Software Freedom Day - Programs
Message to IFSO / MiLUG members, This is a rough first draft. PLEASE do not inform me of mistakes, Correct them instead. I wanted to put this here for correction and expansion. Feel free to add descriptions of other programs here as well. This way, I can have an introductory handout on Saturday (SFD).
Programs
All programs here are available under Licenses such as the GNU General Public License, which copper-fasten the end user's freedom to view the code, use it for any purpose, modify the code and distribute copies with the full consent of the owners of the programs.
THIS IS FREEDOM, THIS IS SOFTWARE FREEDOM.
Mozilla Firefox
This web browser is making massive headlines, mainly for it's security and speed. It has been downloaded millions of times, and Microsoft worry it will upstage their 'Internet Explorer' browser which they include with Windows, but has a notorious security record. Firefox will allow you to do some useful things like:
Stop sites opening new advertising windows which you manually close.
Allow Cookies only after asking (Ask about this, they're not ALWAYS bad)
Warn you when a website may not be what it claims to be (secure sites)
Open lots of websites in the same browser window (Tabs) -VERY useful, because closing ONE browser window minimises all sites at once.
OpenOffice.org
A fully MS Compatible office suite that can read all the Microsoft formats, including Word (Writer), Excel (Calc), Powerpoint (Impress). Not only this, but it can read, and save documents in numerous other documents as well. You can also save your output to PDF format, used as by Adobe Acrobat. OpenOffice is available on ALL Ubuntu Linux derivatives.
KOffice
Has many of the features of OpenOffice.org although the programs have different names. KOffice is available as part of "Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)" which is included in Slackware and many other Linux Distributions. An educational version of Slacware (Slax) is available at the stand.
Acrobat readers
XPDF, Acroread, GGV (Gnome Ghostview), KPDF and others Allow you to read and print documents in "Portable Document Format" or '.pdf'. You'll find "PDF"s on many government sites. Under windows, these need to be read by downloading "Adobe Acrobat Viewer".
Replacements for Microsoft Office Components
Abiword: A fully compatible replacement for the Microsoft Word processor.
Gnumeric: A fully compatable replacement for Microsoft Excel.
Magicpoint: Presentation package, like Powerpoint, but not compatible.