20 Most Popular Open Source Software Ever These days, you can quite easily buy a brand-spanking-new computer and install all the software you need for free, using applications offered under the Open Software License.
You can get a free image editor, a free sound editor, a free word processor, media player, file archiver, PDF creator… the list goes on and on and on. While some of these free apps do not offer quite the same level of polished functionality as their commercial rivals, others far exceed the capabilities of everything else on the market.
Below, we take a close look at the cream of the crop: 20 invaluable and indispensable open source applications that you really should be using, if you’re not already. The vast majority of them are cross-platform and absolutely 100% free! You’re bound to find several that are perfectly suited to your needs.
WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging platform, used by a staggering 202 million websites. As simple or as complex as you want it to be, WordPress is supported by a wide array of plugins which can be used to transform a standard blog into anything you could possibly desire. Besides blogs, WordPress can be used as a straightforward content management system to power anything from online shops using WordPress e-commerce themes, online magazine using a WordPress magazine theme to portfolios using WordPress portfolio themes, WordPress gallery themes are great for photographers and designers showcasing their creations in an online portfolio.
Magento, used by 30,000 merchants, including Samsung, Nespresso and The North Face, is the world’s fastest growing e-commerce platform. Magento Community Edition is offered for free under the Open Software License. The Enterprise Edition, for which you have to pay, offers features like multi-store capability, store credits and gift cards, out-of-the-box.
Firefox currently accounts for 24.43% of the recorded usage share of web browsers, but this figure is on the rise. Already the browser of choice for most web professionals, Firefox’s popularity is growing thanks to its vast selection of third party add-ons, which let users tailor their browsing environment down to the finest detail.
With its speedy searches, built-in RSS feeds, strong security and superb add-ons, Thunderbird has to be the best, free email application available. If you’re prepared to spend some time tailoring your email environment with add-ons, you’ll absolutely love it, but it’s probably not ideal for complete novices.
FileZilla is a hugely successful, cross-platform FTP client. It’s also available as a server, for Windows only. Created in January 2001 by Tim Klosse as a class project, FileZilla has gone on to become the 5th most popular download of all time from SourceForge.net.
GnuCash provides a great, free alternative to paid-for accounting software. Designed for personal and small business use, it offers bank account, stock, income and expense tracking, in addition to double-entry accounting.
Music software like Cubase and Logic Pro can be incredibly expensive, which is why an increasing number of people are turning to Audacity, a free, cross-platform sound editor. Users can record and edit live audio; cut, copy, splice and mix sounds; and convert ageing tapes and records into digital format.
Just like sound editors, industry standard image editing software is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people, but GIMP provides a free alternative. It performs every major function you could desire, except for, vitally, CMYK separation functionality necessary for prepress work.
With the ability to create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases, OpenOffice is an accomplished rival to Microsoft Office, which clearly influenced OpenOffice’s design. Microsoft Office users will feel completely at home and find that OpenOffice performs just as well, if not better.
At last count, VLC media player had been downloaded 300 million times. Unlike some paid-for alternatives, VLC supports practically every audio/video codec and file format. The most recent VLC release also offers live recording of streaming video, frame-by-frame advancement and superb speed controls.
Handbrake rips/converts DVDs to MPEG-4 for playing back on your iPod or archiving. It doesn’t have the ability to decode DVDs, but can do so if you have VLC, which includes a DVD encoder, installed on your computer.
Pidgin is the ultimate, free instant messaging tool. It provides you with one window through which you can simultaneously interact with different people, whichever instant messaging platform they’re using.
Freemind is a terrific mind-mapping tool, which lets you get all your thoughts down as quickly as possible with the use of icons, shapes and colors. Besides the ordinary nodes and links, you can add hyperlinks and even documents to your maps.
Reliable, customizable, intuitive and free, Notepad++ is the most popular Windows-based CSS editor around. It offers everything: syntax highlighting; folding and auto-completion for CSS, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, SQL, HTML, XML and PHP; multi-file viewing; tabbed editing; zoom in/out; and bookmarks.
7-Zip is an extremely popular file archiver for Windows, which, although free, outperforms Winzip. It can unpack the vast majority of archive formats and can create TAR and GZ archives, commonly used on Unix and Linux systems, as well as its own 7z format, which easily outshrinks ZIP files.
Blender is a 3D content creation suite which can be used for everything from modeling to skinning, particle simulation, animating and texturing. Unlike some other free apps in this list, Blender has not been designed to “imitate” other 3D graphics software, which means it takes a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve familiarized yourself with all the shortcuts, you’ll be hooked.
Windows users can consider PDFCreator a credible rival to Adobe Acrobat. Creating PDFs is as easy as printing, literally, as once installed, you can select PDFCreator as your printer, letting you create PDFs from practically any application.
According to Calibre, it’s the “one stop solution to all your e-book needs”. I’m inclined to agree. Besides letting you catalogue and manage your e-book collection, sorting, tagging and commenting on them as you please, you can download content from the internet and convert it into e-book form.
