homebrewandbeer.com

Hi all.

I've got my nerdy hat on.

I use a lot of free software, much of it open source.

Many are listed below.

Has anyone got other handy free software to recommend?

Oliver

Browsers
Mozilla Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/firefox
Opera http://www.opera.com

Email client
Mozilla Thunderbird http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird

FTP client
FileZilla http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla

Local server, php and MySQL
xampp for development on this forum. Rather than having to install all Apache, php, MySQL and various other components and configure them to work together, you just download and install xampp. http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

DVD "backup"
DVD Shrink allows "backing up" of movies and other DVDs (including retaining menus and removing regions) http://www.dvdshrink.org. Due to US copyright laws you cannot download DVD Shrink from that site. Do a Google search to find a download site: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=dvd+shrink+download

Antivirus
AVG Free http://free.grisoft.com

Firewall
ZoneAlarm www.zonealarm.com

Antispyware
Spybot Search and Destroy http://www.safer-networking.org
Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE Personal http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad-awa ... rsonal.php
Windows Defender http://www.microsoft.com/athome/securit ... e/software
AVG Anti-Spyware Free http://free.grisoft.com
AVG Anti-Rootkit Free http://free.grisoft.com

Graphics editing
Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com

nCleaner- http://nkprod.ro/ncleaner/

Was put onto this by our computer tech at work just last week.

Copied from link--
nCleaner is a system cleaner that allows you to clean both your system and applications, free more disk space, boost your system's speed and get more stability and privacy protection.

nCleaner contains an advanced system and application cleaner with over 90 cleaning items available, a Registry Cleaner, a Tweak Manager, an advanced Startup Manager, a Junk Finder, a Free Space Shredder, a System Resource Monitor, a System Adviser, supports logging and statistics as well as advanced Scheduling.

Photo/Image manipulation a la photoshop
GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) http://www.gimp.org/

Vector graphics a la Illustrator
Inkscape http://www.inkscape.org/

Secure FTP (windows)
WinSCP http://winscp.net/

Blog
Wordpress http://wordpress.org/

SSH (windows)
PuTTY http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Antivirus
ClamAV http://www.clamav.net/

Antispam
SpamAssassin http://spamassassin.apache.org/

Brewing
Qbrew http://freshmeat.net/projects/qbrew/

Music library (linux)
amaroK http://amarok.kde.org/

Image preview
gqview http://gqview.sourceforge.net/

Operating System
Ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/

I probably should have mentioned this, too:

Forum software
phpBB http://www.phpBB.com



Cheers,

Oliver

DVDShrink is not downloadable from dvdshrink.org due to US copyright laws, so here's a direct link - Oliver you might want to update your first post?

http://www.mrbass.org/dvdshrink

cheers

PDFCreator - http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator/

Great little program to "print" any file to PDF, use it all the time.
I'm a huge user of free software too, will add more of the stuff I use tomorrow.

Mac users (I know your out there), it's not free per say, but it's got a 30 day trial. I recon it's the best brewing software out there.

BeerAlchemy

KEG wrote:DVDShrink is not downloadable from dvdshrink.org due to US copyright laws, so here's a direct link - Oliver you might want to update your first post?

http://www.mrbass.org/dvdshrink

Will do. Bloody Yanks.

Cheers,

Oliver

Is there any other good brewing software (free of course)

QBrew works for me...

Objectdock http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/

Objectdock Gallery http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx? ... mode=1&c=1

This is pretty cool but a fair bit of setting up involved, more for the advanced user so i was told.
A couple of blokes at work have got it and love it, don't know if i can be bothered to set it up just yet, not enough hours in a day!

Advanced Windows Care http://www.iobit.com/

Found this one in The Age a couple of months ago.
Sort of like adaware with a registry cleaner and does automatic scans.

Don't forget about all that lovely trial software with very little effort or computer knowledge can become free software. Including brewing software.

I was going to say something about "free as in beer" vs "free as in freedom" but I decided that on this forum the essential meaning might be lost...

Chris - two apps I use are:

Home Brew Kit Master 1.6 - for recording brews I've made. Also generates labels and tasting sheets; and

BeerSmith 1.3 - Basically a brewing encyclopedia, with detailed info on hops, grains, extracts, sugars, mashes, beer styles, yeasts, water profiles, etc. Overkill for what I need but probably useful for the more die-hard brewers amoungst us. Note - this one has a 21 day trial period after which printing and saving new recipes is disabled (not that I use these features).

Cheers,
Skinnafrog.

OK, neither of those are really Free I guess, but I'm using the term Free Software in its strictest sense.

Unless of course you figure your 21 Day free trial is really meant as 504 hours of actually using the software

Cheers,
Greg

I'm using Linux, Ubuntu release. All my software is free

On the other PC (Windoze) I use Mozilla Firefox for browsing, Mozilla Thunderbird for email, and Avast for virus protection.

Ubuntu is the best Linux release though, imho, and I've tried a few.

Frog!!

Good to see you made time for your first post.

I need some help with a few brews soon, production and consumption.
Though i know you are better at the latter.

Hi guys. Been lurking for a while now and was finally compelled to register!

Couple of worthy programs to add to the list:

Azureus - bittorrent client, bit clunky but powerful

VLC player - video player, plays pretty much anything!

Audacity - audio editor

foobar2000 - barebones audio player (win only)

Foxit reader - PDF reader, much much much faster than acrobat! (win only)

I also highly recommend giving Ubuntu a crack. Grab the live CD for a test run. Dual booting is very easy if you need to keep a windows partition.

Now to get back to learning about beer...

Cheers

Ben