A while back I wrote a post with a list of the top 10 open source programs, however I got a lot of negative comments and emails regarding the list and its accuracy, although some were positive. I know many people’s Top 10 list will look totally different than this, however, I’ve talked to many people and this is as accurate I can get it to be. And even with this list many people stilll will not agree, but please no more negativity, just say the way you would have listed it.
10. Audacity
Audacity is a free cross platform digital audio editor. Audacity is extremely popular in the podcasting world due to its wide availability, its multiplatform support, and free pricing.
9. BitTorrent
The BitTorrent client is the name of a peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution client application and also of its related file sharing protocol, both of which were created by programmer Bram Cohen. BitTorrent is designed to distribute large amounts of data widely without incurring the corresponding consumption in costly server and bandwidth resources. CacheLogic suggests that BitTorrent traffic accounts for ~35% of all traffic on the Internet
8. OpenSSH
OpenSSH (Open Secure Shell) is a set of free software computer programs providing encrypted communication sessions over a computer network using the SSH protocol. It was created as an open alternative to the proprietary Secure Shell software. The project is led by Theo de Raadt from Calgary, Alberta.
7. PHP
PHP is an open-source, reflective programming language. Originally designed as a high-level tool for producing dynamic web content, PHP is used mainly in server-side applications.
6. The Gimp
The GNU Image Manipulation Program or just GIMP is a free software bitmap image editor. It also has some support for vector graphics. The project was started in 1995 by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis and is now maintained by a group of volunteers; it is licensed under the GNU General Public License.
5. OpenOffice
OpenOffice.org is a free and open source office suite, including word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, vector drawing and database components. It is available for many different platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Unix-like systems with the X Window System including GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X. It is intended to be compatible with, and compete with, Microsoft Office. It supports the OpenDocument standard for data interchange, and can be used at no cost.
4. MySql
MySQL is popular for web applications such as MediaWiki or PHP-Nuke and acts as the database component of the LAMP and WAMP platforms (Linux/Windows-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Perl/Python). Its popularity as a web application is closely tied to the popularity of PHP, which is often combined with MySQL.
Apache HTTP Server is a free software/open source HTTP web server for Unix-like systems (BSD, Linux, and UNIX systems), Microsoft Windows, Novell NetWare and other platforms.
Mozilla Firefox is a free, open source, cross-platform, graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and hundreds of volunteers. Firefox includes an integrated pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, support for open standards, and an extension mechanism for adding functionality. Although other browsers have some of these features, Firefox became the first such browser to include them all and achieve wide adoption. PCWorld reviewed Firefox as the best product of 2005.
1. Linux
Linux is a computer operating system. It is one of the most prominent examples of open source development and free software; unlike proprietary operating systems such as Windows or Mac OS, all of its underlying source code is available to the public for anyone to freely use, modify, and redistribute. Some of the most popular distributions are Ubuntu, Mandriva, Red Hat, and Suse.
Some programs that didn’t make the list, but worth mentioning.
Gaim is a multi-platform instant messaging client that supports many commonly used instant messaging systems
eMule is a filesharing client which is based on the eDonkey2000 network but offers more features than the standard client. The most downloaded program on sourceforge.net.