No one loves to pay crazy per-user licensing fees, not to mention 15- 22% annual support residuals. (And no one loves the endless, mind-numbing meetings with non-technical financial folks trying to pry budget for these tools from their clenched fists.) So today we're going to discuss tools that are free. However, we are not naming them to this list of "great" tools simply because they cost nothing. These are some of the best lesser-known tools out there.
Of course, whenever we speak of great open source Windows projects we need to acknowledge the obvious players. These are the ones that have crossed over to the mainstream and have given paid software a run for its money. We all know them: OpenOffice.org, Firefox, MySQL, Xen, JBoss, and SugarCRM. These are what I like to refer to as the superstars of Open Source for Windows.
But you don't need me to tell you about the superstars. Instead, I have tested and compiled together a list of 20 great open source projects for Windows that will appeal mostly to the management and maintenance of your network. Some of these tools are just for the desktop and some are just for fun -- because happy IT folks are good IT folks. (They are not locking everyone out of the network while sneaking into the server room with a sledgehammer and … oh, come on! Admit it, I can't be the only one to have had that fantasy!) But enough of my outlandish ranting.
The list that follows is organized by my own personal taste. The tools I think are really the unsung gems are first, with the ones that seem to be far more widely known are last. So, before you flame me with comments about having to click through this multi-page post to see all the tools, I'm going to tell you the names of all the tools up front, and tell you which page to find them on. And, for an alphabetized list of all tools in this post, see last page (p. 10).
| Fun stuff: | Juice (p. 1); RSSOWL (p. 7 ) |
| Security tools | Eraser (p. 1); TrueCrypt (p. 6 ) |
| System or Net mgt tools |
FOG (p. 2 ); MRemote (p. 2 ); Paglo (p. 3 ); GroundWork Monitor (p. 4 ). Cobian Backup (p. 5 ); H-Inventory (p. 7 ); NetStumbler (p. 7); jNetStream (p. 9 ); Keyfinder (p. 10); Angry IP Scanner (p. 10 ) |
| Personal or enterprise productivity tools | GIMP 2 (p. 3 ); LifeRay (p. 4 ); Joomla! (p. 6); ReactOS (p. 8 ); Thunderbird (p. 8 ); Filezilla Server (p. 9 ) |
1. Juice 
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
Juice is a podcast receiver and falls into the category of “fun tool.” The first thing that impressed me is its speed. The tool downloaded two podcasts (about 45MB each) in just under a minute. I enjoyed the fact that Juice also came pre-populated with some popular podcasts and the interface for adding your own favorites is simply cut-and-paste. The one thing that takes some work is getting it to work with Windows Vista. Vista is not supported officially although I did find a solution to the error message Vista gave in Juice's support forum. (It was a simple enough fix. I just needed to change the download directory to Documents from My Documents.) Two minutes and I was up and running. Juice is platform independent, fast, and easy to use. If you need something to bring you down from a stressful day and podcasts do the trick, this is a great tool.
2. Eraser
http://www.heidi.ie/node/6
No, this isn't the1996 movie with Gov. Arnold. I'm talking about a tool for the truly paranoid. If you’re in IT, you ought to be paranoid at least to the proper degree. Eraser is a program that will dispense with sensitive data on your hard drive and do it according to Dept. of Defense standards in overwriting the data using various methodologies to ensure it is not recoverable. I’m certain some IT guys wished they had this tool when they found out how “creative” their accounting departments were being on the earnings reports that led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Eraser can be set to overwrite any unused space on drive. Alternatively, it can be used to delete particular folders, sub-folders, and files. Additionally you can set schedules and create several tasks that can run simultaneously. Right clicking on the tray icon allows you to disable scheduled tasks. Another cool feature is the ability to create a “DBAN” disk. This can be used to bulk erase systems that come off lease or that you donate to charity. (Note: it is illegal to erase the illegal activities of your CEO before the FEDS come to get him and you.) Seriously, this is a good tool. I could see myself loading this onto laptop users' systems and creating a folder called dump and then setting a schedule. I would instruct users to put everything they wanted to disappear permanently into that folder. Nothing more would be required on their part or mine.
Ron Barrett, Director of e-Strategy for ClipTraining , is an independent trainer, author and consultant. He has been a technology professional for over 12 years, working for several major financial services firms and dotcoms. Ron is a specialist in network infrastructure, security, and IT management. He is the author of Office Communications Server 2007 R2: How-To , as well as co-author of Windows Server 2008: How-To and The Administrator’s Guide to Microsoft Office 2007 Servers. Ron has been a co-author or technical editor for several other books on Windows administration. Along with book writing, Ron has contributed to several industry magazines such as Redmond, Datamation and Windows IT Pro. Beyond writing, Ron has spoken at several technology conferences for CPAmerica, AICPA and MCP’s TECHMENTOR. Recently Ron has joined ClipTraining as the Director of e-Strategy in an effort to further the company’s presence via the Internet and social networking channels.
Ron's latest book, Windows Server 2008 How-To has been selected as the September 2009 book giveaway on Microsoft Subnet. To enter the monthly book giveaway, visit the Microsoft Subnet home page.
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Projity's OpenProj is a replacement of Microsoft Project
Nice list, you may want to add OpenProj from Projity. OpenProj is a really cool open source tool. It is a replacement of Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project retails for $999.99, OpenProj is free and opens native Project files. It is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. They have 500,000 downloads so it is really taking marketshare.
Great story
Ron, Great story and I am glad you have pulled these together in one place. Of course there are other cool OSS solutions out there so I look forward to hearing more!
Please provide more numbers
Do you happen to know how many MS Project licenses are out there? 500k is a good number, and one that I could take to my boss. But if you had a percentage of what share it has taken from MS Project that would be great.
Openproj on 7% of Windows desktops
From this webpage: http://openproj.org/openproj
It states that openproj is on 7%of Windows desktops
I would also add wireshark
I'd recommend wireshark as a first class protocol analyzer (http://www.wireshark.org). I've used this tool for the last several years, and i find that it rivals any commercial protocol analyzer. The developers have done an excellent job on this product.
I Agree
I love Wireshark, I used it back when it was called Ethereal.. I left it off this list because these were 20 of the OSS tools probably not on peoples immediate list... But it is a product I will definately address seperately in the future.
Hyperic
Hyperic HQ is another systems management tool that actually has the endorsement of Microsoft. In fact, they are a paying customer! HQ makes it really easy to have a complete monitoring and management tool for all your platforms across Microsoft, Linux, Unix and Mac - all in one web based tool. It auto-discovers over 70 different technologies on those platforms and provides detailed performance tracking, log and event tracking, alerting, charting, reporting and diagnostics from a single web console.
cool gui
cool gui ajax. lacks alot of technical features. great support from a few open source developers.
ICEcore a new replacement for Sharepoint
Consider ICEcore as one of the new "cool" kids on the block. It is a more powerful than Sharepoint and also includes real-time capabilities (aka. WebEx). Best of all it is open source and free.
A note about ICEcore
ICEcore looks interesting, too bad that Novell is behind it. No, actually, too bad Novell chose to partner with Microsoft. I think I'll go the Google way instead for collaboration.