8 Must Have Free Open Source Softwares for Windows/Linux Users

As a Windows and Ubuntu user I love free softwares. On Ubuntu almost every software is available for free but when it comes to Windows there are not many good ones available. Here is a list of some free open source softwares for Windows that are helpful in browsing the internet, editing documents, managing files, playing movies etc.

1. FireFox: This is a well-known Internet browser for Windows. The new Firefox is available for Android and Meemo as well. It is very competitive with other freely available browsers like Chrome, Safari, Opera etc. I love Firefox mainly because of its speed, download manager and AntiVirus Integration. I also love the add ons library that has many feature rich add ons for Firefox that helps a lot.
2. VLC: You definitely play music and videos on your computer and you need a free app that can help you with everything. VLC is the best I know. I use VLC for creating playlists and playing music, movies and video songs. It plays almost every format without the need for any codec packs. It is completely free and available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android and UNIX.
3. PDFcreator: For Windows users who use Adobe’s expensive product for creating pdf files, PDFcreator will provide you almost all features for free. You will be able to create and print pdf documents. PDFCreator installs on your computer as a printer. You can edit the document with any editor like Word, Excel etc. and print it as PDF.
4. OpenOffice: OpenOffice is a free office suit that packs all features of MS Office. It has a word editor, spreadsheet, presentation creator & editor plus other features like Drawing Tool for artists and painters, PDF creator etc. You can open and save documents as MS office file formats like .doc, .ppt, .xls etc.
5. ThunderBird: Are you using Outlook? ThunderBird is a free email client which is the most competitive to Outlook. The new Thunderbird is easier to configure and manage. You can manage and import multiple email accounts in a single folder. You can also backup all emails on files, import and export address book & meeting appointments etc. The new tabbed interface integrated with fast search is great to work on.
6. ClamWin: Windows and Linux users work on internet and portable storage which are the entry gates for virus and malicious codes. ClamWin is a free open source Anti-Virus for Windows that keeps your system safe from malware, viruses, worms and other malicious codes and apps. It comes packed with almost same security features as Norton. ClamWin is available for Windows 8, Windows 7/Vista/XP/Me/2000/98, Windows Server 2008 and 2003.
7. 7Zip: When you download large e-books or music files from the internet, they are mostly zipped and compressed to save bandwidth and data use. Sometimes zipping is a great idea to protect and ecrypt a file. 7Zip is a free and effective alternative for WinRAR. You can zip and unzip files, password protect zip files etc. Much other functionality is also built-in in 7Zip.
8. TrueCrypt: You must be having important confidential data on your computer like personal photo and video gallery, business documents, finance related information and other secret files. TrueCrypt is a great way to ensure security and controlled access to those files and data. You can encrypt the entire partition or create a virtual encrypted disk.

I hope you will find these softwares useful in your daily computing tasks. If I missed any good software, please drop a comment.