The promise of open source software is best quality, flexibility and reliability. This is the updated list of the best open source software. The only way to have TRUE “Open Source Windows” is to have all equivalent native Windows programs uninstalled and removed.



Most Popular

Azureus – implements the BitTorrent protocol using Java and comes bundled with many features: Multiple torrent downloads, upload and download speed limiting, both globally and per torrent, advanced seeding rules, adjustable disk cache, only uses one port for all the torrents, UPnP sets the forward on your router and more…

FeedReader – is a news aggregation solution that provides robust, state-of-the-art features in an intuitive, user-friendly environment. FeedBurner offers advanced, cutting-edge capabilities, including the most comprehensive podcasting support available today, as well as unique smart feed technology that puts the information you need right at your fingertips.

FileZilla – is a fast and reliable FTP client and server with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface.

Firefox – delivers helpful new features to make your online experience more productive. Chose from over a thousand useful add-ons to personalize and make it your own.

Miro – free, open source internet tv and video player. Miro gives you access to more free HD content than any other video player.

Mplayer – mother of all open source video players. Mplayer runs on many systems, supports a wide range of output drivers, many fonts (Korean, Cyrillic, etc.) and 12 subtitle formats

LibreOffice – is a multi platform and multi lingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute

Paint.Net – is free image editing and photo manipulation software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools

Pidgin – is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, Zephyr

Thunderbird help you better manage your unruly inbox, scales to the most sophisticated organizational needs while making it easy to find what you need.

PDFCreator PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application.

Databases

Firebird -is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL standard features that runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms.

GigaBASE is object-relational embedded database engine for C++ applications. It provides SQL-like query language, smart C++ interface (loading objects instead of tupples), transaction based on shadowing page algorithm (no separate log file and very fast)

PostgreSQL -is an advanced PostgreSQL-based search engine that provides online indexing of data and relevance ranking for database searching. Close integration with database allows use of metadata to restrict search results. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, Solaris.

Content Managers

CMS Made Simple – provides a fast and easy way to create a web site and manage its contents. Use it to make a home page for your family — or your multinational corporation.

Drupal – an open source content management platform. Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal supports a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.

Joomla! – is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Plone – Content Management System built on top of the open source application server Zope and the accompanying

TYPO3 – Has become one of the leading content management systems (CMS) around the world for both intranets and extranets. TYPO3 offers full flexibility and extendability while featuring an accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and modules. Nearly 2000 extensions are available for download under GPL from a repository called the TYPO3 Extension Repository, or TER.

WordPress – is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.

Content Management Framework

Opencms – is a professional, easy to use website content management system. It is based on Java and XML technology. It can be deployed in an open source environment (e.g. Linux, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL) as well as on commercial components (e.g. Windows NT, IIS, BEA Weblogic, Oracle).

PHP-Nuke -is a powerful Open Source portal application. It can be used as a weblog or as a CMS. PHP-Nuke allows webmasters and editors to easily post new content and comment existing articles. PHP-Nuke is much for game clan and guild sites. It is free software, released under the GNU License.(PHP-Nuke is known for being extremely easy to use as well as EXTREMELY insecure!) If you don’t want your domain name marred, don’t use this software, use integramod instead.

WebGUI – is a web application framework and web content management system that puts the publishing power in the hands of the people who create the content, rather than the IT staff. Join the thousands of businesses, universities, and schools that have found out just how easy web can be.

XOOPS -is an extensible, OO (Object Oriented), easy to use dynamic web content management system written in PHP. XOOPS is the ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic community websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, weblogs and much more. Read the All about XOOPS page for more details. seo training

Developer Tools

AppServ – is an Apache/PHP/MySQL distribution designed to be completely installed and configured in less than one minute. While it works on Windows, the developers recommend Linux for Web or database servers that will be used heavily.

DeskWeb – applies the iconography and usability of a common Windows desktop system to Web applications. It is familiar and user-friendly and lets users easily learn how-to exploit all of the software’s features. It can be used in various ways, such as a content management system, a company groupware, a wiki, or more. Operating system: OS Independent.

Dev-C++ gives you a full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the C/C++ programming language. It uses Mingw port of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) as it’s compiler. Dev-C++ can also be used in combination with Cygwin or any other GCC based compiler.

