Open-source software has become a buzzword. Here there are two strong evidences: Firefox has downloaded more than 25 million people. At the same time, linux-based Web servers also occupy the largest market share. It is widely believed that open-source software (OSS) is safer than a proprietary software system (that is, a software system that declares that users cannot share or modify software. There may be two reasons: first, because the source code of open-source software is open to everyone, anyone can identify and fix its security vulnerabilities. Second, after all, the popularity of open-source software is far inferior to that of Microsoft's Windows software. Therefore, it has fewer chances of being attacked by hackers. However, as open-source software becomes increasingly popular, the second situation may change.
In terms of quantity, most open-source software is based on Linux systems, and developers of Windows open-source software are still shrouded in Microsoft. However, Windows open-source software does not have many excellent works. You can access
Www.opensource.orgOr
Www.sourceforge.netThese open-source software Websites collect a lot of open-source software for Windows XP, including 55 Windows tools involved in this article.
Free options
Among these wonderful Open-source software, the powerful Open Office can fully meet the vast majority of people's Office needs; the GNU-Based Image Processing Package Gimp is comparable to Photoshop; the wysiwyg html editor NVU can be seen as a simplified version of Dreamweaver, while the Media Portal is a strong competitor of Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition. In addition, the open-source software introduced in this article also involves project management, audio editing, PDF conversion, instant communication, FTP, encryption, system monitoring, and other fields, of course, Web servers are indispensable.
Open-source software has entered its maturity. They are powerful and stable. You can even use open-source software to build your PC application system without spending a penny to purchase additional software. Sun, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Microsoft have all begun releasing some of their own software in the form of open source code, allowing others to modify and redevelop the software. For example, the Hula (
Www.hula-project.orgIs a free Collaboration Server. It also provides the e-mail client, calendar, and address book. Currently, it has more than 0.25 million users.
Software License
What exactly does open source code mean? Fundamentally, if a software is called open-source software, its software code should be provided to the public in a readable and understandable form, and can be converted into executable code through the compiler. After compilation, you can copy, distribute, and use the software for any commercial or private purposes without any software license fee.
This basic concept is described in more detail in "Open Source Definition". For more information, see
Www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php. Generally, open-source software applies to the gnu gpl terms (GNU General Public License, GNU General Public License ). However, some software claim to be open-source software, but they are not. For example, PGP company (
Www.pgpi.org) Claims that the encryption program is open source software, but in fact you can only read its source code, the modification and compilation of the source code is still not allowed, because the encryption program adopts the IDEA patented algorithm.
Be vigilant
Like commercial software, open-source software is also vulnerable to insecurity. Hackers can modify the source code of an open-source software, such as adding the code to open the system backdoor, so that it can easily intrude into your system. Therefore, you should develop a good habit of obtaining open-source software from trusted sources. The more trustworthy part is the official website release. Downloading open-source software over a P2P network is quite risky because it is hard to ensure that the software has not been modified by others.
In addition to these considerations, we believe that you will be impressed by these Windows XP. Open-source software, which is no inferior to common commercial software in terms of both breadth, depth and software quality.
Open Office 2 Beta: Office software package
URL:
Www.openoffice.org
Not long ago, developers upgraded Open Office from 1.1.4 to 2.0. This Office package has released three versions based on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, version 2.0 has made a lot of improvements in text processing, electronic data tables, demo tools, and databases, and introduced many new features.
In addition to more beautiful interfaces and better compatibility with Microsoft Office files, open Office 2 also introduces a new file Format, "Open Office XML Format" proposed by the OASIS Organization ", this XML-based open file format will be gradually supported by other software. Open Office 2 provides network installation mode and custom installation mode, which is quite convenient for IT administrators who need to install software on multiple machines through the network.
Open Office 2 has its own database component (HSQLDB) for the first time. You can create and manage databases. Commercial users will benefit from improved SQL functions and better LDAP database connectivity. In terms of text processing, it is more convenient to create a new template, and the improved dialog box makes the software more intuitive. The new macro protection mechanism enhances its security. The text hiding function can better protect your privacy. The workbook software supports cell nesting and can process up to 65000 rows of data. The compatibility with Excel tables has also been enhanced. Like the previous version, Open Office 2.0 also contains a demo program similar to Microsoft PowerPoint-Impress.
For Office users and home users (
Www.openoffice.orgIs a good alternative to the Microsoft Office software package. It also provides some unique features, such as a PDF generation tool. For home users, Microsoft Office is undoubtedly too expensive. In contrast, Open Office is much more cost-effective.
Figure 1: Open Office is a powerful competitor of Microsoft Office software package
Thunderbird 1.02: email client
URL:Www.mozilla.org
Microsoft's e-mail clients Outlook and Outlook Express have been questioned by many for their lack of security features and support for activity scripts. Therefore, Mozilla Thunderbird is an option for many people to switch to other mail clients.