TrueCrypt really is the best free encryption program around for anyone worried about their security. It offers 11 algorithms for encrypting your files, as well as a comprehensive help manual, which gives advice on complex password creation, hidden volumes and erasing encryption giveaways.
Named after an African philosophy of community, sharing and generosity, Ubuntu is a free operating system for Linux that’s quick and easy to use. Recent figures suggest that around 50% of Linux users have Ubuntu installed. With its focus on usability, Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice, Firefox Empathy, Pidgin, GIMP and other tools pre-installed.
In the early hours of Friday a man died asphyxiated during the fire of a supermarket in the south of Santiago, because he could not flee the fire due to police repression outside the business. The premises had been looted by protesters protesting the latest police killings and the police did not allow those left inside to leave. There were two injured by gas inhalation and one a young man of about 30 years dead.
In this way Chile added its third death in three days after protests were revived after the murder of a Colo Colo fan last Tuesday when a police truck ran over him on purpose. And one more since.
From Santiago to Paris, people around the globe have been rising up against austerity and neoliberal policies that make the poor and working people poorer and the rich and powerful richer. pic.twitter.com/HJ1w8NpaqR
While his wake was being carried out, on Friday afternoon, police officers repressed with chemical water cannon and tear gas. Another supermarket was also looted and police arrested 16 people. In several streets of the city there were barricades and sources of fire.
Police violence in the mobilizations had reduced its intensity in recent weeks. But on Tuesday night the riots revived after the death of the fan of the club Colo Colo. Jorge Mora had been hit on purpose by a police truck in the midst of repression after a major football game.
A day later, the demonstrations seized Santiago and other areas of the country again. A protester was hit by a bus that refused to stop at the demonstration and died. In response to the violent repression there was looting of shops, public offices and violent confrontations with riot police thugs.
Likewise, the young Ariel Jesús Moreno Molin remained in critical condition, with brain death, in the Central Post, after receiving a police bullet impact on his head during the repression at dawn of this Thursday in the commune of Padre Hurtado. Yesterday his death was reported. On the other hand, on Sunday night, police officers fired a tear gas bomb at the head of a 17-year-old girl who was participating in the “Popular Concert” in Puerto Montt. The victim resulted in a sinking of the skull and underwent surgery.
Israeli human rights violations: An Israeli soldier fires tear gas at Palestinian protesters during clashes in Hebron
Between 23 and 29 January, Israel committed 262 violations of international law against Palestinians, ranging from freedom of movement to demolition to bodily injury.
22 Palestinian civilians wounded, including 4 children and a girl, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – 16 civilians injured in peaceful protests in the West Bank and one injured with settlers’ fire
5 shootings reported against Palestinian agricultural lands in eastern Gaza Strip
During 102 IOF incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem: 101 civilians arrested, including 11 children and 8 women
A water well and a shop demolished and excavators confiscated in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem
IOF gave out 13 notices to demolish and stop construction works in houses while a court issued orders…
After about a year and a half in hiding, on January 25, 2020, Gabriel Pombo Da Silva was arrested in Portuguese territory. Gabriel previously spent more than 30 years in prison
With an international arrest warrant for a residual theoretical sentence of over ten years (a personal vendetta converted into a “legal detail”), Gabriel continued to contribute to the anarchist struggle with his writings.
This 28 page collection of writings by Gabriel Pombo da Silva is available here to download..
The zine is written in Gabriel’s amazingly raw, imaginative style and shows why the German and Spanish authorities tried to suppress him forever – Read his words, be inspired and take action!!
Gabriel Pombo da Silva is a well-known Galician anarchist militant who has spent more than 30 years in prison. Always at the crossroads of repression, both Spanish and from other European States, for his commitment to the anti-capitalist struggle, he wrote a book during his stay in jail – Diario e ideario de un delincuente -, as well as different booklets – gathered in the book Parte de un appido— and other writings.
On Monday, January 27, 2020, the trial (*extradition) against our comrade began on Portuguese soil, the first stage during which the following emerged in summary.
Portugal has so far accepted the paralysis of extradition to the Spanish state and the defence has about 20 days to add documentation that further supports the importance of non-extradition..
The defence has immediately challenged the calculation of the residual penalty that the Spanish State claims to apply to our comrade, namely 16 years! Without going into too much legal detail, it can be seen from the documentation justifying this count, that it is a “legal revenge” (but what state revenge is not?).
For the moment, Gabriel remains detained at the Oporto Judicial Police, waiting to appear before the judge more or less in mid-February. He can receive visits every other day from anyone. He is well and he is strong, combative, determined and ironic as always!
On the same morning of Monday, January 27, the houses of Elisa Di Bernardo’s mother, father, sister and brother-in-law were searched with the aim of seizing computer equipment.
The public prosecutor’s office of Brescia issued yet another 270bis [subversive association with purpose of terrorism or subversion of the democratic order] for Elisa and Gabriel accusing them of belonging to a subversive cell with international base and support (shakes earth, shakes!).
