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• Getting Started
• Document Production Tools
• Web-Related Tools
• Multimedia Tools
• Linux Distributions
• General Open Source and Free Software Resources

Where to Begin:

Software for Starving students is a bundle of free software for both Windows and Apple computers. If you are looking for a wide variety of different software to try out, this is the place to start. It includes such standards as Open Office (a MS Office substitute) and Mozilla Firefox (a replacement for Internet Explorer), as well as less ubiquitous software such as Trillian (a chat client that supports IRC, AIM, YahooIM, ICQ, and MSN chat) and GIMP (an editing tool similar to Adobe Photoshop). Click here for a full list of packages.

Mozilla Firefox is a web browser (a replacement for Internet Explorer) that has a number of different useful features, including tabbed browsing and a pop-up blocker. Firefox is included in the Software for Starving Students package.

Open Office is a suite of tools that can replace Microsoft Office. It includes a spreadsheet utility (Excel), a document writer (like Word), as well as presentation software (like PowerPoint). The benefit of Open Office is that it can also open Microsoft documents as well as save documents in Microsoft formats (such as the ".doc" files of MS Word). Open Office is included in the Software for Starving Students package.
There is a brief tutorial on using the OpenOffice document editor here.

Document Production Tools

A free PDF deocument creator.

A free image manipulation tool similar to Adobe Photoshop.

Web-Related Tools

PuTTY is a free Telnet/SSH client.

Multimedia Tools

Audacity is a sound recording and editing software.

VideoLAN's VLC is a free video and music player similar to Windows Media Player. It plays Quicktime files as well as DiVX files, mp3s, and DVDs.

Linux Distributions

Ubuntu is a free, open, and very accessible Linux distribution meant for use on home computers. It has an active support community full of people interested in helping new users of Linux.

If you are teaching in a public school classroom (or have kids at home), you might also want to check out Edubuntu, which is a kid-oriented version of the Ubuntu distro. It includes OpenOffice as well as other school-oriented software (like calendars and learning games for school-age children).

An open source (though not necessarily free) Linux distribution. Red Hat is a publicly traded company, and they offer a number of different versions of their distribution for both business and personal use. Red Hat also offers a free version of their distro, Fedora, which is a scaled down version of their full distribution. Red Hat does not offer direct support of Fedora, though.

SUSE Linux began as its own distribution but was recently bought by Novell and is now being integrated into the Novell Linux Desktop. Like Red Hat, the official SUSE distributions generally cost as much as Windows, but there is OpenSUSE, which is the free, stable, scaled down version. OpenSUSE is not officially supported by Novell, but there is a strong community of developers as well as several forums that provide helpful answers to questions.

Open Source and Free Software Resources

The philosophical foundations of the free software movement. In their own words, they are "dedicated to promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs."

An in-depth statement on the philosophy behind the free software movement.

A non-profit organization that attempts to "manage and promote" the open source movement.

"Some rights reserved" copyrights for creative work.

SchoolForge is a group advocating and promoting the use of open source and free software in education.