Homepage of Jeffrey Philippson

One of the real triumphs of the 21^st century to date is the proliferation of well supported, high quality, free software. The free software movement and its formal implementation as the GNU Project were born back in the 1980s, but in the last decade or so they have really come into their own, with free software often matching or even exceeding the quality of commercial competitors. All this is thanks largely to the tireless work of an army of anonymous contributors whose only reward is the satisfaction of knowing that people the world over benefit from their efforts. This success story reaffirms my faith in mankind's ability to cooperate for the greater good.

Below is a list of free software that I have used and liked enough to recommend to others. I do not claim to have tested any of them exhaustively and take no responsibility for their usefulness or reliability for any particular task.

Type	Name	Description
Utilities	7-Zip	Flexible document compression and archiving, including most if not all popular compression formats.
	CutePDF	Simple PDF printer utility for those pesky programs that do not include a 'print to PDF' option.
	pdftk	A toolkit for merging, splitting, rotating, and otherwise manipulating PDFs without any requirement for Acrobat.
Typesetting	MiKT_eX	Windows implementation of T_eX / L^aT_eX for high quality typesetting of structured scientific/technical documents. Includes most widely used packages and the option for automatic installation of additional packages from CTAN.
	WinShell	Windows editor for T_eX / L^aT_eX. An excellent forum exists for getting help with questions relating to WinShell (not L^aT_eX), with many questions answered promptly by the friendly creator of WinShell, Ingo de Boer.
	GhostScript/GSView	Rendering and display of postscript graphics files (.ps and .eps). These are actually general utilities but essential for anyone wishing to include vector graphics in L^aT_eX documents.
Graphics	GIMP	The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a powerful graphics editing tool supporting many vector and bitmapped formats.
Graphics	TkPaint	A simple drawing (not painting) program for rapidly creating high quality diagrams and pictures in postscript format. For subsequent conversion to .png, .jpg, etc, use GIMP.
Programming	Crimson Editor	Clean, well constructed text editor with pre-configured syntax highlighting for more than 100 computer languages.
Programming	G95	An open-source Fortran 95/2003 compiler available for all common operating systems.
Media Player	VLC Media Player	An open-source media player compatible with a very wide range of file formats. Good features, although the interface is not particularly user friendly.