Music Software Resources

Commercial Music Software

Band-in-a-Box - automatic accompaniment software. They also distribute the inexpensive Power Tracks audio/midi sequencer.

Open Source Software

As the name implies, Open Source Software has the source code available, if you would ever want it. It is also Free Sofware. The Open Source Initiative has useful information. You are encouraged to download open source software, install it on all your computers, computers at work, give it to everyone and tell them to do the same thing!

Audio & Music

Audacity - Audio recorder and editor. It has many cool features.

LilyPond - Music notation for serious engraving!

Business

Open Office - a complete office suite and more. Compatible with MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint plus had drawing, painting applications and more. It has imported every M$ Office document I have ever tried to import. It also supports open and many file formats. I run my business with Open Office.

AbiWord - If you want a free, open source wordprocessor but not an entire office suite use this!

Sunbird - is a new open source Calendar project. It's a little rough, but I have been using it.

Graphics

Paint.Net - is an open source bit-map editor, similar to Photoshop. It's fairly easy to use and has considerable documentation. Written in C#, it requires downloading the free MS .NET framework. Paint.Net is for the Windows platform only.

GIMP - is a complex, full-featured graphics editor for bit map images, like digital camera captures.

Inkscape - is an open source vector drawing program, similar to Illustrator or Corel Draw.

Internet

Firefox - Fast becoming an industry stanard brower.

Thunderbird - Powerful mail reader with many features.

FileZilla - FTP program that is both powerful and easy to use.

Azureus - My favorite Bit Torrent client. Many cool features and easy to use. Great for downloading Linux and other large files.

Utilities

7-Zip - Compression utility.

Notepad++ - My current favorite editor. It handles other platforms end of line terminators and easy to use. It does not have a built-in spell checker. For Windows only.

Free text

Project Gutenberg - over 20,000 free books on-line! Very cool!

University of PA - Over 30,000 on-line books.

MIT Open Courseware - Over 1800 courses!

Wikipedia - Wiki free on-line encyclopedia.

Free Code Momma - Download free technical books.

Tutorial

In Pictures - Tutorials for Open Office as well as M$ Office. Funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education. Not open source.

CD Image

If you have high-speed internet access, download the Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society OS WIN CD. It's an .ISO image full of the best open source Windows software. It has a great user interface that makes it easy to install applications. Download it and use BurnCDC to burn a blank CD. It's a free, but not open source utility, that is easy to use.

Open Source Collections

OSS WIN - List of Open Source applications for Windows from Sourceforge.

Sourceforge - Largest Open Source directory on the web! All platforms.