Kma's guide to handy free programs!

[Derillion]

Anyone know of a decent free dvd/cd burning program?

[indigo0086]

http://www.osalt.com/nero

You can check out that site for other things, they pretty much have a bunch of open source alternatives to commercial programs

Also if you're not into winrar bugging you for you to buy it, check out this one.

http://www.7-zip.org/

Much awesomer.

[indigo0086]

http://www.xnview.com/

Awesome media viewer.  Rivals ACDsee and free is always awesome.

[indigo0086]

http://www.osalt.com/gimpshop

Gimpshop, all the wonder of gimp, without the sh!tty interface.  Though I'm not fond of Gnome style, WHERE THE KDE AT!?

http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html

Paint.net.  You need the .net framework so it adds a bit to the system, but it looks good, I'll try it out and see.  I'm going all Open source as you can see.  Like every program I had commercially has a just as awesome version for free.

[indigo0086]

Verdict, Paint.net is much slicker.  Easy interface and I love the transparent backgrounds for the tools windows..  Has all the basic functionality of Photoshop, really well implemented.  Not many filters but that's the one thing about photoshop, you didn't need many.  It doesn't seem to have scripts like Gimp but I was never really that smart to make my own scripts.

[indigo0086]

Ah, there are plugins.

[Derillion]

nice, very cool stuff!

Deep Burner
http://www.deepburner.com
The free version doesn't let you burn video dvd's or audio cd's i think.  There is no install so it just runs. I use iTunes if I want to burn an audio cd.


FoxIt Reader
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
free, very quick and lightweight pdf reader.

[indigo0086]

http://www.osalt.com/nero

[indigo0086]

http://www.erightsoft.net/S6Kg1.html#photo

This is pretty awesome, it basically is a free format converter that can pretty much change any format to another.  I was recommended this for WMV xbox360 compatiability.  You should check out the video demonstration.  

Free > Commercial.

[indigo0086]

Also for programmers/hobbyists check out codeblocks nightly C++ IDE

http://forums.codeblocks.org/index.php?board=20.0

you just need a compiler and the files (don't forget the wxWidgets dll) and you're set.  

It has syntax coloring for pretty much all languages and you cna configure any tool you like.  I have a the perl interpreter set up so I can run perl scripts.  
for linux
http://www.kdevelop.org/


Also for you music nuts check out
Mp3tag.  The one thing an mp3 tag program has to have is freedb functionality and this is great.  I unrecommend the new version of the Godfather because it pretty much lost all it's online functionality, and this one is much more simple.  You get to edit what you want in your final tag, unlike Godfather where whatever junk was in there like comments and websites stayed in and the freedb information just overlapped the junk.  Either way, this is easier.

[indigo0086]

inkscape

http://www.inkscape.org/

open source replacement for illustration programs like illustrator and dreamweaver.  It's pretty basic but from what I've seen most illustration programs are, and rely more on creativity.

[Brooklynese]

i have all these flac files and i cant seem to get them to play. Does anyone know what would be the best type of flac player to download. Or better yet what type of media player will play flac files?

[Derillion]

Winamp has native support for flac.

Winamp plays FLAC out of the box since version 5.31 if you download the Full version (not Lite).

http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation_tasks.html

They have some other listed there, along with directions on how to use flac files with wmp.

[indigo0086]

Anyone know of a good free/open source disk defragmenter?

[indigo0086]

I answered my own question.

Defraggler
http://www.defraggler.com/

You can defrag the whole driver or individual files.  It's awesome.