Looking for FOSS and/or Freeware Replacements for Some of Our Common Tools

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svet-am

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jan 6, 2003
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My wife and I have valid Windows licenses but we're looking to replace most of our apps with FOSS or freeware tools to save money on that end.

Here's the types of tools we still need:

Multi-Track Audio - I'd like a tool that has a good GUI like Adobe Audition for this. Ardour is nice, as is LMMS, but those are both Linux tools.

DVD Mastering - I'm talking about content creation here. A tool like Adobe Encore would be nice.

PowerPoint Replacement (standalone) - We don't like Oo_Org so we've settled on the Win32 ports of Abiword and Gnumeric. Is there a similar standalone tool for presentations?

Batch File Renamer - We use this kind of tool for managing MP3s and pictures. I've played with the shareware version of BetterFileRenamer and like the GUI. Anything similar for free?

DVD Player - does VLC do this? I'm looking for something like nvDVD and the like.

MP3/OGG Ripper - I own an old version of EasyCD-DA Extractor and like it but it's showing its age. What I really like is that it has ONE GUI that handles everything. Anything similar for free?

HTML Editor - Looking for good WYSIWYG editor. I've tried both Kompozer and nVu. Neither is quite 'there' and nVu has a tendency to crash without warning.

Digital Oscilloscope - Something simple that uses the line-in jack and acts as an o-scope. I've used DSSM for this in the past (in college) but my license has expired and I don't care to pay ~$100 for it again.

XWin32 - the big thing I use XWin32 for is bringing native X-Windows GUI elements from a remote machine onto my Windows box. Anything that will do this for free?

I've already seen the freeware post that is stickied and got some good ideas from it. The apps above are not covered by that list so I'm asking here.
 
Audacity is pretty much the premiere (no pun intended) open source audio editor. Officially it's not a "multitrack" one but, hey, you get what you pay for and for a free app, it's pretty damned awesome.

For audio ripping (CDs), there will never ever be a tool more superior than EAC, period. Add any particular codecs you want to rip to and wham, you're basically done with a single application. LAME is the mp3 codec of choice, and obviously Ogg Vorbis is free as well. I use Tag&Rename for all my mp3 renaming duties; no, it's not free, but it is one of the few pieces of software I have actually paid good money for and felt it was worth every single penny of it - not many others are worth the cost.

Media Player Classic and "Home Cinema" Media Player Classic can handle DVDs without issues. I'd recommend VLC in second place.

As for HTML, nothing beats Notepad. :)

The rest of the things you have listed are not software I've ever had any use for whatsoever.
 
bbz_Ghost said:
Audacity is pretty much the premiere (no pun intended) open source audio editor. Officially it's not a "multitrack" one but, hey, you get what you pay for and for a free app, it's pretty damned awesome.

For audio ripping (CDs), there will never ever be a tool more superior than EAC, period. Add any particular codecs you want to rip to and wham, you're basically done with a single application. LAME is the mp3 codec of choice, and obviously Ogg Vorbis is free as well. I use Tag&Rename for all my mp3 renaming duties; no, it's not free, but it is one of the few pieces of software I have actually paid good money for and felt it was worth every single penny of it - not many others are worth the cost.

Media Player Classic and "Home Cinema" Media Player Classic can handle DVDs without issues. I'd recommend VLC in second place.

As for HTML, nothing beats Notepad. :)

The rest of the things you have listed are not software I've ever had any use for whatsoever.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. I'll follow-up on some of your suggestions.
 
Some of this software I haven't used, I'm just letting you know of the choices.

svet-am said:
My wife and I have valid Windows licenses but we're looking to replace most of our apps with FOSS or freeware tools to save money on that end.

Here's the types of tools we still need:

DVD Mastering - I'm talking about content creation here. A tool like Adobe Encore would be nice.
Click to expand...

Limited number of software here, but there is DVDStyler

PowerPoint Replacement (standalone) - We don't like Oo_Org so we've settled on the Win32 ports of Abiword and Gnumeric. Is there a similar standalone tool for presentations?
Click to expand...

Outside of OpenOffice.org's Impress, there is KPresenter from KOffice. However, I'm not sure if it is available for Windows. If not, it should be available for Windows when version 2.0 hits.

]Batch File Renamer - We use this kind of tool for managing MP3s and pictures. I've played with the shareware version of BetterFileRenamer and like the GUI. Anything similar for free?
Click to expand...

Without knowing anything about the UI of BFR, Metamorphose is a pretty powerful batch renaming tool.

DVD Player - does VLC do this? I'm looking for something like nvDVD and the like.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Media Player Classic and VLC do this. I use MPC mostly, but have used both MPC and VLC a lot in the past.

MP3/OGG Ripper - I own an old version of EasyCD-DA Extractor and like it but it's showing its age. What I really like is that it has ONE GUI that handles everything. Anything similar for free?
Click to expand...

I used to use Exact Audio Copy and then pass the output WAV files into a script I wrote to do all the encoding and such into multiple formats, but until I decide to improve my script, I now use Exact Audio Copy with REACT2, which allows you to rip a CD and then encode/tag them into whatever other number of arbitrary formats you like. I have mine output FLAC and LAME MP3s. REACT2 is not exactly very user friendly to set up, but a little reading and configuration will have it working great, and EAC has guides for configuration all over the place.

HTML Editor - Looking for good WYSIWYG editor. I've tried both Kompozer and nVu. Neither is quite 'there' and nVu has a tendency to crash without warning.
Click to expand...

SeaMonkey, but it's also based on Mozilla Composer, which is what nVu was derived from. I almost agree with bbz about notepad, but I use a different text editor. ;)

Digital Oscilloscope - Something simple that uses the line-in jack and acts as an o-scope. I've used DSSM for this in the past (in college) but my license has expired and I don't care to pay ~$100 for it again.
Click to expand...

Sorry, have never had to look for this kind of software.

XWin32 - the big thing I use XWin32 for is bringing native X-Windows GUI elements from a remote machine onto my Windows box. Anything that will do this for free?
Click to expand...

I use Xming to do X forwarding.
 
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