This page lists some open source alternatives to software, primarily geared toward students. The goal is not to list every single piece of open source software, but only that which would be useful in an academic environment.
| Name | Description | Closed Source Equivalents | OS Compatibility
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| OpenOffice.org | OpenOffice.org is a full-featured productivity suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, web page editor and presentation program. It can do just about everything MS Office can, and more. | Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Access | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Abiword | AbiWord is a light weight, stand alone word processor that can read and write a large number of document formats, including MS-Word. | Microsoft Word | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Gnumeric | The goal of Gnumeric is to be the best possible spreadsheet. Gnumeric can read files saved with other spreadsheets, including Excel, Lotus, Applix, Quattro Pro, OpenCalc, XBase, DIF, SYLK, HTML, Psion, MPS, oleo, sc, and XML. Gnumeric can also generate LaTex documents. It offers a customizable feel that attempts to minimize the costs of transition. | Microsoft Excel | Windows, Unix
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| Nvu | Nvu webpage editor makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML. | Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft Frontpage | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Scribus | Scribus is a Page Layout program for GNU/Linux®, similar to Adobe® PageMaker, QuarkXPress or Adobe® InDesign, except that it is published under the GNU GPL. | Adobe Pagemaker, QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign | Unix
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| NoteCase | NoteCase is a hierarchical note manager (aka. outliner). It helps you organize your everyday text notes into a single document, with individual notes placed in the tree-like structure (each note can have its sub-notes). To ensure your privacy, encrypted document format is supported, along with standard unencrypted format. | ?? | Windows, Unix
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| TexNicCenter | TeXnicCenter is a feature rich integrated development environment (IDE) for developing LaTeX-documents on Microsoft Windows (Windows 9x/ME, NT/2000/XP). It integrates all the tools needed to develop documents with LaTeX, into just one application. | ?? | Windows
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| PDFCreator | PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDFs easily from nearly any application. With the PDFCreator Printer driver you turn any program into a PDF-machine. | Adobe Acrobat | Windows
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| Name | Description | Closed Source Equivalents | OS Compatibility
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| Notepad++ | Notepad++ is a free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment. | ?? | Windows
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| SciTE | As well as features found in standard text editing components, Scintilla includes features especially useful when editing and debugging source code. These include support for syntax styling, error indicators, code completion and call tips. The selection margin can contain markers like those used in debuggers to indicate breakpoints and the current line. Styling choices are more open than with many editors, allowing the use of proportional fonts, bold and italics, multiple foreground and background colours and multiple fonts. | ?? | Windows, Unix
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| WinCVS | WinCVS is a set of GUI front-ends for CVS written in C++ and distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL) for multiple operating systems. If you use CVS for version control, WinCVS is indispensable. | Microsoft Visual Source Safe | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Python | Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. It is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Scheme or Java. Python combines remarkable power with very clear syntax. It has modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types, and dynamic typing. There are interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various windowing systems (X11, Motif, Tk, Mac, MFC). New built-in modules are easily written in C or C++. Python is also usable as an extension language for applications that need a programmable interface. | Sun Java | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Name | Description | Closed Source Equivalents | OS Compatibility
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| Maxima | Maxima is a fairly complete computer algebra system written in lisp with an emphasis on symbolic computation. It is based on DOE-MACSYMA and licensed under the GPL. Its abilities include symbolic integration, 3D plotting, and an ODE solver. | Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, MathCAD | Windows, Unix
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| wxMaxima | wxMaxima is a pretty front end to Maxima, a computer algebra system. Most of maxima functions are accessible through menus, some have dialogs. The input line has command history (up-key, down-key) and completion based on previous input (tab-key). wxMaxima provides 2d formated display of maxima output. | Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, MathCAD | Windows, Unix
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| Scilab | Scilab is a scientific software package for numerical computations providing a powerful open computing environment for engineering and scientific applications. Scilab includes hundreds of mathematical functions with the possibility to add interactively programs from various languages (C, Fortran...). It has sophisticated data structures (including lists, polynomials, rational functions, linear systems...), an interpreter and a high level programming language. | Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, MathCAD | Windows, Unix
