Not everyone can afford the prices Microsoft and other companies charge for their software. Others are ideologically opposed to the the business and coding practices of this or that company (read: Microsoft).

There are alternatives, however.

Operating System

Screen Shot of Mr. Scott's Ubuntu Desktop

On none of my home computers do I use Microsoft’s Windows operating system. I prefer Linux, specifically Ubuntu, a development fork from the Debian Linux implementation. There are several reasons I prefer Ubuntu to Windows:

• It’s faster.
• It’s more stable. (Google runs all its servers on Linux, as do the vast majority of all web sites.)
• There are no viruses!
• It makes better use of system resources.
• It’s more flexible.
• It’s free.

That’s right: like all Open Source computer programs, Ubuntu is completely and totally free. Not only that, but it also makes old computers run like new. The minimum system requirements mean that it will run quite well on older computers with older processors (as slow as 300 MHz) on mother boards that have substantially less memory (128 MB) than new systems.

The bottom line is simple: Ubuntu resurrects old computers and turns newer computers into sleeker, faster, and safer machines than Windows can dream of doing.

(On a side note, Google uses Ubuntu for all their in-house computing, though, being Google, they’ve made their own version — ah, the joys of Open Source — called Goobuntu.)

Productivity Software

Don’t have a copy of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc) and don’t want to steal by using a pirated copy? Here are some alternatives, all of which are free.

• LibreOffice (Site)
  This is my productivity software of choice. Absolutely free and very robust. (It is a fork of OpenOffice.org, which illustrates one of the advantages of Open Source software.)
• Google Docs (Site)
  This is not nearly as robust as OpenOffice.org, but it gets the job done. There are plenty of templates available as well. The downsides:
• You must be online to use it.
• Many of the features are still relatively primitive.
• You’re storing everything on the cloud. This has certain security concerns for many.
• Zoho Writer (Site)
  Something like Google Docs, only closer in features to Word. The downside: slow load times. (And, of course, you have to be online, and it has the same potential security issues as Google Docs.)
• AbiWord (Site)
  This is a fairly decent word processing program. If all you need to do is write a term paper (and you have limited disk space), this might be the way to go. The downside: no spreadsheet or presentation software.

Broswers

Many don’t feel Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is the best browser out there. Experts in fact often warn of security vulnerabilities in the coding. There are plenty of alternatives.

• Google Chrome (Site)
  This is one fast browser. It’s my browser of choice, and I only use others when I have to.
• Firefox (Site)
  An excellent choice, and for many years, it was the browser I used.
• Opera (Site)
  This has some nice features for developers, but then Google Chrome came and improved those features.