Software is expensive, really expensive especially if it’s not work provided. Fortunately, there’s an amazing wealth of open source software available for free download. There’s a huge user community generating great how-to guides and building new functionality into the software. For basic office software, here are some of my recommendations.
MS Office – OpenOffice – Open Office replaces the entire Microsoft Office suite.
- Word – Writer
- Excel – Calc
- PowerPoint – Impress
- Visio – Draw
- Access – Base
Photoshop – Gimp – Photoshop image manipulation is easily replicated with Gimp. The software is powerful enough to replace all your photo editing needs.
Illustrator – Inkscape – Illustrator is also really expensive on its own. Inkscape can easily generate vector-based illustrations.
With all these software, the biggest challenge is learning the new software. If you’ve already gone through the steep learning curve of the commercial package, be prepared to do it again if you switch to open source. While it’ll be mostly the same, some functionality operates differently.