Free Windows Software Without Spyware/Adware 636
Jem Berkes writes "This week I launched CleanSoftware.org, a resource site with a unique goal: listing free, daily-use software that is free from spyware, adware, and other malicious/intrusive components. With Windows users increasingly believing that free software invariably means adware or spyware, I set out to promote good, clean, free software. Perhaps geeks helping family and friends set up their new computers this holiday can make use of this resource; sticking to clean software is much easier than struggling with never-ending cleanups. To expand my listing, I am also looking for input from the Slashdot readership: what other free, clean desktop software do you regularly use that Windows users should know about?"
Good, clean, free. (Score:3, Informative)
Firefox (and Linux!).
Re:Good, clean, free. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good, clean, free. (Score:5, Informative)
Category 3D Graphics: ----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/CharacterCountF ilterForAValidList----
3Delight Free - http://www.3delight.com/index.htm [3delight.com]
Anim8or - http://www.anim8or.com/ [anim8or.com]
Aqsis - http://www.aqsis.com/ [aqsis.com]
Blender - http://www.blender3d.org/ [blender3d.org]
gmax - http://www.discreet.com/products/gmax/ [discreet.com]
Houdini (Free Edition) - http://www.sidefx.com/apprentice/index.html [sidefx.com]
Maya Personal Learning Ed. - http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services...ple/i ndex.shtml [alias.com]
Now3D - http://digilander.libero.it/giulios/Eng/homepage.h tm [libero.it]
OpenFX - http://www.openfx.org [openfx.org]
SOFTIMAGE|XSI EXP - http://www.softimage.com/products/exp/v3/ [softimage.com]
Toxic - http://www.toxicengine.org/ [toxicengine.org]
Wings 3D - http://www.wings3d.com/ [wings3d.com]
Category Anti-Virus:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Char acterCountFilterForAValidList----
AntiVir - http://www.free-av.com/ [free-av.com]
Avast - http://www.avast.com/i_idt_1018.html [avast.com]
AVG - http://www.grisoft.com/ [grisoft.com]
ClamWin - http://www.clamwin.com/ [clamwin.com]
Category Anti Spyware:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Charact erCountFilterForAValidList----
Ad-aware - http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/ [lavasoft.de]
Bazooka - http://www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/index.html [kephyr.com]
Diet K - http://www.dietk.com/ [dietk.com]
SpyBot Search & Destroy - http://spybot.safer-networking.de/ [safer-networking.de]
SpywareBlaster - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.htm l [javacoolsoftware.com]
SpywareGuard - http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareguard.html [wilderssecurity.net]
Category IRC Clients:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Charact erCountFilterForAValidList----
BersIRC - http://www.bersirc.com/ [bersirc.com]
BitchX - http://bitchx.org/download.php [bitchx.org]
HydraIRC - http://www.hydrairc.com/ [hydrairc.com]
TinyIRC - http://www.tinyirc.net/ [tinyirc.net]
XChat - http://www.silverex.org/news/ [silverex.org]
Category Audio Players:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Charact erCountFilterForAValidList----
1by1 - http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch [uni-frankfurt.de]
Billy - http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy [sheepfriends.com]
CoolPlayer - http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
DeliPlayer. http://www.deliplayer.com/ [deliplayer.com]
Foobar 2
Re:Good, clean, free. (Score:3, Insightful)
Asking /. about Windows software? (Score:5, Funny)
All you're going to get is "All you need to do is list Linux and you're done." comments.
Re:Asking /. about Windows software? (Score:5, Informative)
Ask the slashdot admins to reveal what % actually uses desktop linux, its in the logs. The windows userbase is huge, even here. Almost all of my unix use is server side. That being said:
Winamp - disable anon statistics at setup
Firefox/Mozilla
Media Player Classic - best videoplayer out there OSS
Music Brainz - indentifies mp3 files my their sound signature
Abiword - word processor OSS
eMule - like kazaa only better
TightVNC - A nice VNC derivative
Cygwin - unix on windows. sexy.
Winzip - it now does 256 ARS encryption
PGP - the free version, crippled but useful
Textpad - great text editor
Thunderbird - email client OSS
7-zip - free zip/rar/everything opener
Trillian - best IM client, does encryption
Gaim - okay IM client OSS
CoreFTP - better than filezilla
atomic time sychronizer - for PCs/users that cant do NTP
Tweak UI - Users will want this eventually
AGP - free virus scanner
Ad Aware - spybot not needed really. AA catches just about everything now
What NOT to recommend:
Google toolbar - the full version is spyware. Warn users if they are going to use this.
