The great thing about open source, besides the fact that it is free, is that millions of programmers are constantly working to improve it. With everyone looking for and correcting bugs, software updates come more frequently. Take Internet Explorer for example, the update frequency is far less than that of Mozilla Firefox. Also, with access to the source code you can customize it to fit your needs, granted that you are or know a programmer. Contrary to what some people think, most Open Source software is very high quality.

There are many great open source programs to choose from.
A list of some of the more popular ones:

Mozilla Firefox: This web browser has an intuitive interface and blocks viruses, spyware, and popup ads. It delivers Web pages faster than ever. And it’s easy to install and import your favorites. Packed with useful features like tabbed browsing, Live Bookmarks, and an integrated Search bar, Firefox will change the way you experience the Web, for the better.

Mozilla Thunderbird: Simple to use, powerful, and customizable, Thunderbird is a full-featured email application. Thunderbird supports IMAP and POP mail protocols, as well as HTML mail formatting. Easily import your existing email accounts and messages. Built-in RSS capabilities, powerful quick search, spell check as you type, global inbox, deleting attachments and advanced message filtering round out Thunderbird”s modern feature set.

Filezilla: FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with a lot of features. FileZilla Server is a reliable FTP server.

WordPress: WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.

OpenOffice: OpenOffice is a multi-platform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, diagram application, and a DBMS.

AbiWord: AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.

GIMP: GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image render, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything.

Gaim: Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr networks. Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Audacity: Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to: Record live audio; convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs; edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files; cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together; change the speed or pitch of a recording, and more!

Apache: Apache HTTP is an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows NT. The goal of this project is to provide a secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards. Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996. The November 2005 Netcraft Web Server Survey found that more than 70% of the web sites on the Internet are using Apache, thus making it more widely used than all other web servers combined.

MySQL: is a very popular open source, relational DBMS that runs under various versions of Unix and Windows and Mac. Widely used for Web applications and other embedded applications.

Ubuntu: Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. Ubuntu includes more than 16,000 pieces of software, but the core desktop installation fits on a single CD. Ubuntu covers every standard desktop application from word processing and spreadsheet applications to internet access applications, web server software, email software, programming languages and tools, and of course several games.

This blog is powered by 5 of these. I use Apache to serve the web pages, MySQL to power the database, Filezilla to upload to the FTP account, WordPress for the CMS, and Firefox to surf (I still test in IE).

To find out more about Open Source philosophy visit the Open Source Initiative (OSI), and for a more complete list of available software visit listible.