List of Free And Useful Software For Your Daily Use

Some freewares are well known and then there are others that are equally useful, but not as well known. Enough talk though, here’s the list.

1.) utorrent: This is a light and easy to use application that has gained popularity all over the world. It has its own torrent search engine and consumes very little memory. It isn’t the most stylish application, but is super useful and fast.

2.) PDFCreator: PDF files are good, as long as you don’t have to make them youself. But wait, just use PDFCreator. It is a quick and easy way to convert your documents into the .pdf format. It is easy to use but has some drawbacks, like lack of password protection or encryption.

3.) OpenOffice.org: It has been said time and again, Microsoft Office is an expensive software, but everyone needs MS Word or PowerPoint. So, what to do? Use OpenOffice.org, by Sun Microsystems, which is the same company that gives you your Java updates. It is the ideal replacement for MS Office and it’s completely free.

4.) Cobian Backup: Backing up data is very important and losing data because you forgot to back it up is the most annoying thing that can happen. Supported by Microsoft, Cobian Backup is a good and easy to use backup software that you can use.

5.) Avira: Developed by Avira GmbH, a German antivirus company, this application is based on the AntiVir scan engine, which is called Like Filewalker. It is free and quite easy to use, offering protection from malware, spyware, dialers, worms etc. It has very high detection rates. Perhaps the only problem is that since version 8, there have been no developments in the software.

6.) Avidemux: The video editor that comes with Apple’s Macbook is pretty strong, but you have to buy an Apple for it, which is expensive. Avidemux is an open source video editor, which was written in C++ and supports a huge range of video and audio formats. It is not very user friendly though.

7.) Connectify: This Windows 7 application is free and useful. It can turn your laptop into a Wi-Fi hotspot, which allows you to share your internet connection with others. Pretty much similar to tethering in Android phones.

8.) Cacheman: You may have heard of this. This is a Windows tune up utility that was designed in order to increase the speed and stability of a computer. It does so by optimising the caches, recovering RAM and also fine tuning various system settings.

9.) AutoHotKey: Ever had tasks that you have to do repeatedly? Well, use this software for them. This is a free open source software, which allows users to automate tasks that are repetitive in nature.

10.) VLC Media Player: Top of the lot and perhaps the most popular open source freeware application is the VLC Media Player. It is a very powerful multimedia player. It can also encode and stream multimedia and supports many different formats. Perhaps its greatest utility is the fact that you can play almost any format without having to download an additional codec for it.

Source: Fortystones.com

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Posted at Friday, September 06, 2013 |  by Rajat Khandelwal

Interesting And Lesser Known Facts About Linux

- Only 2 per cent of the code, which was originally written by Torvalds, remains in the current Linux kernel.

- Linux is used in government offices in many countries. In India, Linux is also used for educational purposes in Tamil Nadu.

- The top 10 supercomputers in the world use Linux. Linux accounts for 33.8 per cent of the world’s data servers compared to the operating systems from Microsoft, which account for only 7.3 per cent.

- Bullet trains in Japan, the New York Stock Exchange, CERN and the San Francisco traffic control systems run on Linux.

- Some of the biggest technology related companies like Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc. use Linux as their primary operating system.

- In 1991, the GNU project that was developed, did not have any kernels or drivers. That is why Torvalds was led towards working on the Linux kernel development.

- Hollywood director, James Cameron had said that hit movie Avataar was the first movie to be shot completely in 3D using free software on Linux-driven machines.

- The first Linux distribution to be offered by an original equipment manufacturer was Ubuntu. This was done by Dell.

- The well known and very popular digital recording system TiVo also uses Linux.

- Google’s Android operating system, which led to a revolution in the mobile phones industry, is known to be based on Linux.

- Linux itself is not an operating system, rather, it is a kernel. GNU Linus is the operating system.

- The original Linux kernel had only 10,239 lines of code, whereas, today the standard version of the kernel has only 10 million lines of code. This is growing at 10 per cent per year and nearly 4,500 lines are added to the code. In addition, about 1,500 lines in the code are altered almost everyday.

- Yggdrasil Computing Inc was the company that started commercial distribution for Linux for the first time. The freeware was launched on CDs by Yggdrasil in 1992.

- An asteroid has been named after Torvalds in order to honour him.

- A study conducted by the European Union showed that redeveloping the most recent Linux kernel would cost about $1.14 billion.

- The Linux mascot is a penguin named Tux. The name of the Penguin is based on the fact that a penguin’s body is coloured like a tuxedo. But, there are also theories that the name comes from the words Torvalds and Unix.

- The Debian operating system was the first GNU/Linux-based system, which was developed.

- Creator Torvalds originally wanted the Linux kernel to be called Freax. This could be a mix of the words free, freak and the letter X, which would indicate the fact that it resembles Unix. His friend, Ari Lemmke, who was the administrator for the FTP server that was hosting the kernel for downloads, called it the kernel of Linux Torvalds.

- The Linux kernel runs on so many operating systems that it is the most widely ported operating system in the world.

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Posted at Sunday, August 18, 2013 |  by Rajat Khandelwal

Open-source alternative for Coke!

Have you ever had a can of Coke and thought that it would taste better if it was open source? No? Well, some people have and they have created the world's first "open source" cola. And it's on version 1.1.3

Anybody can make the drink, modify and improve on it as they see fit, as long as the recipe is made public under the GNU General Public License. However, recipes are not copyrightable, so the legal basis for that premise is untested.

Originally released as a promotional tool to explain open source software, the drink became a success and the company that made it sold 150,000 cans, and the creators became better known for the cola than for the software they were trying to promote!

Source-Wikipedia

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Posted at Sunday, June 02, 2013 |  by Rajat Khandelwal