Re:Asking /. about Windows software? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Asking /. about Windows software? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Asking /. about Windows software? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes it is. Split hairs all you like, but you are supposed to pay for the software if you decide to keep it:
http://www.textpad.com/download/index.html [textpad.com]:
Re:Asking /. about Windows software? (Score:3, Interesting)
Notetab Light [notetab.com], which is totally free, no nagging, no ads, nothing.
Re:Asking /. about Windows software? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Asking /. about Windows software? (Score:4, Informative)
I've noticed a lot of sites actually selling NTP clients for windows as shareware. Rediculuous scams.
All versions of windows 2000, XP and 2003 support Simple NTP natively via the Windows Time Service. You just can't configure it using a GUI. However, entering this simple command line:
The server time.nist.gov is a decent choice for users in the US. You can enter multiple NTP servers separated by commas, and the Windows Time service will try them in order.
Re:Asking /. about Windows software? (Score:2, Insightful)
[u]until Linux will run all the software that the mass public enjoys using[/u]
To be accepted GNU/Linux must be able to preform all the tasks required by its users, induvidually programs matters little.
so what's wrong with (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:so what's wrong with (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:so what's wrong with (Score:5, Insightful)
1. There are many different versions of programs on Pricelessware. At least six text editors, for example. Basically if it comes up to an acceptable level of usability and isn't spyware/shareware/nagware/adware, it will get in. Not just one text editor they think is best.
2. The whole list is up for review each year, but the list is updated throughout the year. In most cases programs aren't voted off, only new programs are voted in.
3. Linux is in fact included on Pricelessware.
(longtime user of Pricelessware since back when it was just a newsgroup)
Re:so what's wrong with (Score:3, Interesting)
Or Nonags [sunet.se]?
Re:so what's wrong with (Score:5, Informative)
I love... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I love... (Score:4, Informative)
Why does anyone use WinMX, Kazaa or any other spy and mal-ware software when both eMule [emule-project.net] and Shareaza [shareaza.com] are available? with source?
I guess I spend so much money on my hobby, CGI and the software for that, I just can't handle the thought of buying something when a free application does as good or better.
Some free software that is better than alternative commercial software (or has no alternative):
FREENET [sourceforge.net]
Steel Panthers: World at War [steelpanth...datwar.com]
Irfanview [irfanview.com]
PAF 5 [familysearch.org] (genealogy software, go to download products, ignore Marie Osmond's attempts to seduce you to the dark side)
GMAX [discreet.com] 3D Modelling software
You can also get tons of free software with the purchase of magazines (I know, not really free); you can get the previous version or a free version of just about any graphical app when you buy digit magazine, including software that cost kilobucks as recently as a year ago.
for mac page (Score:3, Informative)
Waaaaait a minute there, pal... (Score:5, Funny)
What's the catch?
Re:Waaaaait a minute there, pal... (Score:2)
Re:Waaaaait a minute there, pal... (Score:3, Informative)
the obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
Miranda [miranda-im.org] (instant messenger)
PuTTY [greenend.org.uk] (telnet/ssh client. but if you didn't know _that_, then you really have no business being here.)
And the less obvious (Score:5, Informative)
For power users, mostly (because they'll confuse your grandma)
I'm sure there are many others, but those are the ones that immediately came to mind.
Re:And the less obvious (Score:5, Informative)
AbiWord (word processor)
AVG Anti-Virus Free Version (obvious)
Azureus (bit torrent)
burnatonce (cd burning)
ChatZilla (irc client)
Daemon Tools (disk image mounting)
DC++ (file sharing)
FileZilla (ftp client)
Firefox (obvious)
Free Launch Bar (taskbar/toolbar customizer)
GrabIt (usenet downloader)
HoeKey (global hotkey utility)
ImageMagick (command line image utilities)
IrfanView (image viewer)
Locate32 (filename search)
Media Player Classic (obvious... not from microsoft)
PINs (password storage)
Purrint (screen capture utility)
SpaceMonger (disk space visualizer)
Start Killer (disable start menu and/or windows key)
Startup Control Panel (control startup items)
Startup Monitor (monitor startup items)
TClock2 (takbar/clock cutomizer)
TeamSpeak (voice chat for gaming)
Thunderbird (email)
Viewtify (customize open/save dialogs)
VirtuaWin (virtual desktop manager)
VLC (media player)
Wackget (wget frontend)
Wget (command line downloader)
Wherzit (find lost windows)
Winamp (music)
Wizmo (various command line tools... i use it to sleep monitor)
XnView (like irfanview, but better)
There are more I use, but this is a new Windows install.
Google should find you the sites.
PS: Stupid Lameness Filter.
