Lately you may have been hearing more about Open Source Software, Free/Libre Software, Linux, GNU, and BSD. These terms are being used liberally. However, what does Free/Libre and Open Source Software really mean? Some say it is “free as in freedom, and not beer”. Others attribute free as in price and speak out that it is in fact not free, since there exists hidden cost which are not mentioned. Some insist you can benefit from the intensive community effort, which helps bring software and applications with updates and improvements to the users. Clearly, there are many views and opinions about the FLOSS world.

No matter what the definition of FLOSS is, it is really up to you to decide and find out. No, we are not going to trick you into another marketing scheme, or try to brain wash you with the traditional “my software/ideology is the best, just follow me” talk. This article is targeted to provide you with possible FLOSS options and alternatives for daily usage on your computer.

For starters, using FLOSS on your personal computer does not mean it is a requirement to use a FLOSS operating system like GNU/Linux. There also exists FLOSS software which can run on proprietary operating systems. The main point is that the freedom of choice is yours. The software should suit your need, and not the other way round.

Why should I?

The first question that comes to mind would probably be: “Why should I use FLOSS if my good old computer is serving me well?”

If it is serving you well, its probably suggested you keep it that way. However, have you actually considered that there are actually other alternatives for the software that your paying for? One thing we have noticed is that many people simply do not realize that alternatives exists. When you find a FLOSS alternative that serves you equally, or better than the one your paying for, why not save the money and donate it to the MyOSS? magazine instead? (this is meant to be a joke, you don't have to do that, of course)

These series of articles will present you FLOSS alternatives for your daily computing need. In this issue we will summarize some popular Free/Libre and Open Source Software that many have come by, and have been using for a while. In future articles we will highlight some further Free/Libre and Open Source Software that might be added to your “soon-to-try” list, but we hope that you are then well equipped with the knowledge of other alternatives you are actually entitled to.

Open Office Suite

When we talk about productivity, we are all familiar to Microsoft Office. It is a complete suite of productivity and office applications. A not-so-new office suite is being deployed as alternative – Open Office. It was started by StarDivision? as StarOffice? many years ago, and then was acquired by Sun Microsystems. The open source version of Star Office was named as Open Office. The release of OpenOffice?.org (OOo?) 1.0 was a great hit. Many are using it as their office software choice over Microsoft Office.

Open Office uses open standards for its documents. This feature allows for better document interoperability between other Office software such as Abiword and Koffice. Besides its own document formats, Open Office applications have the ability import Microsoft Office documents. Thus, if you come from a Microsoft Office background, most of your current documents are not put to waste when you change to Open Office. There might be certain formatting issues in the imported Microsoft Office documents but content wise, they work just fine. To be fair, Open Office has done a amazing job in importing Microsoft Office documents.

Putting the interoperability aside, for a casual personal user who does not write 200 pages every week with 40 figures plus 27 tables, you might not even notice much difference when using Open Office instead of the proprietary option. For a company who wishes to use an efficient office suite for its daily business needs, Open Office has been used and tested, and some even consider it as the the right suite, a truly great alternative,

Open Office version 2.0 has just been released, and there are many new enhancements in this version that are well worth trying out.

Take Back the Web

We are often provided with a standard web browser and email client when we receive our computer. Often you might not realize there are also quite some mature FLOSS products you can choose to visit websites or to read your email.

Coming out of the Mozilla Foundation are two famous candidates that we would like to introduce, Firefox and Thunderbird.

Firefox was born in 2002, and is increasingly popular among users for its speed, security, and support for standards. It provides various nice features such as the tabbed view and a pop-up blocker that comes together with the standard installation. There also exists lots of extensions and themes available for you to customize your Firefox. Firefox has emphasis on security for Internet browsing where it has been used as a solution to fight against ad/spy ware and viruses.

The second candidate, Thunderbird, is a mail client from Mozilla. It was started right after the Firefox project, and similarly gained great response from the public. Important features bundled are speed, spam control, POP/IMAP support, RSS Reader. It also includes extensions plus theme possibilities. It is often found today being used together with Firefox as perfect web plus mail solution on many platforms.

If you prefer to have only one suite instead of multiple pieces of software for your daily Internet usage, you might be interested with the original Mozilla Suite instead. In this suite you will find web browser, mail client, HTML composer and IRC Client. The same features available in Firefox and Thunderbird are found in the Mozilla Suite too, so you are rest assured that most of the things needed are well taken cared.

Gaim – the all-in-one small wonder

Today's Internet has evolved a lot from what it was decade ago. But one thing will stay the same – people connected via network. First came BBS, then IRC, and then the era of Instant Messaging (IM) was born. Chatting over the Internet is a viable solution for communication, and has become a very popular method of choice for talking with your friends.. However, on the Internet there are many ways to talk to each other. Imagine having a Nokia cellphone which could only talk with Nokia cellphones. How would a person with a Sony-Ericsson contact you? Clearly, this would not be a desirable situation but with IM's, this situation is exceedingly common.

Gaim is an open source multi-protocol instant messaging client for multiple platforms. It supports many protocols, such as ICQ/AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, and even the new Google Talk (which follows the implementation of Jabber/XMPP protocol). Using it, you can freely chat with people on different IM protocols, removing the fuss of having 5 different clients running on your computer, occupying your valuable task bar space. You no longer need to convert your friends to one protocol, since you can stay in touch with them with Gaim.

Compared to its initial versions, there have been a lot of improvement to Gaim. It does most of the features you observe on various clients. Certain features might be still not available, such as voice chat or on-line gaming. However, important features are constantly being improved or being added by contributors.

So if you would like to continue chatting with different people from all over the world, yet don't like to be constantly downloading different IM clients or switching between many different IM clients, check Gaim out. The only risk you bear would be spending more time chatting than doing something productive, but hey, you can discuss your work over IM, right?

That's all for now folks!

As the first article of this new series, we hope you will have some great time with the above open source recommendations. Remember by having alternatives you can make your own choice in deciding what suits your need the best when it comes to your computing needs. In coming issues we will try to introduce and recommend more FLOSS that you can try or even utilize no matter what your platform or operating system is.

Links to Resources:

• OpenOffice?.org - http://www.openoffice.org
• Firefox - http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
• Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
• Mozilla Suite - http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/
• Gaim - http://gaim.sourceforge.net