Free Software Suggestions

This page covers a variety of open-source and free software. Students, remember to always look for educational or academic discounts on products that aren't free and read through all software licenses carefully!

Note: Technical support for these suggestions may not be available from the Office of Campus Computing. The Office of Campus Computing, and USF St. Petersburg, are not responsible for the content of third-party Web sites.

Internet, Email, Chat & Online Telephony

• Jajah Web-activated VoIP service
• Mozilla Firefox Web browser
• Mozilla Thunderbird email client
• Safari Web browser
• Opera Web browser
• Pidgin (formerly GAIM) instant messenger
• SecureShell SSH client
• SmartFTP FTP client

Writing, Publishing & Productivity

• AbiWord (word processor only)
• IBM Lotus Symphony (similar to Microsoft Office)
• OpenOffice (similar to Microsoft Office)
• The GIMP (similar to Adobe Photoshop)

Players, Plugins & Viewers

• 7-Zip (archive extractor)
• Adobe "Acrobat" Reader (PDF file viewer)
• Adobe Flash Player
• Google Picasa (photo viewer and editor)
• QuickTime Player
• Microsoft Word Viewer
• Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer
• Microsoft Excel Viewer

Virus & Spyware Scanners

• McAfee VirusScan Enterprise (USF members only)
• Lavasoft AdAware SE Personal (spyware scanner)
• Spybot-Search & Destroy
• Wikipedia: List of antivirus software

Operating Systems

• Red Hat Fedora Linux
• Haiku Operating System (successor to BeOS, under development)
• Sun Solaris 10