Re:the obvious (Score:3, Informative)
Re:the obvious (Score:2)
IrfanView (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IrfanView (Score:3, Interesting)
It's ShareWare so it's not free, but PMView [pmview.com] is the best picture viewer I've used. It's fast, light, support a myriad of formats (and does it right) and use very good algorithms for stuff like antialiasing. Built in simple scripting ability for doing resizing, rotating etc. I.e a simple Ctrl-A, MB2 click and select your script to run on all the pictures.
Also it got excellent printing support, where you can scale and size your print exactly as you want and direct memory TWAIN support (so you see your scan as
Re:IrfanView (Score:2)
GQView is a very, very good replacement, IMO. Complete with similar keyboard shortcuts and the like. [shrug]
Re:IrfanView (Score:3, Insightful)
It has a function to enable bmp preview chaning the icon on windows explorer. If this function is enabled, looking at a folder full of bmp files will involve reading them all and resizing lots of image, so it might be quite slow. I recommend disabling that.
thank you and darn (Score:5, Funny)
From the benevolent computer geek in me: thank you.
From the computer repair business owner in me: ouch.
Real Player alternative (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati ve.htm [free-codecs.com]
Although less annoying, there's a Quicktime alternative too:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alte rnative.htm [free-codecs.com]
QT Alternative seems to lock up... (Score:2)
Example file (downloadable): http://mp3content03.bcst.yahoo.com/bmfroot04/BMFS h are04/yahoomovies/7/11048407.mov [yahoo.com]
Other Media Software (Score:5, Informative)
Zoom Player http://www.inmatrix.com/ [inmatrix.com]
VideoLAN http://www.videolan.org/ [videolan.org]
VirtualDub http://www.virtualdub.org/ [virtualdub.org]
You should mark Open Source as such (Score:3, Insightful)
microsoft has some of nice little freeware (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/to
I also use The Core Media player, a free media player that I use to replace windows media player with. It has all the known codecs already built-in, and has many other unique and helpful features.
http://www.tucows.com/preview/299014.html
Hope you'll find those two useful.
Anthony
Re:microsoft has some of nice little freeware (Score:2)
Re:microsoft has some of nice little freeware (Score:2, Insightful)
Are links really that difficult?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/tools /default.mspx [microsoft.com]
http://www.tucows.com/preview/299014.html [tucows.com]
The space in the first link isn't your fault, the /. lameness filter breaks words from being too long; it prevents morons from making the page's layout fubar
Re:microsoft has some of nice little freeware (Score:2)
I have found that it is more to do
When reaching the end of the window, links will have a space inserted at that point.
THISis_only_a_1234_test___ofthislinetoseehowitr
Trillian (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Trillian (Score:2)
Performace is better, though skinnability (and your own personal concept of aesthetics) is less.
-transiit
Free Windows Software... (Score:5, Funny)
W32.Envid@mm
Trojan.Vundo
W32.Bofra@mm
Backdoor.Agent.B
W32.Evaman.C
W32.Erkez.B@mm
Here's some (Score:5, Informative)
- CD Burner XP Pro [cdburnerxp.se]
- Ultra VNC [sourceforge.net]
- POV Ray [povray.org]
- Sygate Personal Firewall [sygate.com]
- IconShop [homestead.com]
Good luck!By the way, how do you plan to take submissions in the future and filter out bunk submissions? It'd be nice to have a moderated system that could evolve some.
Cygwin! (Score:5, Informative)
Free[ soft]ware (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, this distinction won't help the ordinary user, but for you, it's a good rule of thumb: basically everything that comes with source is safe (except some "open source" scams -- if you're paranoid, just check if they use some weird fancy license instead of known-good ones). Of course, it's possible to conceal malicious code,
Gnu (Score:2)
You really can't go wrong running Gnu/Windows. Hah! I wonder what RMS would think of the idea of Gnu/Windows?
Seriously though, Cygwin is awesome. My CompSci professors usually recommend that students install Cygwin for working on their assignments (since our assignments have to compile on the school's unix machines).
Obvious Choices (Score:4, Informative)
- Firefox [mozilla.org]
- Thunderbird [mozilla.org]
- Outpost Firewall [agnitum.com]
- Cygwin [cygwin.com]
- The GIMP [gimp.org]
- Spybot [kolla.de]
- adAware [lavasoftusa.com]
- Trillian [trillian.cc]
- Google Desktop Search [google.com]
- SETI@home [berkeley.edu]
- iTunes [apple.com]
I'm sure there are many other specialty apps that could be useful, but searching SourceForge [sourceforge.net] for something in the appropriate category seems like a better approach than trying to audit a bunch of closed source stuff for malware.UltimateZip (Score:2, Informative)
UltimateZip http://www.ultimatezip.com/ [ultimatezip.com] for file compression
Crimson Editor http://www.crimsoneditor.com/ [crimsoneditor.com] for editing code
BadBlue http://www.badblue.com/ [badblue.com] for local webserving
LeechFTP http://stud.fh-heilbronn.de/~jdebis/leechftp/downl oads.html [fh-heilbronn.de] (no longer under development, but I like it)
for the Geekier MS Windows user (Score:4, Informative)
For the geekier MS Windows user, how about emacs and yudit [yudit.org]?
