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As an impoverished student, the development of the open source softwware movement has been a great boon to me. Not only can I get all sorts of stuff for free that I would normally have to pay for, but the community of developers creating competing products can only be a good thing for the end users. Here is a list of my favourite and most used free software packages.

Ubuntu
Since I accidentally wiped my Hard Disc a couple of months ago, I have been using Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a distribution of the Linux Operating System. It starts up faster than my windows did and it looks nice as well! Most of the programs I need are already installed (an office suite, image manipulation tools, web browser etc...) and if not the package manager can help me get what I want. The best part about Ubuntu, for me though, as a beginner was the support. There is a manual, a huge forum full of helpful people and an IRC channel which is equally well stocked with supportive types. I asked loads of stupid questions in my first week of Ubuntu-ing and all my queries were solved within a couple of hours maximum. Ubuntu is also completely free! You can even order free CDs sent to you! Ubuntu comes with a lot of the packages below already installed. I will mark them with a (u).

Firefox (u)
Firefox, as I'm sure many will be aware, is an open source web browser. It and many other worthy browsers are slowly eroding away Internet Explorer's market share. Firefox has emerged as the most popular "alternative" browser. It is often touted as being much more secure than IE, but at least part of this perceived extra security is just because of IE's dominant position. Most hackers looking for security flaws would be working mainly with trying to get into Internet Explorer, since that is what the majority of people use. Because of this, FF and other alternative browsers seem safer in comparison. If Firefox became the dominant browser, who knows how it might fare... Having said that, Firefox is still a lot better than the competition, and here's why; customisation. You can fiddle with your browser to your heart's content. And if the option you want isn't available already, there will be some little add-on to FF that will open up those options to you! There are several other free browsers available including Opera and Safari.

NVU
NVU is a tool that allows you to create and edit webpages, like frontpage or dreamweaver. Its is pretty good doing most of the stuff you'd expect a program of this sort to be able to do.

jEdit
jEdit

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