Free Software Tips

[Virtual Headache]

Well, since there have been a few threads with software recommendations, I thought it would be good to make a collection of all of them.

I'll sort them to fit into categories then.

If you found a program which is free and good, post it here.
You'll have to have tried it out before of course (otherwise you can't judge it anyway).

Just fill out the forum:

Name: The name of the program
Category: The category it fits in (just make up a category yourself: video, audio, graphics for example)
Description: Be sure to describe the program in a few words (don't make it too long)
Download link: It would be better not to link to the program directly, but to a page where you can download it from

[Electron]

Name: avast! antivirus 4.7
Category: Anti-virus protection
Description: A great and reliable free real-time antivirus scanner. Provides good protection, although it opens a window every time a virus is found. This can be somewhat annoying, but it's still a LOT better than even the best free anti virus programs.
Download link: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

Name: Skype 2.5
Category: Internet communications
Description: If you haven't got it already, get it now. Skype is a famous and much-loved program that enables you to make video and audio calls to any other person using skype on the internet...for free! It also has a built-in instant messenging service, if you don't have a webcam.
Download link: http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/

Name: Mozilla Firefox
Category: Intrernet browsing
Description: What's really funny is that in August of this year, around 60.7% of all people browsed the internet with Internet Explorer. IE is probably Microsoft's worst pile of sorry programming that the world has ever seen. Don't use it! Mozilla Firefox displays web pages acurrately and supports all modern web design methods (including Cascading Style sheets, funnily enough >:o). So if you are using IE, get Firefox and truly rediscover the web!
Download link: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

[Comis Patronus]

Name: Pivot Stickfigure Animator
Category: animation program
Description: You can make stick-figure animations that could be uploaded to show others.
Download link: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/stickfigure.html

[SBJ95]

^Oh, yeah, that program's awesome!
Name: Inkscape
Category: Video Manipulation/Creation
Description: A Visio and CorelDraw wannabe that runs natively on Win32, Linux, and OSX. It's open source, too!
Download Link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438

[Sheer Cold]

Name: Firebug
Category: Firefox add-on
Description: Lets you edit a page's HTML and CSS live. Extremely useful for web developers. You don't have to edit a page's actual CSS file to see how it would look.
Download link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843

Name: Paint.NET
Category: Graphics editor
Description: Not as powerful as other programs, but the most user-friendly one I've tried.
Download link: http://getpaint.net/

Name: GIMP
Category: Graphics editor
Description: If you don't want to buy Photoshop, get this. It's the most popular free editor.
Download link: hhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.gimp.org/downloads/&sa=X&oi=smap&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&usg=AFQjCNGJwygbZfUx_vGCtl_q-nn3lYjdew

Name: KompoZer
Category: HTML editor
Description: Offline HTML editing program that fixes common mistakes, color groups, and automatically adds Doctype. More useful for HTML 4.01 than XHTML though.
Download link: http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.kompozer.net/download.php&sa=X&oi=smap&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&usg=AFQjCNEDAe82-8Ez97ItqghlVtClyMItdA

Name: 7-Zip
Category: File unzipper/decompressor
Description: Unzips RAR, ZIP, and other common archived files. Free alternative to WinRAR or WinZip.
Download link: http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.7-zip.org/download.html&sa=X&oi=smap&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&usg=AFQjCNFs5m7e-q4XM8OjWZiC-OCLtZDL8g

Name: CodeBlocks
Category: Programming IDE
Description: A free C++ development IDE that resemble MS Visual Studio.
Download link: http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.codeblocks.org/downloads&sa=X&oi=smap&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&usg=AFQjCNGGlHTG0i0TYaIXcsVRpYJIcChVGQ

Name: Beneton Movie GIF
Category: GIF animator
Description: A very good free GIF animator. Allows for frames to have different millisecond lengths. High CPU usage though.
Download link: http://software.benetonfilms.com/Beneton_Movie_GIF/

Name: OpenOffice
Category: Office application suite
Description: Free alternative to MS Office. It also takes up less space.
Download link: http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

Name: Google SketchUp
Category: 3D graphics editor
Description: Lets you easily create 3D models of buildings and other structures.
Download link: http://www.google.com/url?q=http://sketchup.google.com/download/&sa=X&oi=smap&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&usg=AFQjCNEnrcs-hgW1LbidHnfrc4GG66tgyw

The following aren't really software but...

Name: Ubuntu
Category: Operating system
Description: Developed using Linux, this is an alternative (not replacement) for older OS's like Windows 98. It doesn't have many games, but you'll never get a virus.
Download link: http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download

Name: X10Hosting
Category: Webhost
Description: The best free web host I could find. It's not a dinky little program that creates your site on their template; they allow you to use HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, Perl, and other languages.
Download link: http://x10hosting.com