Ubuntu Wiki

List Of Opensource Programs (LOOP)

• for Windows

What is the LOOP list?

• This is a list of high-quality, open-source applications that run on Windows.

Purpose:

• To demonstrate the quality of open source applications and thereby advocate the open source software development model.

Rules for adding programs to the LOOP list:

1. Must be open source.
2. Must run on Microsoft Windows operating systems.
3. Only include the best application for each specific purpose. In rare cases, two applications may be listed.
4. Include the names of the top three commercial applications that provide similar functionality, if known.

Desktop Applications

• Communication
  • Email Client = Thunderbird

    • URL: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/ Compare to: Microsoft Outlook

    Universal Instant Messaging Client = Gaim

    • URL: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/ Compare to: Trillian

    Web browser = FireFox

    • URL: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ Compare to: Microsoft Internet Explorer

  Education
  • Space Simulator = Celestia

    • URL: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ Compare to: Unkown

    Planetarium = Stellarium

    • URL: http://www.stellarium.org/ Compare to: Unknown

  Games
  • Strategy = Battle for Wesnoth

    • URL: http://wesnoth.org/ Compare to: Age of Wonders, Heroes of Might and Magic, Warlords

  Productivity

  • Database (File-based) = OpenOffice (Base)

    • URL: http://www.openoffice.org/ Compare to: Microsoft Office (Access)

    PDF creator = PDF Creator

    • URL: http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm Compare to: Adobe Acrobat

    Presentation = OpenOffice (Impress)

    • URL: http://www.openoffice.org/ Compare to: Microsoft Office (Powerpoint)

    Report Creator = JasperReports

    • URL: http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/ Compare to: Crystal Reports

    Spreadsheet = OpenOffice (Calc)

    • URL: http://www.openoffice.org/ Compare to: Microsoft Office (Excel)

    Word Processor = OpenOffice (Writer)

    • URL: http://www.openoffice.org/ Compare to: Microsoft Office (Word)

  Management

  • Finance: TurboCash

    • URL: http://www.turbocash.co.za/ Compare to: Quicken Quickbooks

    Gantt chart = GanttProject

    • URL: http://ganttproject.sourceforge.net/ Compare to: Microsoft Project

    Project management = OpenWorkbench

    • URL: http://www.openworkbench.org/ Compare to: Microsoft Project

  Misc
  • Linux environment = Cygwin

    • URL: http://www.cygwin.com/ Compare to: Unknown

    Recipe Manager = Gourmet Recipe Manager

    • URL: http://grecipe-manager.sourceforge.net/ Compare to: Unknown

    Screen Saver = Really Slick Screensavers

    • URL: http://www.reallyslick.com/ Compare to: Unkown

  Multimedia
  • 3D graphics creator = Blender

    • URL: http://www.blender.org/ Compare to: Alias Maya

    Audio Editing = Audacity

    • URL: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Compare to: Adobe Audition

    Desktop Publishing = Scribus

    • URL: http://www.scribus.org.uk/ Compare to: Adobe PageMaker, Quark

    Image Editing = Gimp

    • URL: http://www.gimp.org/ Compare to: Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop

    Video Editing = Jashaka

    • URL: http://www.jahshaka.org/ Compare to: Adobe After Effects, Pinnacle Studio, Apple Final Cut

    Web Design = Nvu

    • URL: http://www.nvu.com/ Compare to: Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver

  Security
  • Network protocol analyzer = Ethereal

    • URL: http://www.ethereal.com/ Compare to: Sniffer

    VPN client = OpenVPN GUI for Windows

    • URL: http://openvpn.se/ Compare to: Cisco VPN client, Nortel VPN client

  Utilities
  • FTP Client = Filezilla FTP client

    • URL: http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/ Compare to: SmartFTP, BulletProof FTP

Server Applications

• Application server = JBoss

  • URL: http://www.jboss.org/ Compare to: BEA Weblogic, IBM Websphere

  Database server = MySQL

  • URL: http://www.mysql.com/ Compare to: Microsoft SQL server, Oracle database

  Database server = PostgreSQL

  • URL: http://www.postgresql.org/ Compare to: Microsoft SQL server, Oracle database

  FTP server = Filezilla FTP server

  • URL: http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/ Compare to: Unknown

  VPN server = OpenVPN

  • URL: http://openvpn.net/ Compare to: Cisco VPN

  Web server = Apache

  • URL: http://httpd.apache.org/ Compare to: Microsoft Internet Information Services (ISS)

FAQ:

Why do you only include open source applications? Why not include applications that are free, but not open source?

Some of these applications only run in Windows, and not Linux. Why do you include these?

The goal of the LOOP list is to demonstrate the advantages of open-source applications. One of those advantages is the ability to port the applications to other operating systems. This means that anyone with the time and skill can port these applications to Linux or any other operating system.