How do you know? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can only be sure of that by having the source of the program. I see that you have many pieces of non-free software there in the same list as free. What makes you so sure that a non-free program which you use doesn't have a secret mode in which it obeys its coder, not you.
Re:How do you know? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you read C fluently? What about C++? What about x86 assembly? What about when they're obfuscated? Most importantly, do you have an infinite amount of time?
I'd be willing to bet the number of people answering "yes" decreases with each question. There's nothing inherant in free software that says it must be free of malicious code.
What I will give you, is that it's a lot less like
Me thinks (Score:3, Funny)
I didnt have to do much to my parents computer this christmas since i had already installed Firefox and open office to take care of most of thier needs.
RSS aggregators (Score:2)
Such as Sharpreader [sharpreader.net] and RSSBandit [rssbandit.org]. See Wikipedia's News aggregator [wikipedia.org] entry for a lot of good ones.
FileZilla (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FileZilla (Score:2)
Media Player Classic (Score:3, Informative)
Media player classic [sourceforge.net] is part of the "guliverkli" [sourceforge.net] suite of multimedia opensource tools and applications.
It is much better than any other free player that I have tried, such as WMP, BSPlayer, and others.
I found out that most problems related to subtitles, audio, and codec-specific sync issues, which occur in many other players, never happened in Media Player Classic.
This could be a nice addition to CleanSoftware.org
Zonealarm (Score:2, Informative)
video lan client (vlc) (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.videolan.org/ [videolan.org]
a clean, free, open source gem
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (Score:4, Informative)
Blocking the intenet connection for those programs (Score:2, Insightful)
Now I can choose any program that I want. I'm quite happy with this solution for a time being. Though it's not possible for those programs which meant for internet only.
mirrors and third-party oddities (Score:4, Insightful)
Easiest way to avoid this is to code in a way for people to flag entries as questionable, to be verified manually by you or a trusted compatriot.
Think about it some.
-transiit
sourceforge (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps geeks helping family and friends will set up linux distros instead and head over to sourceforge, just to name one good place for solid gpl stuff.
Not trying flame here, but I got tired of being the windoze adming for the family and friends and for some time now I've been saying something along the lines "sorry, it's been years since I touched Microsoft and thesedays I wouldn't know where to begin to sort your problems. Let me set up a linux for ya and I'll promise I'll help you with as much as is needed."
For those of you that make .AVIs (Score:3, Informative)
What to do with rotten apples...? (Score:2, Insightful)
What happens if one of these includes spyware? Will the whole program be delisted, or will the offending ditros be identified individually?
easyphp (Score:2)
Great development environment. Installs apache, mysql, php all in one go. Great replacement for mssql and iis.
Forgot to include another one in my previous post (Score:2)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/po
Hope you'll find it useful.
Anthony
Sysinternals utilities (Score:2)
-ReK
Check out NoNags (Score:3, Informative)
From their intro page [nonags.com]: "Before we list anything here we check for viruses, trojans, spyware etc."
tinyapps.org (Score:2, Interesting)
Blender (Score:2)
http://www.blender3d.org/ [blender3d.org]
LetterRip
Paint.NET (Score:2)
Shareaza! (Score:2)
www.shareaza.com
A great alternative to Kazaa, Limewire, and other questionables in the P2P arena...
Free Software vs. Freeware (Score:3, Informative)
It is Freeware that is very often infected with spyware, trojans, ads, etc.
Free Software is almost the opposite. It's where not only can you be reasonably sure it's safe, it's also where you can check - something almost all commercial software doesn't allow you to.
Miranda IM (Score:3, Informative)
Nettime Free Windows NTP Client (Score:2)
Vim (Score:2)
WinSCP2
putty
winamp
firefox
thunder
buzz studio
audacity
buzz studio
kristal
Indie game dev tools (Score:2)
For the RPG fanatic, there are a few great freeware tools for making RPGs:
http://sphere.sf.net/
http://ika.sf.net/
http://www.verge-rpg.com/
All three have a number of quality completed games and tech demos.