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| R language | R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. It is similar to the S language and environment. R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, ...) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible. The S language is often the vehicle of choice for research in statistical methodology, and R provides an Open Source route to participation in that activity. | SPSS, SAS, S Plus | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Name | Description | Closed Source Equivalents | OS Compatibility
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| RSSOwl | RSSOwl is a RSS / RDF / Atom Newsreader written in Java using SWT as fast graphic library. Read News in a tabfolder, save favorites in categories, Export to PDF / RTF / HTML / OPML, Import Feeds from OPML, perform fulltext-search, use internal browser. | ?? | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Mozilla Firefox | Firefox is a light-weight web browser based on Mozilla technology. It empowers you to browse faster, more safely, and more efficiently. Key features include: Popup Blocking to stop those annoying ads popping up. Tabbed Browsing lets you view multiple web pages in a single window. | Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Mozilla Thunderbird | Thunderbird is a modern email client with features such as intelligent spam filters, a built-in spell checker, a range of themes and customisable layout. Thunderbird provides IMAP/POP support, HTML e-mail composing, quick search, address book, advanced message filtering, address completion, import tools, and the ability to manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts. | Microsoft Outlook Express, Eudora | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Gaim | Gaim is an instant messenger (IM) client. Use it to chat with others in real time using any supported network, including AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr. Gaim can be simultaneously connected to several networks, so if you have contacts on different networks, you can talk to them all at the same time, from one easy to use program. | AOL IM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Trillian | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Azureus | Azureus implements the BitTorrent filesharing protocol using java language and comes bundled with many invaluable features for both beginners and advanced users. | ?? | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| FileZilla | FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client and server with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. | WS_FTP, CuteFTP | Windows
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| Name | Description | Closed Source Equivalents | OS Compatibility
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| The GIMP | The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), is a powerful and comprehensive imaging solution, suitable for those wanting to manipulate digital photographs, design and export graphics for the web, convert from one file format to another and even produce complex high-resolution compositions for print. (If you are coming from Photoshop, you might want to try out GimpShop - a mod for GIMP that makes it look and act more like Adobe Photoshop.) | Adobe Photoshop | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Blender | Blender is a professional-grade open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. | 3D Studio Max, Bryce, others? | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Art of Illusion | Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. Many of its capabilities rival those found in commercial programs. Some of the highlights include subdivision surface based modelling tools, skeleton based animation, and a graphical language for designing procedural textures and materials. | 3D Studio Max, Bryce, Maya, others? | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Inkscape | Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as Postscript, EPS, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats. | Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Audacity | Audacity is a sound editing program which can record, playback, and mix sounds or apply effects using a variety of filters. Edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo) and mix multiple tracks together. Save your files in a number of formats, including WAV, Ogg Vorbis and AIFF, or use Audacity's native project format for high performance editing. | Cool Edit Pro, Soundforge, WaveLab | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Name | Description | Closed Source Equivalents | OS Compatibility
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| 7-zip | 7-Zip is a program for creating or unpacking archived and compressed files. It can unpack 7zip, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB files, or create file archives in those formats. For the standard ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2 - 10 % better than that provided by PKZip or WinZip, and the native 7zip format can provide a 45% reduction in file size from the common zip format. | WinZip, WinRar | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| ClamAV | Clam AntiVirus is a GPL anti-virus toolkit. The main purpose of this software is the integration with mail servers (attachment scanning). The package provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via Internet. The programs are based on a shared library distributed with the Clam AntiVirus package, which you can use with your own software. Most importantly, the virus database is kept up to date. For windows users, there is a nice GUI-based package called ClamWin. | Norton Antivirus, McAfee Antivirus | Windows, Unix, Mac OS X
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| Gnucash | If you've been looking for a way to manage your personal or business finances using Free Software, you've found it! Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. GnuCash is backed by an active development community and is blossoming into a full-fledged accounting system. | Quicken | Unix
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