Wish you could create vector art in Adobe Illustrator, edit videos in Sony Vegas, or just play a game of Halo 
2 on your PC, but can’t afford the programs? We’ve all been there, and it sucks, honestly.
Thankfully, there’s a whole genre of software comprised of free solutions to the otherwise costly mainstream alternatives. This magical genre is called Open Source.
After the break are a few programs that you may find useful, with often just as many features as the costly alternative.
Microsoft Office » OpenOffice
The free and open productivity suite.
Autodesk 3ds Max » Blender
The open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation.
Adobe Photoshop » GIMP
The GNU Image Manipulation Program, for X Windows systems.
Adobe Illustrator » Inkscape
The vector graphics editor.
Techsmith Camtasia/HyperCam 2 » Camstudio
The free alternative for recording on-screen video.
Sony Vegas/Adobe Premiere » Jahshaka
The world’s first OpenSource Realtime Media Playback and Visual Effects System.
Trillian Pro » Pidgin
The multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once.
Halo 2 » Sauerbraten
The singleplayer (2 game modes, savegames) and multiplayer (12 game modes) first person shooter.
Guitar Hero » Frets on Fire
The open source Guitar Hero alternative.
vBulletin » phpBB3
The most widely used Open Source forum solution.
Microsoft Windows » Ubuntu
The free, Debian derived, Linux-based operating system, available with both community and professional support.
By far, the best resource for Open Source applications is SourceForge.net.
Excellent blog entry =) Will certainly refer to this in the future ^_^ Thanks for making it
Thanks, really handy!!!
Absolutly brilliant. Very useful :O
Any Open Source “Final Cut Pro“‘s out there?
awesome! thanks for posting this, camstudio is brilliant!
Nice, I’m going to try this out
Good post.
NO Free Lunch in this world. You need to know How the money is generated.
Have you ever though Why They are giving these free !!
Hope you get what I mean.
This is just a way to keep users data / Spyware / Security holes / Ugly Marketing practices / Sell them after a year / Poorly coded softwares.
When you need productivity You need to pay.
I worked with open source model for 3 years. And found this is just a gimmick.
Thank you
Hidden 10:06 am on December 12, 2009 Permalink
are you working for microsoft, adobe or the like?
windows is full of security holes, spyware, and bugs. I don’t pay for anything, that was open source in the past