Finding Free Software: Part 1

Searching for free software is not always easy, there's loads of it out there, some of it spectacular, some of it appalling. Finding the right software for your requirements is not always an easy task. Hopefully this article, the first of many, can give you a little insight into the best places to find free software.

Freshmeat

One of the first places I go when I need software to perform a task is Freshmeat, which is a repository for free software that runs on Windows (TM), Unix, Linux, Mac OS X & Palm OS. It has thousands of applications all classified by category, license, platform, language it is written in & maturity level. It also has a popularity counter that keeps track of how often a program has been downloaded, and a vitality score, based on how often the software is updated.

First, sign up for an account, whilst anyone can search Freshmeat for software, signing up for a free account lets you apply filters to your searches to make sure you are only seeing the programs you want

When you first go to Freshmeat, the front page has a list of recently updated or added programs. Scroll through and have a look, to get a feel for how the site works. Each application has a description, usually one or two paragraphs, describing what it does, and what, if any things have changed since the last version. Under the description are the classifications the application comes under.

Scrolling back to the top you will see a text box for you to enter your search into, try to be short and specific, I generally search for one or two words at most. For the purposes of this article, I have put CMS in the search field, as this returns 88 Matches, CMS stands for content management system, generally speaking it is used for websites where no technical people will be updating the content and want an easy way to do it

Once the search page loads, and assuming you are logged in, we will start whittling down the results with filters. First we will filter to all applications licensed under the GPL. This removes 31 results from the search. Now we will choose to only view software that is considered Stable. Now we are down to 19 applications.

A final filter we will apply is to sort the results by popularity, whilst this will not always give you the best application per se, it will give you an application that has a large user base, many of whom will haunt message boards answering questions when you are stuck.

Now start reading those results. Look for the CMS that does what you want, and isn't loaded down with features you don't need or understand. Before you know it you will be downloading tarballs, and trying out the software itself. Yes it really is that easy, and free. The first program you download may not be for you, it may be too hard to install, or have a awful layout that really makes you wonder about people. But there are plenty more to try out. If you're really adventurous, play with some of the beta software, its usually quite good, but can have big bugs. Remember, free software comes without warranties, so test everything before you deploy.

Related Links:

• http://freshmeat.net