I have been using open source and free software for a decade now. I thought its time to dedicate a post to them. I am
often asked which is the best software to do this or do that. In this post you will find the list of softwares that I use regularly and can’t do without. This post also includes the hardware which is equally important. I am not evangelizing any product or company. I am just posting what I thought was enormously useful and made a difference to me:
The Hardware
My home PC has been an AMD for the past 5 years. I currently use a AMD Athlon X2 with 6 gigs of RAM. It has a 19inch Viewsonic and three network cards. I also have a Wifi Router and a UPS which gives me around 20 minutes of backup. I use the Dell SK-8115 USB keyboard.
I hate carrying big laptops, so my latest buy is Asus Eee PC 4G which runs Xandros. I use this when traveling.
Softwares
Operating Systems
My home PC has been running opensuse for the past 3 years. It currently runs opensuse 10.3 x86-64 with kernel recompiled. I also have Slackware 12 dual booted. Through Virtualbox I run a whole lot of other operating systems.
My Eee PC 4G runs Xandos. I previously had a phone running Symbian Series 60v3, now I have a Windows Mobile 6 
.
The Web Browser
Goes without saying, I currently use Firefox 3.0. Konqueror sometimes.
Instant Messengers
Pidgin and Skype for Linux.
Office Tools
Open Office suite – primarily Open Office Writer. Dia for flow charts and diagrams.
Email Client
Thunderbird and Google Apps for my domain TechProtocol.com.
Text Editor
Vi, JEdit and gedit
IDEs
Netbeans and Eclipse
Compliers
GCC and Java
Search
Google and Grep
Download
Azureus and DownThemAll! (extension for Firefox)
Remote Access
TightVNC and SSH
Viewers
KPDF
Multimedia
Xine and MPlayer. Amarok for Music.
