A curated list of free software.
What is free software? "Free" as in cost? Open source? Not quite. In order for a piece of software to be truly free, its license must allow users to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software without imposing excessive restrictions.
The Free Software Foundation defines free software as software that gives you:
- the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
- the freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
- the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from the changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Free software can be licensed in a number of ways. The GNU GPL encourages propagation of free software, but free software can also be unlicensed. Read more about the licenses here. Most of the software below should have one of the licenses listed in the appendix.
In other words, software that falls under any of the three boxes on the left is good for this list. Software from the right two boxes is not.
Feel free to submit a pull request. The software that you add must strictly adhere to the above definition, and you must have used it enough to know that it is awesome. See Contribution Guidelines for more information.
- Audio
- Development
- Command Line Tools
- File Management
- Graphics
- Miscellaneous
- Office
- Screencasting
- Text Editors
- Utilities
- Version Control
- Virtualization
- Web Browsers
- Web Servers
- Audacity - Sound recording and post-processing. (GNU GPLv2+)
- Cygwin - Unix-like environment for Windows, providing access to a number of tools commonly found on Linux systems. (GNU GPLv3)
- PuTTY - Remote terminal emulator that connects over SSH, Telnet, SCP, and rlogin protocols as well as raw socket connections. (MIT)
- ranger - Minimal, lightweight, and aesthetically pleasing file explorer for GNU/Linux. It runs in the terminal window, so it fits in well with window managers such as i3. vi key bindings allow for quick operations to be performed, including rename and delete. (GNU GPLv3)
- 7-Zip - File archiver for creating and opening compressed files. (GNU LGPLv2.1+)
- FileZilla - Universal FTP solution. (GNU GPLv2+)
- Blender - 3D creation suite for modeling, simulation, and animation. (GNU GPLv2+)
- GIMP - Image manipulation software. (GNU GPLv3)
- qBittorrent - Easy to use BitTorrent client. (GNU GPLv2+)
- VLC - Multimedia player that supports a variety of audio and video formats. (GNU GPLv3)
- LibreOffice - Office suite with word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs. (MPLv2)
- Sumatra PDF - Document reader with support for many formats. (GNU GPLv3)
- Zathura - Highly customizable and functional document viewer. It provides a minimalistic and space saving interface as well as an easy usage that mainly focuses on keyboard interaction. (Custom)
- SimpleScreenRecorder - Highly customisable GUI screencasting program. (GNU GPLv3)
- Atom - Hackable text and source code editor. (MIT)
- GNU nano - Simple text editor for the command line. (GNU GPL)
- Notepad++ - Extensible text and source code editor. (GNU GPLv2+)
- PWGen - Secure password generator. (GNU GPLv2)
- Rufus - Bootable USB installation media creator. (GNU GPLv3)
- Wireshark - Packet analyzer for network troubleshooting and analysis. (GNU GPLv2)
- Git - Fast, distributed version control providing full project history without the need for a central server. (GNU GPLv2)
- VirtualBox - Feature rich virtualization tools with support for many operating systems. (GNU GPLv2)
- Firefox - Web browser with a large collection of add-ons available. It is backed by Mozilla, a non-profit organization that supports innovation, freedom, and an open Web. (MPL 2.0)
- Waterfox - Fork of Firefox that is focused on performance, 64-bit systems, and data privacy. (MPL 2.0)
- Apache HTTP Server - Secure, efficient, and extensible web server. (Apache License 2.0)
- ZeroNet - Decentralized websites using Bitcoin cryptography and the BitTorrent network. (GNU GPLv2)