DotNetNuke – is a powerful open source framework that creates and deploys robust modules on the ASP.NET platform. Written by its core team of developers, this book will provide youwith the tools and insight you’ll need to install, configure, and develop your own stunning

EasyPHP – is a complete software package allowing to use all the power and the flexibility that offers the dynamic language PHP and the efficient use of databases under Windows. Package includes an Apache server, a MySQL database, a fully PHP execution, as well as easy development tools for your web site or your applications.

Ghostscript -allows users to convert, view, and print PostScript and PDF files. Different versions of the software are available either as open-source or as commercial distributions. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, Classic Mac.

Hibernate – is a powerful, high-performance object/relational persistence and query service. Hibernate allows you to express queries in its own portable SQL extension (HQL), as well as in native SQL, or with an object-oriented Criteria and Example API.

jEdit – is a text editor written in Java. It supports auto indent and syntax highlighting for 130 different coding languages, as well as dozens of independently developed plug-ins and macros that make programming easier.

MiKTeX – is an up-to-date TeX implementation for the Windows operating system. It is a typesetting program with a complete set of fonts, utilities, and macros.

Notepad++ is a free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the M$ Windows environment. Notepad++ is designed to be a freeware replacement for Notepad. Supported languages : C, C++, Java, C#, XML, HTML, PHP, JavaScript, RC resource file, make file, ASCII art file(extension .nfo, doxygen, ini file, batch file, ASP, VB/VBS source files, SQL, Objective-C, CSS, Pascal, Perl, Python and Lua.

Open ModelSphere – conceptual, logical and physical data modeling (incl. forward / reverse engineering of databases); business process modeling; UML modeling.

PDFCreator -is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application. It allows users to create PDF files from any printable Windows document. As an added bonus, it can also create PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, or EPS files.

phpMyAdmin – handles the administration of MySQL over the Web. phpMyAdmin performs many database administration tasks like running SQL statements, adding and dropping databases, and adding, editing or deleting tables or fields. Operating system: OS Independent.

SharpDevelop -is a free IDE for C#, VB.NET and Boo projects on Microsoft’s. It includes a forms designer, code completer, an integrated debugger, and many other features. Operating system: Windows.

TortoiseSVN – is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows. It works directly from Windows Explorer and you can use it with virtually any development tools.

Ultimate++ is a C++ cross-platform rapid application development suite focused on programmers productivity. It includes a set of libraries (GUI, SQL, etc.), and an integrated development environment.

WaveMaker – is a visual development tool for building Ajax applications – think MS Access for Web 2.0. WaveMaker provides a point and click, browser-based development tool for building complete web applications – with 9 mouse clicks, a developer can build a web application that displays data from an underlying database.

WAMP5 – installs automatically Apache, PHP, MySQL, PHPmyadmin and SQLite manager on any Windows system. It was created in order to make it easy to use the latest version of PHP?PHP5Operating system: Windows.

wxWidgets – lets developers create applications for Win32, Mac OS X, GTK+, X11, Motif, WinCE, and more using one codebase. It can be used from languages such as C++, Python, Perl, and C#/.NET.

XAMPP – is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start. Operating system:Windows, Linux, OS/X, Solaris.

Emulators

DOSBox – is a long gone from Windows–the command prompt inside Windows isn’t truly DOS anymore. Many old games simply won’t run from the Windows command prompt. They need true blue DOS. You can get the free DOSBox, which does a great job of emulating it. Install and run the program, then run any DOS game–or DOS application, for that matter–inside it. When you run DOSBox, it automatically sets any sound-system related variables, so that your sound system will work properly with your old games.

QEMU – is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer using dynamic translation to achieve good emulation speed.

Virtualbox – is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use.

Wine – is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. It lets you run Windows programs on x86-based Unix systems. Operating system: Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, Solaris.

ZSNES – is a Super Nintendo emulator programmed by zsKnight and _Demo_. It lets you play your Super Nintendo games on your PC. Some games work better than others, and it is very much a working progress. Operating system: Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and DOS.

Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. Bochs is capable of running most Operating Systems inside the emulation including Linux, DOS, Windows® 95/98 and Windows® NT/2000/XP or Windows Vista.

PearPC is an architecture-independent PowerPC platform emulator capable of running most PowerPC operating systems.

Nestopia is an open source NES/Famicom emulator designed to emulate the NES hardware as accurately as possible. Originally for Windows only, Nestopia has been ported to the Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.

