Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: jr2 on September 02, 2007, 01:39:21 am
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http://www.decimation.com/markw/2007/07/24/lesser-known-windows-freeware/
Stumbled Upon that, figured there might be a few things you guys would like. If so, let me know which ones were your favorites. :)
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Lesser Known? Most of that stuff is pretty popular.
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...That's what I was thinking, but then again, I didn't know of most of this stuff 6 months ago. :p So I decided to make it a bit more popular, if possible. :nervous:
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A few nice ones on there. Since I'm likely to be reinstalling Windows at some point soon I'm trying a few of these out.
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i tend to perfer
sourceforge.net
:D
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Open source != better.
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i tend to perfer
sourceforge.net
:D
Quite a few of those are on sourceforge. So is a lot of ****e.
Sometimes its nice to have someone give you a recommendation as to which ones are worth trying.
Oh and unless you're a coder willing to spend time on the code or there is a 3rd party willing to do that, open source is basically the same as closed source. Many open source programs get one or two half hearted source code downloads but never receive a single patch from anyone not already on the team. In which case there really isn't a huge difference for the vast majority of users.
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Open source != better.
open source=newest version free, always
open source != have too pay for the newest version every time it comes out
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Both of which could be attributed to freeware too. Especially any freeware which doesn't charge for a Pro version.
Congratulations on completely missing Scuddie's point.
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Well went through them and some seems quite interesting but I would definetly recommend Notepad++ its really good for editing table files.
/Dice
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notepad++ is incredibly usefull to lua scripting, and if set up properly makes a good table editor too. damn fine program.
Open source != better.
i never claimed it to be better. it certainly is a hella lot cheaper though. :D
of course the same can be said about commercial software. more accurately the quality of the software depends on the quality of the design team. compare pidgin to trillian. trillian has more features, but i tend to find that a majority of them dont work. i think i only got things like webcam chat to work properly only once. pidgin is much simpler and makes a damn good instant messanger. either one will always be better than the free one you get from whoever you pick as your im service. those work well only when on their own service using their program, if you can stand the ads. in this case open source = win
then theres winamp. newer versions tend to be bloated but at least getting old skool functionaity is as easy as uninstalling a bunch of the dlls that come with it. ive yet to see open source produce a better audio player. not that ive looked much. ive been using it sence the day i discovered what an mp3 was in my high school com sci class. closed source = win.
then you get into apis, you know like sdl and opengl. compair that their closed source windows counterpart, directx, i tend to favor the open. why, trans-compatability. mainly old dx games not even remotely useable under new versions. open = win
now linux is only really good if youre a super-geek. ive spent too much time scratching my head at the terminal though. the only way to really learn anything is to stare at a rather bloaded and dull manusal pages. i read for 2 hours and still didnt get gcc to compile my sdl proggie. but then again look at windows. bill gates knows that as long as linux has that gargantuan learning curve they will always win out to your average joe blow computer user. linux is still good though. it works and even loads faster than vista software is a ***** to install, usually having to config and run make files with commands you dont even understand what do. but then you look at windows which has even more arbitrary bull****. as far as operating systems go i dont thing anyone has done a really good job. ive never seen any os get more than 3 stars on any general software ranking system. so as far as oses go its a stalemate at best.
my point is mainly that sometimes opensource is good (as you see here on hlp), and sometimes its bad, and the same can be said about closed source. so dont try to prove your point with hard logic :D
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i never claimed it to be better. it certainly is a hella lot cheaper though. :D
Cheaper than free? How does that work? Do they pay you money to take open source software off their hands? :p
Everything on that page is free. In some cases that's to persuade people to buy the Pro version but a lot of that stuff is closed source and still free.
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heh, brainfart there. my point was that it depends on the developer. not that free is freeer than free. :D