Open Source Software for Adult Learners
College is not cheap. And these days, in addition to tuition, and books, and various fees, many courses carry an additional cost. That cost comes from the expectation that you have access to specific software needed to complete course work. In this Bit Literate Guide we’re going to tell you how you can use free open-source software to meet almost any course requirement you might face.
Open source software (OSS) is software created by volunteers and provided for free to anyone who wants it. And free in this case has two meanings. It means free as in “you don’t have to pay for it”. But it also means free in the sense that the special knowledge --the intellectual property-- needed to create the software is available to anyone who wants it. There are no patents or copyrights or other restrictions that limit the use of the software. The license under which most open source software is distributed (the General Public License – the GPL) requires that the source code for the software be made available to anyone who wants it. This "sharing for the common good" approach has resulted in the creation of a number of highly regarded software packages and the use of open sources software is growing rapidly.
Open source software packages are available that to fill almost any software need, but few packages are of special interest to adult learners. We've described them here.
FireFox
Perhaps the most popular OSS product in use today is the web browser called FireFox. Firefox is a very good web browser and many people have started using it in place of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Indeed, many FireFox users believe that it is superior to IE. One big reason for this is that FireFox is considered by many to be more secure than IE. IE was designed at a time when computer security was an afterthought at best. So the ability to download and run programs from the Internet, basically without restriction, was designed into IE. This subsequently proved to be a poor design choice. And while Microsoft has gone to great lengths to fix the many security holes in IE, new ones appear regularly. Microsoft is constantly fighting to restrict access to features that were built into IE at the start, and that’s not easy. Firefox was designed with security in mind, and while there have been malware attacks against Firefox they have not been as severe as the ones that target IE.
Of course, the security issue would be moot if Firefox wasn’t a good browser. But it is, and many people prefer Firefox. It's fast, reliable, and it supports features like SVG and MathML that IE does not have. You can get Firefox at: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
OpenOffice
Firefox may be the most commonly used open source software package, but it may not be the most important one, at least not for adult learners. That honor goes to the office suite called OpenOffice. OpenOffice (version 2.0 is current) is a direct competitor to Microsoft Office. OpenOffice includes a word processor called Writer, a spreadsheet called Calc, a presentation program called Impress and a database manager called Base. Each of these programs competes directly with the Microsoft office equivalent, and Writer and Calc are strong enough that some people prefer them to the Microsoft equivalents (Word and Excel). You can download a complete copy of OpenOffice from the OpenOffice web site at: http://www.openoffice.org/
So can you really use OpenOffice to replace Microsoft Office? What about sharing files with MS Office users? Perhaps the single most important feature of OpenOffice is that it can open and save files in the Microsoft formats with few if any problems. DOC files created by Word and XLS files created by Excel work just fine in Open Office. This makes it painless to use OpenOffice and share the files you create with Word and Excel users.
OpenOffice also allows you to save your files in a non-proprietary, standards based, format based on XML. Long story short, saving your files in the OpenOffice format (called OpenDocument) ensures that you will never be forced into an upgrade to maintain access to the files you create. The entire software industry is moving in this direction and OpenOffice is leading the way.
The Gimp
The next program we'll consider is "the GIMP". GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program and while this program is oddly named, it is a very powerful graphics editing package. The GIMP stacks up well against programs like Photoshop and PaintShop Pro and it is completely free. If you need high-end image editing, and you can't afford Photoshop, give the GIMP a try.
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