P2P

ABC – is an improved client for the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file distribution solution. ABC is based on BitTornado which extended from the original BitTorrent core system, coded by Bram Cohen. It offers some unique customization options. With this app, you can customize which information is displayed, prioritize the queuing system, and download multiple files simultaneously in the same window. Operating system: Windows.

Ares – is a P2P file-sharing program. It’s easier to figure out how to search for files and download them, and it also will download files using BitTorrent, which is probably the most popular file-sharing protocol today. Also useful is that the program includes a built-in media player, as well as chat capabilities and a built-in Web browser.

BBurst! – is the BitTorrent client that uses less memory and other resources than the original client. Key features include a torrents manager and super-seeding mode. Operating system: Windows.

BitTorrent – is the global standard for delivering high-quality files over the Internet. BitTorrent enables you to publish your own content. If you are a filmmaker, musician, or even a comedian, it?s the perfect place to showcase your work to worldwide audience. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix.

BT++ is an improved client for the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file distribution solution. It is written, like the official BitTorrent client, in Python and wxPython for maximum cross-platform compatibility. It should work on any platform that wxPython is available for.

DC++ is an open source client for Windows for the Direct Connect network. Direct Connect allows you to share files over the Internet without restrictions or limits. The client is completely free of advertisements and has a nice, easy to use interface. Firewall and router support is integrated and it is easy and convenient to use functionality like multi-hub connections, auto-connections and resuming of downloads.

eMule -is one of the biggest and most reliable peer-to-peer file sharing clients around the world. Many developers contribute to the project, so the network gets more and more efficient withevery new version. Operating system: Windows.

RevConnect – is a file sharing program based on DC++. It is fully compatible with the Direct Connect network. RevConnect is an free open-source, ad and spyware-free client, written in C++ for the Direct Connect protocol that allows you to share files over the internet with other users. Operating system: Windows.

Shareaza P2P – is known by its support for numerous P2P networks, including Gnutella2, Gnutella1, eDonkey2000/eMule, and BitTorrent. And its “Collections” feature allows users to preview albumcovers, song lists, and descriptions from a single screen. Operating system: Windows.

File Transfer

cURL – is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SCP, SFTP,TFTP, TELNET, DICT, FILE and LDAP. curl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST,HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user+password authentication (Basic, Digest, NTLM, Negotiate, Kerberos…), file transfer resume, proxy tunneling and a busload of other useful tricks. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, Solaris

Filezilla – Both a client and a server are available.

WinSCP – allows users to transfer files securely via SCP and SFTP. It incorporates Secure Shell (SSH) technology. Operating system: Windows.

Games

OpenArena – OpenArena is an open-source content package for Quake III Arena licensed under the GPL, effectively creating a free stand-alone game. You do not need Quake III Arena to play this game. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X

Scorched 3D – Scorched 3D is a game based loosely (or actually quite heavily now) on the classic DOS game Scorched Earth “The Mother Of All Games”. Scorched 3D adds amongst other new features a 3D island environment and LAN and internet play. Scorched 3D is totally free and is available for both Microsoft Windows and Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Solaris, etc.) operating systems.

ScummVM – allows you to port many classic point-and-click adventure games to nearly any platform you like. Supported games include Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Beneath A Steel Sky, Day of the Tentacle, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2, Monkey Island, Sam and Max, and dozens of others. Operating system: OS Portable.

StepMania – can be played using the keyboard or a sensor-laden “dance pad”. StepMania has game modes similar to Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution and Andamiro’s Pump It Up, Amuseworld’sEZ2Dancer, and Konami’s Para Para Paradise. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, Xbox.

Mobility Tools

BitPim – is a program that allows you to view and manipulate data on many CDMA phones from LG, Samsung, Sanyo and other manufacturers. This includes the Phone Book, Calendar, WallPapers, RingTones(functionality varies by phone) and the File system for most Qualcomm CDMA chipset based phones. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X.

PortableApps – aims to make all of your applications portable. It makes it easy to transfer software and data from your PC to a USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, or other device. Operating system: Windows.

Photo Tools

Coppermine Photo Gallery – is a multi-purpose fully-featured and integrated web picture gallery script written in PHP using GD or ImageMagick as image library with a MySQL backend. It offersa huge lineup of features including multiple languages, e-card creation, thumbnails, and many more. In order to use it, you need a Web server running Apache, PHP, MySQL, and either GD or ImageMagick. Operating system: OS Independent.

