69 Free or Open Source Tools For Students
January 22nd, 2009
By Jill Gordon
Bookmark this on Delicious Many Open Source software projects were either started in colleges or started by recent college graduates. Whether it’s a coincidence or not, a lot of the available open source software is ideal for college students.
Free and Open Source Software Tools for Students
With the widespread use of the Internet and the growth of web-based applications, there are also a lot of hybrid forms of software available – free software with APIs (Application Programmer Interfaces) but not truly open source. The following list covers some of the best free and open source software from an average student’s perspective. (The list is arranged by software category, with recommended applications and the occasional short list of alternative or supplemental apps.)
1. Web browser.
If you’re currently in school, you probably can’t imagine a time when there was no Internet. Now, it’s probably an intrinsic part of your studies. So you need a good browser. Recommended: Mozilla Firefox. This is hands down one of the best web browsers available regardless of what your major is. There are many hundreds of useful addons for writing, researching, design and web development as well. Alternatives: Google Chrome, Opera, Safari.
2. Research
There’s no one software tool that will satisy all your research needs, but start with some of the following
- Ottobib for research paper bibliographies.
- Google Reader for subscribing to your favorite web feeds.
- Spreeder to help you do all your reading faster.
- Dictionary.com to look up definitions.
- SpellJax to make sure you’re speling is grate.
- Google Video and even YouTube for some learning via web video.
3. Learning and Brainstorming
Research is useless if you’re not actually learning anything. An ideal way to learn new material is by using concept mapping or mind mapping – which are similar but not exactly the same. Recommended: XMind and FreeMind. Alternatives: Mindomo, Mindmeister, Cmap, Comapping. (Comapping offers real-time mind map editing from multiple users, which is ideal for virtual team brainstorming.)
4. Communications: Email and IM/ Chat
These two subcategories are the mainstay of Internet-based communication. Both give you advantages over a phone communication, including the ability to attach information and especially to respond in your own good time. Recommended email client: Thunderbird. Alternative: GMail. If you want to combine your email client with newsgroups, IRC, a web browser and HTML editing, try Mozilla SeaMonkey for an "all-in-one Internet application suite." Recommended Chat/IM client: Adium (Mac OS X) or Pidgin (Windows, Mac). Both allow you to manage multiple chat accounts from different networks. Alternative: Meebo, for a web-based interface to manage multiple accounts.
5. Collaboration Tools
Collaboration goes beyond project management software such as GanttProject and into chat combined with real-time document browsing and editing, amongst other features. Recommended: Campfire. (Has both free and paid options.) Alternatives: Scriblink (web blackboard) and Skype (VoIP, chat and filesharing). Skype allows you to have an IM or voice chat with one or more classmates while simultaneously passing files to each other.
6. Visualization, Graphics and Diagramming Tools
This is a fairly broad category that includes vector and raster graphics editors, 3D graphics programs, and diagramming tools. Recommendations: Inkscape, Gimp, Blender, Gliffy.
7. Document Editing and Management
There probably aren’t many students who don’t have to write a term paper or essay. This is pretty much a given for most students. When it’s time to aggregate all that research you’ve done in the library (or online), you have numerous software options for writing and producing a finished paper. Recommended: OpenOffice suite, which includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tool, is compatible with MS Office. Get all your assignments done, manage your finances in the spreadsheet. And it even converts documents to Adobe PDF format for when you have to submit term papers. Alternatives: Google Docs + Spreadsheets, Zoho. Supplemental: PDF Creator to produce a finished document that you can email or upload to your class’ teaching assistant.
8. Presentation Tools
If you need alternatives to MS PowerPoint, pick from either OpenOffice or ZohoShow presentation tools, or embed your presentations into a web page with SlideShare.
9. FTP/ File Transfer/ File Storage
Need to share those documents and presentations with your study/ project team? You can FTP (upload) to a team website or use a filesharing service. Recommended FTP: FileZilla. Alternatives: FireFTP (runs in the Firefox browser as an addon). Filesharing: There are far too many services to make a recommendation. However, if you have a Google Mail (GMail) account, you can save files online by attaching them to a draft email. (Note: Some filetypes may not be allowed.)
10. Productivity and Task Management
There is a huge market for productivity and task management software, and an accordingly large number of applications and subcategories to fill the niche. This includes to-do lists, calendaring and hybrid forms for both mobile and non-mobile platforms. Recommended: Google Calendar, Remember the Milk, Tada List. Supplemental: Jott, if you want to manage tasks from your phone.
