Ignore all the doom and gloom about the world's economy, recession and the credit crunch- there's a wealth of completely free and legal software out there

Ignore all the doom and gloom about the world's economy, recession and the credit crunch- there's a wealth of completely free and legal software out there

Chances are that if you’re cool enough to read Tech on a weekly basis, you’re cool enough to have used the Mozilla Firefox web browser. It’s free, it doesn’t let viruses in faster than a gaping wound (I’m looking at you, Internet Explorer), and it’s got a magic bar that automatically searches your favourites and history as you type.

What you might not be aware of is that Firefox is part of a multi-pronged attack on the big businesses of Silicon Valley under the banner of free and open-source software. Open-source software is used to run half of all websites (including content management for the new Student website) and you can even buy a laptop from Dell with the free Linux operating system installed instead of Windows. So what’s it all about?

Open source means freedom: freedom from having to pay for annual, unnecessary updates to your programs, freedom to run your computer without restrictions put in place by the powers that be, freedom to rewrite software the way you want it… if you take the time to learn how, that is.

Richard Stallman, a computer programmer at MIT who became disillusioned with how programming culture had changed during the late 1970s, started the open-source movement. At first programmers had openly shared the source code of the programs they developed, but this gradually gave way to commercialisation and ‘closed-source’ software. Stallman decided he would make a new, completely free operating system based on the successful UNIX. He named this project GNU, standing for ‘GNU's Not Unix.’ Unfortunately the animal puns didn’t end there, as Stallman called the core of this system ‘GNU Hurd’.

Without getting into too much unnecessary and boring technical talk, this laid the foundation for the Linux operating system which millions of computer nerds use and love every day. As open-source software can be modified by anyone with the knowhow, there are literally hundreds of variants of Linux available (although not all of them are free) suitable for everyone from your granny to the most hardened of computer veterans.

It’s not just free operating systems that are available: there are now countless juicy open-source programs ripe for the picking, from basic tools to fully-fledged games. Instead of paying an obscene amount of money for Microsoft’s Office Suite, including that rubbish database thing no one ever uses, consider replacing it with OpenOffice or its Mac equivalent, NeoOffice. Likewise, why pay £400 for Adobe Photoshop when the brilliantly named GIMP image editor can do a similar job for free? Another great free program is Audacity (or as it’s also known, Awesome Ringtone Creator), a surprisingly powerful music-editing tool. The website Sourceforge provides a repository for open-source software including some of those mentioned above; links to more information about these programs are available at the end of this article.

If your computer is filled with rubbish and you can’t find those handy recovery discs that wipe the whole thing, you can install Linux as a replacement or in tandem with Windows. Many Linux versions come in the form of a ‘Live CD’, meaning you can try them out before you permanently change anything. Ubuntu is a particularly good choice for those comfortable with Windows with its familiar interface and easy to understand options.

This all sounds well and good, but there are a few provisos. Programmers are not artists or design gurus and as a result some free programs can look ugly as sin compared to their expensive rivals. Unlike commercial software, open-source programs are not always finished when they are released to the public; rather they evolve as people contribute to the project, adding new features and improving stability. If you opt for a Linux operating system it can’t run programs designed for Windows: you can cheat and run some of them using a tool called Wine, but don’t expect to play Crysis on your Linux PC any time soon.

Open-source software has gone from being the mainstay of hobbyists living in their parents’ basement to a viable alternative to commercial offerings. Given the current financial crisis and ubiquitous use of the words ‘credit crunch’ on a daily basis, we hard-up students can save a few quid here and there by making the switch to open-source. Now, has anyone ever heard of open-source alcohol?

Ubuntu Linux: http://www.ubuntu.com

Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net

OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org

The GIMP: http://www.gimp.org

Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net