Then for those who are more interested in platformers and action games:
http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/
http://ww w.gamemaker.nl/
Those who love the old school sierra/lucasarts adventure games might want to check ou
free software? (Score:3, Interesting)
My list is here.... (Score:2)
http://bnac.biz/links.html [bnac.biz]
I for one will be looking through this list in the next week to see what else I can add to my own list.
StrokeIt (Score:5, Interesting)
I use it all the time - once you get used to "right-click+drag-left" as "back" in your browser, you'll feel naked without it.
It's completely trainable - if you want to scrawl out your name to have it open Notepad, you can probably train it to pick up on that.
Otherwise, it comes with preprogrammed gestures that you can assign to all sorts of different commands - you can send keystrokes, hotkeys, even low-level Windows messaging commands to an application.
It's good stuff.
Right way to do this (Score:3, Interesting)
The search result should tell four things.
1) whether it's been tested by org members to verify that it's free of the malware.
2) whether it's been tested by org members to verify that it contains certain malware.
3) verified ways to kill/remove malware if user choose to install it(for advanced users only - it could run as news group fashioned forum for best result - open source consunting - geeks for people)
4) it should return empty if software weren't submitted for testing or do not have knowledge for existance of the actual software. This attempt should be counted and used as priority marker for which software needs to be reviewed next.
* SOftware search should require three field (Software name, version, company)
This could be a good pilot project while people wait for the MS to close it's door.
Gurus can get together and develop an open source or clever automated procedures to test the various installation to see if product contains the known malware. It could come in two different method.
1) using QA tools to automate the installation of softwares to clean environment. Script tool + vmware to run install process and counting and comparing the number of running processes before and after to raise the alert.
2) Device a scanning software to scan the setup.exe or entire software package for malware signaure(binary size with matching hash from the file)...
This is very very cool.
Oktokie
Some suggestions for site (Score:5, Informative)
1. Editors! There are a lot of freely available (open source, freeware, etc.) editors out there. EMacs, Jove, VIM, Elvis, VILE/XVile/WinVile, NVI, Scintilla, and others too countless to name. I haven't seen ANY of these encumbered by SpyWare.
2. MultiMedia: RealPlayer and QuickTime both avoid spyware, if I'm not mistaken.
3. Blender and DIA are missing. They appear on
TheOpenCD.org, which seems to be a similar project to yours.
4. Cygwin32 -- Essential for any Linux user that needs to occasionally run Windows. With laptops with humongous drives, you can have an entire development system with GCC, perl, python, etc.
5. ActiveState has freeware implementations of a few useful languages, such as ActivePerl.
6. Tcl/tk comes to mind as not on your list.
7. Sun's Java is almost a requirement nowadays and integrates into IE, Opera, and the Mozilla-based browsers.
8. PaintDotNet was mentioned on Slashdot recently.
Now... for the site...
If you wish to use this as a service for users, then you should have a "This Just In!" section that shows items and when they are added. This way, a person can visit every couple of weeks and keep abreast of the things that have changed since they last left. This is also a good use for cookies--remember the last visit and highlight things that have changed since then.
Good attempt, and good luck!
Pegasus Mail (Score:5, Informative)
Gnucleus (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Currently (Score:3, Informative)
Now to be a little more of a help than an ass...
There's Bittorent, Azureus, Firefox, Mozilla, Thuderbird, Open Office, the GIMP, Ad-aware, Spybot-S&D, Winamp (at least in the 3.0 series...haven't upgraded for a while.)
I'm sure others will name more.
Re:Currently (Score:4, Interesting)
note: dont think i'm anti-winamp... this is all coming from a guy that has been developing 3rd party plugins and components for winamp 2/3/5 the past 4 years now.
Re:Currently (Score:2)
more programs (Score:2, Informative)
WinHTTrack
Battle for Wesnoth
Lbreakout
Filezilla
TightVNC
SciTE
All free - all free from adware/spy ware
Re:Teraterm and winzip (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Teraterm and winzip (Score:4, Informative)
among other things that nag screen says is that "WINZIP IS NOT FREE SOFTWARE", it's kind of it to let you keep using it but it makes it pretty clear that you shouldn't. there's quite a lot of shareware that even if it works after 30days says in it's licensing that you're not allowed to use it after that.
7-Zip instead of winzip (Score:2)
-ReK
Re:Good, Clean, and Free (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously speaking my desktop right now looks like a Full screen X0rg-cygwin + Fluxbox running - like this [dotgnu.info]. With lots of Xterms and ssh logins :)
Re:Nice, (Score:2)
Hah! (Score:2)
Re:More software... (Score:2)
WinMX (Score:3, Informative)