TOP 5 FREE SOFTWARE

Internet is a amazing place where you can get tons of knowledge and skills absolutely free.These are 5 free software for your computer that are very useful.You can get many software for free on the internet, I am beginning with this edition of "Free Software" and in future blogs we will be looking at the best free open source programs for your computer. Open source software means that its source code is freely available for users to modify, inspect and distribute to anyone for any reason. There are so many open source programs that are actually great, in this blog i will show 5 of my favorites that i think are more useful. All the soft wares are well established, trusted and completely free.



1. OfficeSuite

OfficeSuite is a cross-platform office suite application developed by MobiSystems. It has versions for Android, iOSand Microsoft Windows (PC) and adds extensive PDF abilities to its compatibility with the most frequently used Microsoft Office file formats. The software has over 220 million downloads on Google Play and is among the top Android business applications.

OfficeSuite can be found preinstalled on devices by Sony, Amazon, Alcatel, Sharp, Toshiba, ZTE, Huawei, Kyocera and more.

History

The software was first released as a mobile application on Palm OS in 2004 (incorporating older MobiSystems apps: Quick Spell, Quick Check and Quick Write), followed by Symbian in 2005. Until 2009, OfficeSuite was mainly used as a reader. Then MobiSystems received an inquiry by Sony for an Android based office solution development. Sony required it within a very narrow time frame - just 12 weeks. Apparently the developers succeeded and Sony preinstalled the newly developed OfficeSuite on all of their Android devices in 2009. Several years later the software debuts on iOS in 2013 and the year 2016 marked the first desktop client version for Windows. Today, OfficeSuite is a very powerful office solution that has extensive features used by millions of businesses and users around the globe. Besides the ability to connect to any cloud provider such as Google Drive, Box, iCloud, OneDrive and more, OfficeSuite offers storage space in MobiSystems`s proprietory cloud - MobiSystems Drive. In 2018 the app was selected by Google to be among the few to receive Android Excellence Award.

Platform Availability

• Android
• IOS

2. Firefox (Web Browser)

Mozilla Firefox (or simply Firefox) is a free and open-source web browser developed by The Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation. Firefox is available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, illumosand Solaris operating systems. Its sibling, Firefox for Android, is also available. Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. In 2017, Firefox began incorporating new technology under the code name Quantum to promote parallelism and a more intuitive user interface. An additional version, Firefox for iOS, was released on November 12, 2015. Due to platform restrictions, it uses the WebKit layout engine instead of Gecko, as with all other iOS web browsers.

Firefox was created in 2002 under the codename "Phoenix" by the Mozilla community members who desired a standalone browser, rather than the Mozilla Application Suite bundle. During its beta phase, Firefox proved to be popular with its testers and was praised for its speed, security, and add-ons compared to Microsoft's then-dominant Internet Explorer 6. Firefox was released on November 9, 2004, and challenged Internet Explorer's dominance with 60 million downloads within nine months. Firefox is the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator, as the Mozilla community was created by Netscape in 1998 before their acquisition by AOL.

Firefox usage grew to a peak of 32% at the end of 2009, with version 3.5 overtaking Internet Explorer 7, although not Internet Explorer as a whole. Usage then declined in competition with Google Chrome. As of January 2019, Firefox has 9.5% usage share as a "desktop" browser, according to StatCounter, making it the second-most popular such web browser; usage across all platforms is lower at 4.66% (and then third-most popular overall). Firefox is still the most popular desktop browser in a few countries including Cuba (even most popular overall at 49.7%) and Eritrea with 72.26% and 83.28% of the market share, respectively. According to Mozilla, in December 2014, there were half a billion Firefox users around the world. 

Features of Firefox

Features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental search, live bookmarking, Smart Bookmarks, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (also known as "geolocation") based on a Google service, and an integrated search system, which uses Google by default in most markets. Additionally, Firefox provides an environment for web developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as the Error Console or the DOM Inspector, or extensions, such as Firebug and more recently there has been an integration feature with Pocket. Firefox Hello was an implementation of WebRTC, added in October 2014, which allows users of Firefox and other compatible systems to have a video call, with the extra feature of screen and file sharing by sending a link to each other. Firefox Hello was scheduled to be removed in September 2016.

Functions can be added through add-ons created by third-party developers. Add-ons are primarily coded using an HTML and JavaScript API known as WebExtensions, which is designed to be similar to the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge extension systems. Firefox previously supported add-ons using the XUL and XPCOM APIs, which allowed them to directly access and manipulate much of the browser's internal functionality. As they are not compatible with its multi-process architecture, XUL add-ons are now deemed Legacy add-ons and are no longer supported on Firefox 57 and newer.

Firefox can have themes added to it, which users can create or download from third parties to change the appearance of the browser. The Firefox add-on website also gives users the ability to add other applications such as games, ad-blockers, screenshot apps, and many other apps.

3. OBS Studio (Screen Recorder)

OBS is a free and open-source software suite for recording and live streaming. Written in C and C++, OBS provides real-time source and device capture, scene composition, encoding, recording, and broadcasting. Transmission of data is primarily done via the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and can be sent to any RTMP supporting destination, including many presets for streaming websites such as YouTube, Twitch.tv, Instagram and Facebook.

For video encoding, OBS is capable of using the x264 free software library, Intel Quick Sync Video, Nvidia NVENC and the AMD Video Coding Engine to encode video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format and the H.265/HEVC format. Audio can be encoded using either the MP3 or AAC codecs. Advanced users can choose to use any codecs and containers available in libavcodec / libavformat as well as output the stream to a custom ffmpeg URL.

