roadster3043 said:
Greetings.
Has anyone in the group made an all freeware software PC?
From free OS, office suite, video editing, web browser, email client,
etc?
Any ideas and suggestions?
Thank you.
Take care.
roadster3043
jmfix at hotmail dot com
First:
There are a lot of free OS systems, but only a few are even sleightly
usefull.
To skip a lot of <BEEP> and go straigt to the os that can be used:
- Free Dos - Dos only, but quite good
- Linspire (Was Lindows) Has a free version, but I doubt it remains freeware
if it realy takes of.
- Linux - ther are a few flavours of pinguins out there. I have been told
that the Debian variant(s) are the only ones that are realy free.
- BeOs (Was quite nice when it reached fame, now it more a sort of
collectors Itemn, I'm afraid)
So If you Realy want a compleet freeware system, you will be bound to Linux.
If you want something people cannot screw up, You might try one of the Linux
Live Distribution CD's - OS+ software running from CD, where knoppix is
without doubt the most known one. Since it runs from CD it is quite hard to
screw it up, but also quite hard to change settings and defaults. (only
usable if you have an additional harddisk, smart media drive or an USB
drive. (Or even a diskette)
Even if you go for othe linux distributions, Knoppix will give you a good
excample of common used freeware on linux.
But say you want to spend a couple of bux on Windows 98Se, Windows2000
(recommanded) or windows XP - probably comes with any supermarket system -
then it is possible.
- If the sysem is for business purposes, you can forget about runnin only
freeware. You will be violating a douzain or more EULA's for a fully equiped
system. For my own business I found some very essential programs (Like a
virus scanner and a firewall) not aviable freely for commercial uses.
- If the system is for private businesse only, then you are able to get
everything you need for free (If you're not too picky and only want software
that can do *exactly* the same as the commercial packages. This is not
possible. It would probably even render such software illegal)
I found that *most* applications have at least 2 worthy freeware
counterparts, all withtheir ownstong and weak points. For software that
haver numberous freeware counterparts, you'll often find the real choise
been narrowed to 2-4 packages. Between the remaining software, the final
choise is often a mix of
- Karma
- Specialised features
- Yin-yan
- System requirments - though often these are almost the same)
- Fingerspitzengefül
Since ther wil also be a lot of discussion about what a software should be
on a freeware system, í cannot give you a list of software. But if you want
to know my (or other people's) choises about a replacement for a particulair
program, feel free to ask.
MightyKitten