Gallery – is an open source project with the goal to develop and support leading photo sharing web application solutions. It allow some basic photo manipulation, such as resizing, rotating, and altering image quality, but does not include advanced photo editing. Operating system: OS Independent.

Instant Messaging

aMSN – is an open source MSN Messenger clone. It allows you to communicate with users on multiple networks. a MSN also allows you to display pictures and emoticons and add skins to yourchat window. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X.

Miranda – is a small, fast and easy instant messenger with support for multiple protocols. Miranda IM is designed to be resource efficient and easy to use while still providing many features including support for AIM, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, and more. Operating system: Windows.

Pidgin – is a multi-platform instant messaging client that allows you to connect with all your buddies from a single messenger, even if they are using different networks. It supports MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, IRC, GroupWise, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Same time and XMPP. You can login to multiple messenger accounts at one, allowing you to chat with your buddies onYahoo, ICQ and MSN (for example) at the same time.

QutIM is a free open-source multiprotocol ( ICQ, Jabber/GTalk/Ya.Online/LiveJournal.com, Mail.Ru, IRC ) instant messenger for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems.

Security

AdminToolsLauncher – Starter Application for most windows tools requiring administrative rights. Operating system: Windows XP/2000/Server 2003.

ClamWin Free Antivirus – is a Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and 2003. With Clam Win you can scan individual files manually or you can use the Microsoft Outlook add-in to find and remove infected attachments automatically.

Eraser – is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Windows 2003 Server and DOS.

IPCop Firewall – provides a good option for home users and small offices. It?s stable, secure, and easy to configure and maintain. Operating system: Linux.

FreeOTFE – a free, open source, “on-the-fly” transparent disk encryption program for PCs and PDAs. Using this software, you can create one or more “virtual disks” on your PC/PDA. These disks operate exactly like a normal disk, with the exception that anything written to one of them is transparently, and securely, encrypted before being stored on your computer’s hard drive.

GnuPG for Windows provides EMail-Security using GnuPG. Gpg4win is a free and easy to use installer package for Windows containig preconfigured programs and handbooks for EMail and file encryption. Gpg4win contains everything to start without big problems. Gpg4win is also compatible with Mozilla Thunderbird using the addon Enigmail.

KeePass is a free password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known.

PeerGuardian – protects your privacy while you?re using P2P file sharing networks. It supports multiple lists, list editing, automatic updates, and IPv4 blocking. Operating system: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X.

Truecrypt – a free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux. Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. It encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive. Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly; OTFE) and transparent.

Remote Desktop

mRemote – is a full-featured, open source, multi-tab remote connections manager. It allows you to store all your remote connections in a simple yet powerful interface. Currently these protocols are supported: RDP (Remote Desktop), VNC (Virtual Network Computing), ICA (Citrix ICA), SSH (Secure Shell), Telnet (TELecommunication NETwork), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), Rlogin (Rlogin), RAW.

UltraVNC – is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. Key features app include File Transfer, Video Driver, optional Encryption Plugins, MS Logon, Text Chat, Viewer Toolbar, and others. Although it’s designed primarily for Windows, the Embedded Java Viewer allows you to transfer files to and from other operating systems as well. Operating system: Windows.

TightVNC – is a free remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer. TightVNC offers additional features like file transfers, video mirror drive support, scaling of the remote desktop, support for two passwords, and more.

Screen Capture

CamStudio CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

MWSnap MWSnap is a small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen. Current version is capable of capturing the whole desktop, a highlighted window, an active menu, a control, or a fixed or free rectangular part of the screen. MWSnap handles 5 most popular graphics formats and contains several graphical tools: a zoom, a ruler, a color picker and a window spy. It can be also used as a fast picture viewer or converter.

ZScreen – is a free open-source screen capture program that allows for region/window/full-screen screenshots. It can FTP screenshots and put the URL in your clipboard in a single keystroke. It supports automatic custom naming conventions with variables. It can also interface with image editing software.

eXtended Screenshot (xscreenshot)is a nice Windows and Linux screenshot tool for make, edit, share and exchange screenshots between people via the internet. Xscreenshot oriented for QA testers, programmers, designers, sales managers, support centers and other people.