This new (but old, crushed and retracted) repressive wave obviously does not facilitate Gabriel’s legal situation and the regime press of the three countries has already done its duty by exalting the close investigative collaboration between Italy, Spain and Portugal.
To journalists, our historical enemies’ puppets, their duty… to us our revolutionary duty (and let each one call it what he wants, je je).
Updates will follow.
Freedom for Gabriel! Freedom for all! Long live anarchy!
Ardire, Scripta Manent, Operation Buyo … Do they mean anything to you? These are only a few of the police judicial “operations” that our “clan” has lived on its own skin for being and remaining anarchists to the extreme consequence.We are a nomadic clan that goes from country to country in search of accomplices who practice anarchism without asking for approval or consensus, who act without worrying about the “politically correct” discourse (so much in vogue in our times) that haunts our little shops today. We are also not interested in “aesthetics”, but “ethics”, the practical, the real.
We are looking for an anarchism that dirties our hands, keeps us awake and always on guard (as opposed to any complacency); this anarchism that is not liked by and disturbs the servants of the State, who have not abandoned their efforts to imprison us.
It is not easy to go from one place to another. It’s even more difficult along with our daughter, that little beauty we called Iraultza, and a canine companion that we will never fail to take with us, because she is an integral part of our clan.
Apparently, the Spanish State has not stopped wanting to put me in prison for a “residual sentence” that exists only in its putrid mind and its disgusting papers.
That being how things are, we have decided to live in the shadows, bringing our invisible contribution to all the projects that are of interest to us and with which we feel complicit.
We express all our subversive solidarity for the DESERVING comrades on trial in Italy and the world. We have no declarations to make in the courts of the “gowned” because we don’t give a shit about their theatres and farces, their accusations and acquittals.
The best way to propagate Anarchy is to live it intensely, not by representing it. We are not for farce or comedy.
There will be no more “communiques” from our clan: We are free and we are dangerous.
For Anarchy!
The nomad-anarchist clan. Elisa-Gabriel-Iraultza and the quadruped.
Received 18.3.19, and translated to English by Act for freedom now! original in Italian HERE
Belmarsh Prison inmates have revolted in support of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who has now been moved out of solitary confinement.
What kind of world do we inhabit when Belmarsh Prison Inmates
prove more ethical than the entire Western Empire? In some refreshingly good news about Julian Assange, WikiLeaks is reporting that its founder has finally been moved out of solitary confinement to a different wing in Belmarsh Prison where he can have normal social interactions with 40 other inmates.
Chelsea Manning is back in jail for the 2nd time for refusing to testify against the victimized Julian Assange
So what caused this shift in Assange’s treatment? Did the powerful empire-like alliance loosely centralized around the United States suddenly come to its senses and realize that torturing journalists for telling the truth is the sort of tyrannical abuse that it accuses other governments of perpetrating? Did officials in the British government bow to public pressure from the pro-Assange demonstrations which have been taking place in London month after month and have some faint flickerings of conscience? Did Belmarsh Prison authorities come to their senses after more than a hundred doctors warned that their cruelty was killing the award-winning publisher?
Why no. As it turns out, Assange was in fact rescued from the cruelty of this globe-sprawling empire by the concerted protests of high-security prison inmates.
On January 25, various feminist collectives, NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations), and community members from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas met at the Santa Fe international border crossing to protest the unsolved murder of 26-year-old activist and artist Isabel ‘Isa’ Cabanillas de la Torre.
Isabel was murdered on the dawn of January 18, after being reported missing the day before. Isabel’s body was discovered next to her bike in the designated “safe corridor for women” located in downtown Juarez. She was found with two bullet wounds, one to her chest and one to her head.
Mexican authorities have not yet made any arrest, named suspects, or know the reason for Isabel’s murder. Contradictory rulings on the murder have been provided by the Attorney General’s Office and it’s own women’s department within the office.
Hijas de su Maquilera Madre said that they held the Mexican state responsible for the safety of women and activists in Juarez and Mexico, issuing demands for the highest levels of Mexican authorities, “to open the lines of investigation into Isabel’s femicide.” They also demanded an end to the gun exports from the US to Mexico and an end to impunity for women’s murders.
Demo at the border for Murdered activist, Isabel Cabanillas
Juarez Mayor Armando Cabada enforced a temporary closure of the international border in conjunction with the protest. In an act of empty propaganda, Cabada solely deployed women police officers to monitor the demonstration, a similar tactic seen last year in Mexico City.
Some of the organizers declared that the demonstration was peaceful, pandering to authorities by stating that those who took part in violent actions or destruction of private property were infiltrators.
Hundreds of indignant people marched up the international bridge, rallying against the Mexican government’s inaction to address violence against women. Despite the calls by organizers against property destruction, some demonstrators spray-painted slogans such as ‘Isa Vive (Isa Lives)’ on buildings and structures as they passed.
The Free 
