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I decided to write this guide after spending about fifteen years trying many of the free software packages available on the Internet. I always enjoyed using free software, mostly because it is free and I am a cheap skate. Nevertheless, I know that I am not alone and that there are many people out there who share my spend thrift ways. Most likely if you are reading this, then you might just be one of those kindred spirits. In the course of these years I have found some software that was great and some that was not so great. This is a culmination of those experiences in a hope that I can save you some time and frustration.

One of the biggest annoyances associated with free software was the constant and annoying nag screens as well as spyware which made the software not worth the price of free. For all of you up and coming software developers, please feel free to offer your software for free. You can even throw in some ads to generate some revenue, feel free to even require payment to unlock special features, but please do not make the ads a hindrance to using the program itself. All of the software mentioned throughout this article is 100% free. Where it is applicable I will make mention of the software package's commercial equivalent.

First off, I would be remiss if I did not make mention of software that makes it possible to even run all of these software packages. I am of course, speaking of the Operating System itself. Currently, the free Operating Systems are based on Linux and they are all just different Kernel builds of the same System developed by Linus Torvalds. There are many different versions of this OS but there are only a couple of which that stand out above the others. As a note, I will mention the Linux Operating Systems but some of the free software that I will be mentioning later in this article will be only Windows compatible.

Operating Systems:

Ubuntu Equivalent Microsoft Windows XP

Ubuntu is a really clean and stable Operating System. Ubuntu has really made a name for itself and is considered one of the best free Operating Systems available. The OS has a very easy to install interface which makes it as simple to install as Microsoft Windows. There are instances where some hardware may not be compatible with the Linux Operating System, but that is becoming a rare occurrence.

Ubuntu also comes in a LiveCD version which can be booted from your PC so that you can try it out without committing to installing the OS first. In many cases you can simply

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