System Administration Tools

AdminToolsLauncher – Starter Application for most windows tools requiring administrative rights. Operating system: Windows XP/2000/Server 2003.

ClamWin – is a Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and 2003. ClamWin Free Antivirus comes with an easy installer and open source code. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge

Daphne – is a small (system tray) application for killing, controlling and debugging window’s processes. You can kill a process by dragging the mouse over the windows, by right-clicking the process in the main process list, or by typing its name with the “Kill all by name” command. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge

GLPI – is the Information Resource-Manager with an additional Administration- Interface. You can use it to build up a database with an inventory for your company (computer, software, printers…) Operating system: OS Independent.

GrepWin – is a simple search and replace tool which can use regular expressions to do its job. This allows to do much more powerful searches and replaces. Since regular expressions can sometimes get complicated, grepWin allows you to bookmark your most used expressions.

Nmap -is a free open source utility for network exploration or security auditing. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, although it works fine against single hosts. Nmap uses raw IPpackets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics.

TrueCrypt – is an open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux. It is a software system for establishing and maintaining anon-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention.

Webmin – is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. Webmin removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files like /etc/passwd, and lets you manage system from the console or remotely.

Wireshark – is the world’s foremost network protocol analyzer. It supports hundreds of different protocols, multiple platforms, and can analyze VoIP traffic. Operating system: Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, Solaris, all BSD platforms.

Video/Multi-Media Tools

Avidemux – is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.

Cinelerra – is a free and open source software video editing system.

FFDShow – is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV,MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies.

HandBrake – is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. It grabs video from a variety of sources, including a DVD and a DVD image, and grabs audio from sources as well, including MPEG audio tracks. You’ll then be able to output a digital file in a variety of formats, including MPEG-4, AVI, OGM for video, or AAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis for audio.

Kaltura is the developer of the first open-source video platform, including the first open-source online editor. A Wiki extension , an all in one video pack for WordPress and a video module for Drupal are also available.

LiVES – is a very flexible tool which can be used by both VJ’s and video editors – mix and switch clips from the keyboard, trim and edit your clips, and bring them together using the multi track timeline.

MediaCoder – is a free universal batch media trans coder, which integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution.

MediaPortal – is an Open Source application ideal for turning your PC / TV into a very advanced Media Center. Media Portal allows you to listen to your favorite music and radio, watch and storeyour videos and DVDs, view, schedule and record live TV as a digital video recorder and much much more.

MPlayer OS X – is binary distribution of MPlayer (The Movie Player for Linux) and comes with the native GUI in Mac OS X. After installation you can simply (by drag-and-drop) play almost all3ivx, DivX 3,4,5 and other codecs files in the window or full screen mode. Rendering of very nice antialiased text-based subtitles is also supported.

SMPlayer – is a multimedia player based on the Mplayer engine. It has many features including changing the sync of audio/video, changing brightness, hue and colour balance of live video. It supports all formats that Mplayer does, is avilable in multiple languages and is compatible with Windows and Linux.

WDM – is a video capture driver for Bt848, Bt849, Bt878 and Bt879 based video capture boards. It tries to take the most of the hardware, using all the features the chipset has to offer. It is also implemented as a WDM driver, so the same driver works under Windows 2000, Windows 98SE, Windows XP and Windows Me without modifications.

Xine – is a free multimedia player. It plays back CDs, DVDs, and VCDs. It also decodes multimedia files like AVI, MOV, WMV, and MP3 from local disk drives, and displays multimedia streamed over the Internet.

VirtualDub -is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP). It is useful for basic trimming and cleaning up footage, and also has batch processing capabilities.

Virtual Magnifying Glass – Virtual Magnifying Glass is a free, open source, cross-platform screen magnification tool. It is simple, customizable, and easy-to-use.

VLC Media Player – is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2,MPEG-4, DivX, MP3, Ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

UMPlayer is a cross-platform multimedia player supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It boasts many advanced features such as built-in subtitle search and YouTube player.

http://lightworksbeta.com/ Lightworks High end video editor alternative to Avid Composer and Final Cut Pro. Free beta currently available for Windows. Linux and Mac development begins late 2011.

Wikis

MediaWiki – is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It allows collaborative editing on documents within a familiar interface. It was designed to be run on a large server farm and requires Apache, PHP, and MySQL.