Mozzila FireFox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source and fully customizable web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. A Net Applications statistic puts Firefox at 24.59% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of April 2010, making it the second most used browser worldwide after Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Other sources put Firefox's usage share between 20% and 32%.

To display web pages, Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which implements most current web standards in addition to several features which are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards.

Latest Firefox features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (also known as "geolocation") based exclusively on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through add-ons, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.

Firefox runs on various versions of GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and many other Unix-like operating systems. Its current stable release is version 3.6.3, released on April 1, 2010. Firefox's source code is free software, released under a tri-license GNU GPL/GNU LGPL/MPL.

GreaseMonkey

Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to HTML web page content on the DOMContentLoaded event, which happens immediately after it is loaded in the browser (also known as augmented browsing). Numerous scripts exist for cutomizing popular websites such as YouTube.com, FaceBook.com, Google.com, and others. Scripts can be easily disabled to view webpages in their original format, then quickly re-enabled to return to your customized browsing experience.

As Greasemonkey scripts are persistent, the changes made to the web pages are executed every time the page is opened, making them effectively permanent for the user running the script.

Greasemonkey can be used for adding new functions to web pages (for example, embedding price comparisons within shopping sites), fixing rendering bugs, combining data from multiple webpages, and numerous other purposes.

Numerous free, pre-written scripts can be found through your favorite search engine or at UserScripts.org

Blackle.com

Blackle is a website powered by Google Custom Search, which aims to save energy by displaying a black background and using grayish-white font color for search results.

The concept behind Blackle is that computer monitors can be made to consume less energy by displaying much darker colors. Blackle is based on a study which tested a variety of CRT and LCD monitors. There is dispute over whether there really are any energy saving effects.

This concept was first brought to the attention of Heap Media by a blog post, which estimated that Google could save 750 megawatt hours a year by utilizing it for CRT screens. The homepage of Blackle provides a count of the number of watt hours that have been saved by enabling this concept.

Darken

Using the same concepts behind Blackle.com, Darken allows you to change the background of any webpage to black in order to conserve monitor energy and make the web easier on your eyes. Darken is a javascript that will execute on any page after the page loads, overriding previous web coding. Along with turning the background black, Darken also changes the text to a white-ish gray color (CSS silver) to even further reduce eye strain caused by the bright glow of your computer monitor.

Darken can be installed as a GreaseMonkey script and applied to every web page you visit, or just a select few sites of your choosing.

For users who do not want to install add-ons, Darken can also be applied using a "bookmarklette". The download website also has a link that you can simply drag-and-drop into your favorite browser's links bar. Anytime you visit a webpage that you want darkened, simply click the "bookmarklette" and Darken instatly changes the web page's colors!

(Note: the Darken "bookmarklette" does not contain the ability to automatically aplly itself to web pages.)

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is free, easy, and uses the same formats as Microsoft Office (and more!).

LibreOffice is an open-source software application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is distributed as free software and written using its own GUI toolkit. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others. As of November 2009, OpenOffice supports over 110 languages.

LibreOffice originated as StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000 with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office by providing a free and open alternative; later versions of StarOffice are based upon OpenOffice.org with additional proprietary components. The OpenOffice.org project is primarily sponsored by Oracle Corporation (initially by Sun Microsystems). Other major corporate contributors include Novell, RedHat, RedFlag CH2000, IBM, Google and others.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor for Windows, though it can run on Linux and Mac OS X, using software such as Wine. One main advantage of Notepad++ over the built-in Windows text editor, Notepad, is tabbed editing, to easily work with multiple open files.

It is distributed as free software. The project is hosted on SourceForge.net, from where it has been downloaded over twenty million times and twice won the Community Choice Award for Best Developer Tool. To display and edit text and programming language source code files, Notepad++ uses the Scintilla editor component.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and is distributed as free and open source software with additional proprietary software available.

It is named after the Southern African ethical ideology Ubuntu ("humanity towards others"). Ubuntu provides an up-to-date, stable operating system for the average user, with a strong focus on usability and ease of installation. Web statistics suggest that Ubuntu's share of Linux desktop usage is about 50%, and upward trending usage as a web server.

Ubuntu is composed of many software packages, of which the vast majority are distributed under a free software license (also known as open source). The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. Ubuntu is sponsored by the UK-based company Canonical Ltd., owned by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. By keeping Ubuntu free and open source, Canonical is able to utilize the talents of community developers in Ubuntu's constituent components. Instead of selling Ubuntu for profit, Canonical creates revenue by selling technical support and from creating several services tied to Ubuntu.

Canonical endorses and provides support for three additional Ubuntu-derived operating systems: Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Ubuntu Server Edition. There are several other derivative operating systems including local language and hardware-specific versions.

Canonical releases new versions of Ubuntu every six months and supports Ubuntu for eighteen months by providing security fixes, patches to critical bugs and minor updates to programs. LTS (Long Term Support) versions, which are released every two years, are supported for three years on the desktop and five years for servers. The latest version of Ubuntu, 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), is such an LTS version, and was released on April 29, 2010.

Visual Studio Express

Microsoft Visual Studio Express is a set of freeware integrated development environments (IDE) developed by Microsoft that are lightweight versions of the Microsoft Visual Studio product line. Express Editions were conceived beginning with Visual Studio 2005. The idea of Express editions, according to Microsoft, is to provide streamlined, easy-to-use and easy-to-learn IDEs for users other than professional software developers, such as hobbyists and students. The first versions of Visual Studio 2005 Express were released on October 2005 and the Service Pack 1 versions were released on December 2006. Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions ran on Windows 2000 SP4 and above Windows NT-based platforms. In line with popular demand since their original release, these editions will always remain free-of-charge. Visual Studio 2008 Express editions were released in November 2007 and their SP1 on August 11, 2008. Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 Express Editions require Windows XP or a later Windows version; Windows 2000 is no longer supported for development but can be a target platform if using 2008 Express. Microsoft may make previous versions of Visual Studio Express unavailable. Currently, Visual Studio 2005 Express editions are available for download from the Microsoft website.

Visual Studio 2010 Express Editions were released in April 2010 alongside Visual Studio 2010.

GIMP

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. It is a powerful piece of software with capabilities not found in any other free software product. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert-quality photo-retouching program, an online batch-processing system, a mass production image renderer, or an image-format converter. GIMP is modular, expandable, and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image-manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

The volunteer developers of The GIMP have been working hard to develop a polished, user-friendly, and freely distributed image editor. Although the separated palette windows may disturb those users who are used to more traditional layouts, your comfort level should grow exponentially as you discover how pain-free the program is.

One of the most powerful general-purpose image editors around, the upgrades make the GNU Image Manipulation Program eminently comparable to Photoshop. Older features include channels, layers and masks, filters and effects, tabbed palettes, editable text tools, perspective clone, improved printing, and color operations such as levels. New improvements include GEGL integration for 32-bit color support, dynamic brushes, and more options for the free select tool. It even has regex-based pattern matching for power users.

The application provides professional tools that can stand against the big boys without the hefty price tag. Even the installation process has gotten simpler, with no need to download and install the GTX Runtime Environment separately. Extremely powerful and easy to work with, GIMP is ideal for both amateur and pro photographers, Web designers, or anyone who wants to create and edit professional-quality digital images on a budget.

Deviant Art.com

Deviant Art.com has a wide variety of brushes, tools, stock art, ideas, and tutorials for both GIMP and Photoshop.

Stock.xchng

A great website filled with gigabytes upon gigabytes of free stock photos.

Every Stock Photo.com

A great website filled with gigabytes upon gigabytes of free stock photos.