoni while he was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. Mazzoni now works at Google, but is still the main developer and maintainer of Audacity, with help from many others around the world.
8. GIMP
GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool. In addition to offering freeform drawing, GIMP can accomplish essential image workflow steps such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in the GIF format. At present GIMP is entirely suitable for amateur or professional work with images intended for viewing on monitors and printing on inkjet printers; GIMP does not yet offer the CMYK separation and color management functionality which is essential for prepress work.
9. OpenOffice
OpenOffice is an open source software application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is distributed as free software and written using its own GUI toolkit. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others. As of November 2009, OpenOffice supports over 110 languages.
10. VLC
VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various formats. VLC used to stand for VideoLAN Client, but that meaning is now deprecated.
11. Handbrake
HandBrake is an open-source program designed to convert MPEG video (including DVD-Video) into an MPEG-4 video file in MPEG-4 Part 14 (.mp4) or Matroska (.mkv) containers. Originally developed for BeOS, HandBrake is now available for Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Handbrake requires a minimum screen resolution over 1024×620 and has no plans to support netbooks.
12. Pidgin
Pidgin (formerly named Gaim) is a multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple. Libpurple has support for many commonly used instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to log into various different services from one application.
The number of Pidgin users was estimated to be over 3 million in 2007. Both Pidgin and libpurple are free software, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
13. Freemind
As with other mind mapping software packages, FreeMind allows the user to edit a hierarchical set of ideas around a central concept. The non-linear approach assists in brainstorming new outlines and projects as ideas are added around the mind map. As a Java application, FreeMind is portable across multiple platforms and retains its same user interface, causing some amount of variation from the common interface in each platform. Mac users may notice the most difference from their traditional user interface, but a MacWorld reviewer says the software’s features should still appeal to the segment of users who accept function over form.
14. Notepad++
Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor for Windows, though it can run on Linux and Mac OS X, using software such as Wine. The primary advantage of Notepad++ over the built-in text editor, Notepad, is tabbed editing, to easily work with multiple open files.
It is distributed as free software. The project is hosted on SourceForge.net, from where it has been downloaded over twenty million times and twice won the Community Choice Award for Best Developer Tool. To display and edit text and programming language source code files, Notepad++ uses the Scintilla editor component.
15. 7-Zip
7-Zip is an open source file archiver designed originally for Microsoft Windows. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, and can read and write to several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or Windows shell integration. 7-Zip began in 2000 and is actively developed by Igor Pavlov. It is related to a cross-platform port, p7zip.
16. Blender
Blender is a 3D graphics application released as free software under the GNU General Public License. It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, water simulations, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulations, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications, including games.
Blender is available for a number of operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. Blender’s features include advanced simulation tools such as rigid body, fluid, cloth and softbody dynamics, modifier-based modeling tools, powerful character animation tools, a node-based material and compositing system and Python for embedded scripting.
17. PDFCreator
PDFCreator is an application for converting documents into Portable Document Format (PDF) format on Microsoft Windows operating systems. Once installed, it allows the user to select PDFCreator as their printer, permitting almost any application to print to PDF.
18. Calibre
Calibre is a free and open source e-book management tool that allows one to organise, save and manage e-books, in and between a variety of formats. It also supports e-book syncing with a variety of popular e-book readers. Calibre is cross-platform (programmed in Python and C) and is intended for the three main operating systems, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
19. TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt is a software application used for real-time on-the-fly encryption. It is distributed without cost, and has source code available. It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or a device-hosted encrypted volume on either an individual partition or an entire storage device. TrueCrypt is distributed under the TrueCrypt Collective License.
20. Ubuntu
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. It is named after the Southern African ethical ideology Ubuntu (“humanity towards others”) and is distributed as free and open source software with additional proprietary software available. Ubuntu provides an up-to-date, stable operating system for the average user, with a strong focus on usability and ease of installation. Web statistics from late 2009 suggest that Ubuntu’s share of Linux desktop usage is between 40 and 50%.