Thunderbird provides a wizard that allows you to import emails and email addresses from Outlook and Outlook Express. In Thunderbird, all important functions can be quickly operated through the buttons on the toolbar. This email client is quite easy to use and allows you to easily change the interface subject. The quick search function allows you to search by sender or subject, and display by group by multiple keywords.
Thunderbird also integrates the spam filter and RSS reader with self-learning functions. It also provides good support for IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), and you can add more features for Thunderbird by installing plug-ins. The download URL of the plug-in is https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions.
Figure 2: Thunderbird is safer than Outlook/Outlook Express
Ganttproject 1.11.1: project planning tool
URL:Http://ganttproject.sourceforge.net
You can use this software to develop a project plan and track project resources. The Ganttproject can arrange various components of the project in different layers and associate them with corresponding personnel and time periods. It uses a bar chart to show the progress of the project. You can see the scheduled completion time and actual progress of each task. You can assign tasks to members of each project group and set their priorities and deadlines. The Ganttproject has complete output functions. It not only saves data as PDF files and csv data table files, but also outputs HTML files and publishes them to the Internet. As Ganttproject is a pure Java application, it can run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and other platforms.
Wx Musik 0.4.1: audio player
URL:Http://musik.berlios.de
You can use WX Musik to manage your music library and its built-in player to play music files. WX Musik supports Mp3, ogg, wma, aiff, wav, ape, MCM and flac file formats, and Internet audio streams. The software also provides Windows and Linux-based versions. After installation, it will prompt you to create a music library. You can specify it to scan folders containing music files. You can also import album art. It supports images in png, gif, jpg, and bmp formats.
WX Musik can list many additional information, such as album name, artist, Song length, and bit rate, when displaying songs in the music library. It can also classify or sort songs. For example, you can choose to list 50 recently played songs or 10 most frequently played songs. Other useful functions include the ID3 tag Automatic modification function and the logical query character search function. WX Musik can also be used to listen to network radio stations and allow you to customize the radio station list.
Nvu 1.0: HTML editor
URL:Www.nvu.com
Nvu actually originated from Netscape. Do you still remember the clumsy HTML editor Netscape composer? Nvu was further developed based on it. However, the latest nvu version is not the ugly duckling of the year, and it is fully qualified for professional web design work. Like commercial HTML editors such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver, this software (currently supports windows, Linux, and Mac OS) both source code direct editing and WYSIWYG web page design environments are provided.
Nvu strictly follows W3C standards, and the HTML code generated by nvu is also quite Compact. It will help you eliminate error or redundant code. This Editor provides the spelling and syntax check functions, and allows you to customize the interface using different theme schemes. You can create and save templates on your own, and use the built-in FTP client to quickly upload pages to the web server.
Figure 4: nvu provides two Webpage Design environments: direct source code editing and WYSIWYG. Audacity 1.2.3: audio file editor
URL:Http://audacity.sourceforge
With the help of audacity 1.2.3, you can easily record, play, edit, import, and output audio in Windows or Linux. When editing, click a few clicks to cut, copy, or insert the selected music clip. If you want to insert an MP3 file to the currently opened audio file, you can use the project | import audio command to import the file. Other features include mixing multiple audio tracks, applying audio effects, and changing the playing speed of music. Audacity has 28 built-in audio filters and can be expanded. It supports INS in VST, ladspa, and nyquest formats. The ID3 tag editor and Noise Removal feature make the software more perfect. If you want to save the result as an MP3 file, you need to download and install an lame DLL encoder (Http://lame.sourceforge.net) And specify the path of the encoder through File | Settings | File formats | Search Library. In addition to the editing function, Audacity also supports recording sound from the line-in port of the sound card.
Figure 5: Audacity allows mixing multiple audio tracks, applying audio effects, and changing the playing speed of music Ant Renamer 2.0.8: file name Editor
URL:Www. antp. be
Changing the file name in Windows Resource Manager is quite painful because it lacks the automatic processing function. Once you change the name of a batch of files, Windows Resource Manager cannot help. For example, you may need to add a unified singer name to the names of a batch of mp3 files, add a period and location to a batch of image files, or change the HTML file names to lowercase letters, now Ant Renamer can play a role.
You can drag a batch of selected files to the program window with the mouse, and then perform relevant settings. For example, you can set the characters to be deleted, the characters to be replaced, and the numbers to be added. When adding a number, it allows you to specify the start number and the increase range of the number. In character replacement mode, you can search for a specific character or number in the file name and replace it with another character or number. You can also modify the file name based on the mp3 tag or unify the entire file name into uppercase or lowercase letters based on the case of the first character.
Figure 6: Ant Renamer will get twice the result if you need to modify file names in batches |