User Interface

The main user interface is organized into five sections: scenes, sources, audio mixer, transitions, and controls. Scenes are groups of sources like live and recorded video, text and audio. The mixer panel lets the user mute the audio, and adjust the volume through virtual faders, and apply effects by pressing the cogwheel next to the mute button. The control panel has options for starting/stopping a stream or recording, a button to transform OBS to a more professional Studio Mode , a button for opening the settings menu and a button to exit the program. The upper section has a live video preview, used to monitor and edit the current scene. The user interface can be switched to dark or light theme depending on what the user prefers.

When in studio mode, there are 2 scene preview windows, the left one for modifying and preview of non-active scenes, while the right window is for preview of the active scene. in the middle there is a secondary transition button, allowing for transitioning to the non active scene in the left window.

There are some simple tutorials in the Internet that shows how to use Open Broadcaster Software.

Open Broadcaster Software started out as a small project created by Hugh "Jim" Bailey, but quickly grew with the help of many online collaborators working both to improve OBS and spread the knowledge about the program. In 2014, development started on a rewritten version known as OBS Multiplatform (later renamed OBS Studio) for multiplatform support, a more thorough feature set, and a more powerful API. As of v18.0.1 of OBS Studio, OBS Classic is no longer supported due to the former reaching near-full feature parity with the latter, though the download for Classic is still available.

4. Shotcut (Video Editor)

Shotcut is a free and open-source cross-platform video editing application for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Windows. Started in 2011 by Dan Dennedy, Shotcut is developed on the MLT Multimedia Framework, in development since 2004 by the same author.

Shotcut supports video, audio, and image formats via FFmpeg. It uses a timeline for non-linear video editing of multiple tracks that may be composed of various file formats. Scrubbing and transport control are assisted by OpenGL GPU-based processing and a number of video and audio filters are available.

Format

• Format support through FFmpeg
  • Frame-accurate seeking for many formats
• Supports popular image formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, SVG, TGA, TIFF as well as image sequences
• Multi-format timeline: mix and match resolutions and frame rates within a project
• Webcam and audio capture
• Support for 4K resolutions
• Network stream playback (HTTP, HLS, RTMP, RTSP, MMS, UDP)
• Frei0r video generator plugins (e.g. color bars and plasma)
• Color, noise, and counter generators
• EDL (CMX3600 Edit Decision List) export
• Export single frame as image or video as image sequence

Audio

• Audio scopes
  • Loudness
  • Peak meter
  • Waveform
  • Spectrum analyzer
• Volume control
• Audio filters and mixing
• JACK transport sync
• Tone generator
• Stereo, mono, and 5.1 surround

Video effects

• HTML5 as source and filters
• Color grading tools
• De-interlacing
• Auto-rotate
• Wipe transitions
• Track compositing/blending modes
• Speed and reverse effect for clips
• Keyframes

Hardware

• Blackmagic Design SDI and HDMI for input and preview monitoring
• Leap Motion for jog/shuttle control
• Webcam capture
• Audio capture to system audio card
• Capture (record) SDI, HDMI, webcam (V4L2), JACK audio, PulseAudio, IP stream, and Windows DirectShow devices
• Multi-core parallel image processing (when not using GPU and frame-dropping is disabled)
• DeckLink SDI keyer output
• OpenGL GPU-based image processing with 16-bit floating point linear per color component

5. GIMP Graphics Editor)

GIMP  (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, converting between different image formats, and more specialized tasks.

GIMP is released under GPLv3+ licenses and is available for Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.

GIMP was originally released as the General Image Manipulation Program. In 1995 Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis began developing GIMP as a semester-long project at the University of California, Berkeley for the eXperimental Computing Facility. In 1996 GIMP (0.54) was released as the first publicly available release. In the following year Richard Stallman visited UC Berkeley where Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis asked if they could change General to GNU (the name given to the operating system created by Stallman). Richard Stallman approved and the definition of the acronym GIMP was changed to be the GNU Image Manipulation Program. This reflected its new existence as being developed as Free Software as a part of the GNU Project.

The number of computer architectures and operating systems supported has expanded significantly since its first release. The first release supported UNIX systems, such as Linux, SGI IRIX and HP-UX. Since the initial release, GIMP has been ported to many operating systems, including Microsoft Windows and macOS; the original port to the Windows 32-bit platform was started by Finnish programmer Tor M. Lillqvist (tml) in 1997 and was supported in the GIMP 1.1 release.

Following the first release, GIMP was quickly adopted and a community of contributors formed. The community began developing tutorials, artwork and shared better work-flows and techniques.

A GUI toolkit called GTK (GIMP tool kit) was developed to facilitate the development of GIMP. GTK was replaced by its successor GTK+ after being redesigned using object-oriented programming techniques. The development of GTK+ has been attributed to Peter Mattis becoming disenchanted with the Motif toolkit GIMP originally used; Motif was used up until GIMP 0.60.

User interface

The user interface of GIMP is designed by a dedicated design and usability team. This team was formed after the developers of GIMP signed up to join the OpenUsability project. A user interface brainstorming group has since been created for GIMP, where users of GIMP can send in their suggestions as to how they think the GIMP user interface could be improved.

GIMP is presented in two forms, single and multiple window mode; GIMP 2.8 defaults to the multiple-window mode. In multiple-window mode a set of windows contains all GIMP's functionality. By default, tools and tool settings are on the left and other dialogues are on the right. A layers tab is often to the right of the tools tab, and allows a user to work individually on separate image layers. Layers can be edited by right-clicking on a particular layer to bring up edit options for that layer. The tools tab and layers tab are the most common dockable tabs.

These were the the top 5 free software that are really helpful and fun to use, I hope you liked this information.