11. Mathematics and Modeling
Mathematica and MathCad are great packages, but besides the expense, they’re often more than the average student needs. Open source software will probably suit you unless you’re planning graduate studies. Recommended: Gnu Octave. Alternatives: Sage Math, Mathway, Open Source Physics, POV-Ray (and additional modeling addons).
12. Programming/ Coding/ Web Development
If you don’t already know it, the Linux operating system is the breeding ground of an immense number of open source projects – having taken the mantle from its predecessor UNIX. If you want to take full advantage of the numerous open source coding tools, you might have to install Linux on your computer. (Or you can install the cygwin environment for MS Windows, but you miss out on a lot of true Linux features.) Even if you don’t want to/ can’t use Linux, you have a number of options for coding and web development: Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Ruby on Rails – all of which are good for relatively fast prototyping of code. If you need an open source IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for code development and testing, try Eclipse, which has components that cover Java and many of the languages above. If you’re using Java only, you can also try Ingres Cafe. If you want a multi-platform web authoring tool comparable to FrontPage or Dreamweaver, try NVu. Finally, Microsoft’s Dreamspark program also allows students to download and use their developer and design tools for no charge.
13. Blogging, Microblogging, Content Management, Info Repositories
Start a blog, make it popular by publishing great articles about your topic of study, drive traffic with Twitter and Facebook, make money in click ads, affiliate ads, or even tutoring (possibly via Skype). Okay, that’s a bit oversimplified, but if you’re good at blogging and find your niche, you might be able to pay some or all of your WordPress. Alternative: Drupal, wiki software. Microblogging: Twitter.
14. Forums/ Social Networks
Need a custom social network for team/ class/ department projects? BuddyPress gives you that ability by installing over a WordPress Multi-User (WPMU) installation. Alternative: BBPress or Vanilla forums.
15. Personal Finance
You might be a starving student but you probably still have to manage your finances. If you’re comfortable using the web for such private information, then you have a number of options – some of which let you pay your bills online. (Most options below are either free or have a free component or trial.) Recommended: Wesabe. Alternatives: DimeWise, Mint, Moneytrackin’.
References Used
If you’re looking for more Open Source desktop software, visit the Sourceforge repository. Just search with a suitable keyword, and browse through the options. You can also check the following references, which were used in building the list of free and open source tools above.
- Free College Software Guide.
- TG Daily – Sage: a free, open-source complex math tool.
- Students : Top Web Tools for College Students.
- 50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Writers and Writing Majors.
- Web Tools for Students.
- 100 Terrific Web Tools for Meeting Your Personal and Career Goals.
Did you enjoy this article?
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:50 am
thats great, and i hope this will lead to Linux at last
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
You could list GNUCash for the Personal Finance. http://www.gnucash.org/
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:00 am
Great list that includes a nice variety of things they will need. I think remember the milk are making a charge for the iPhone application which isn’t very friendly and Google are now stopping support for the video.I will show some of these alternatives to my students, and glad you included mac as well!
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:43 pm
That’s a great list even for the professionals already. Keep it up!
January 23rd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Check out the OSS for Windows compilation available from the Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society:
http://www.ttcsweb.org/osswin-cd/
January 24th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
This is great for students.
February 2nd, 2009 at 4:56 am
A great tool for producing good looking papers and essays is LaTeX (http://latex-project.org).
An editor for windows that is easy to use is TexnicCenter (http://texniccenter.org) which uses MikTeX to do the TeX processing.
For Macs I’d recommend TextMate for editing and Gedit with latex-plugin for Linux.
It’s not as easy to use as office suites, but it provides a much better result in my opinion.
February 2nd, 2009 at 5:14 am
Another very nice tool is about school logs, free: http://www.myschoolog.com/
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Excellent article. These are all indispensable tools that even professors can use. I would also recommend a great tool I use from eTagLive.com it’s a browser extension that lets you capture snippets of information on any website (text, images, videos) so that you can review or cite them later on, it’s a great research tool.
February 4th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Hi
Really nice compilation. Tried out Freemind and few money managing apps.
Looking for more in future, so subscribing to your RSS
Thanks,
Cyriac
February 5th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Isn’t it funny that Microsoft’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on this page…..
February 6th, 2009 at 3:32 am
Excellent article
Thanks
February 12th, 2009 at 8:07 am
http://www.findingDulcinea.com has many resources and tools for students and teachers.
February 19th, 2009 at 5:04 am
I love this list, ever since I found it I have been on and off t5his page going through it and downloaded most of these packages. I really don’t know how to thank the guys that develop these packages (except to make a donation) and the guys who wrote this page.
Thanks so very much!
April 29th, 2009 at 4:51 am
A few things from Google are missing – Google Docs has presentations (alternative to PowerPoint) and Google Blogger for blogging.