A Modest Construct

rev 22 January 2008

OpenOffice.org

License: Open Source

Description: Don’t want to pay $150+ for Microsoft Office? OpenOffice is a free, multi-platform office suite, backed by Sun Microsystems, that emulates (and in many instances improves) the features and performance of MS Office. Did I mention it’s completely free? This is probably the second-best download on this list, after Mozilla Firefox. Note that I list this program as Java, but only the Database application and certain wizards require it—the program is very much functional without a JRE.

Scribus

License: Open Source

Description: Scribus is a desktop publishing program, similar in nature to Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, or Quark Xpress, but rather than being an expensive commercial program, it’s a multi-platform, open-source program available free of charge.

AbiWord

License: Open Source

Description: AbiWord is a small, fast, standalone word processor for a variety of platforms. It’s not an integrated solution like OpenOffice, but gets the job done, depending on your needs

Gnumeric

License: Open Source

Description: Gnumeric is a standalone spreadsheet application written for the Gnome desktop and ported to Windows. It is fast and accurate.

GanttProject

License: Open Source

Description: This is customizable software that allows for easy creation of Gantt charts (scheduling charts, esp. for software writing).

Dia

License: Open Source

Description: Essentially the open-source competitor to Microsoft Visio, Dia allows the user to make organizational charts or diagrams of just about anything. This link is for the Windows version of Dia. The regular page can be found here.

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