My most-used home software

Dave Winer responded to a Doc Searls editorial which included a testimonial to the essential nature of "Open Source" software with a list of his Mission-Critical Software, to illustrate that it's software that's essential, not Open Source software.

That seemed like an interesting thing to do, so I've made my own list, of what I use at home. These are ordered roughly from most-used to least, which is not necessarily the same thing as "most essential."

A number of the tools are essential at work, as well: notably vim and the browser. I still use Outlook there, since it hasn't mysteriously broken the way my home copy did, and some big apps for engineering work, which are most definitely not Open Source, and not free. I maintain an Apache webserver on hp-ux, and I've been sysadmin or advisor for installations of hypermail both of which are Open Source and freely distributed.

Disclaimer: I'm not a software developer per se, and any claims to things being "Open Source" are just my best guess. "Free" (or not) is for the version I'm using, not necessarily all versions.

Program Purpose Use Open Source? Free?
vim Main writing tool All the time Yes? Yes
MSIEv5.5 Browser All the time No Yes
Outlook Express email All the time No Yes
Windows95 O/S All the time No No
amail web email access Several times a week Yes Yes
Corel Photopaint Image edit Several times a week No No
EditPad Text file view/print Once in a while No Yes
Perl Scripting, weblogging Daily Yes? Yes
WS_FTP LE Ftp utility Several times a week No Yes
Quicken Bookkeeping, accounting At least once a week No No
Quattro Spreadsheet, simple database Occasionally No No
Noteworthy Composer Score editing, choral rehearsal Intensively at times No No
WordPerfect Formal correspondence Occasionally No No
Cygwin Unix shell on windows Occasionally Yes Yes
Audioworks Playing CDs Occasionally No No
Acrobat Reader PDF viewer Occasionally No Yes
Winzip Archive handler Occasionally No No
Netscape News reading Occasionally Yes Yes
Zonealarm Internet security Whenever online No Yes

Other voices

O'Reilly has an index of P2P "companies, projects and initiatives" with interesting branches out into different software directions.

Tom von Alten      tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org

http://www.anybrowser.org/

Wednesday, 11-Jul-2001 12:06:24 MDT
http://fortboise.org/useful/mysoftware.html