@ vioelt #36 After sales support is the main key to a paid commerical product. But try gimp portable if you're worried about installing it, and there are 101 tutorals on the net on how to do anything with it.

@ don #3 same thing it's all about support, also most government/educational faculitys have a Microsoft AD backend, products like MS Office tie into AD for security policys and managment. While Office suites open office or libreoffice are great for small business or home use. In large corperates they can end up costing more in IT resouce and lost time than their MS equilivant.

@ Malcolm #32 Secuirty Essentials isn't techincally freeware, it's free for home use and small buinesses up to 10 users, but not 100% free or open souce. Also it dosn't get updated as fast as it's big brother Forefront Endpoint Protection.

While I do like linux which is free, it can be a bit much for those not so geeky.

If you do have a windows PC, check out this list: http://www.lockergnome.com/craighton/2012/01/30/best-windows-downloads-for-any-new-computer/

I wonder whether the appeal of the commercial product is the implied after-sales support. I would love to try Gimp but it sounds like I'm just not geeky enough to install it.

All these clowns dissing free and open source software don't realize how much they're relying on free software, every time they browse the web.

Apache is by far the most common web server software out there (although stuff.co.nz uses nginx, another open source server). And the stuff servers (again, like the vast majority of web servers) are running linux.

Among the well-known sites using the Apache/Linux combination: winsite.com (windoze software distribution).

To determine this, use sites like http://uptime.netcraft.com (an apache server, with FreeBSD OS).

Paint.net is a favourite of mine.

Here is possibly one of the largest lists of free security software out there.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/long-list.htm/Probably%20the%20Best%20Free%20Security%20List%20in%20the%20World

I'm surprised that the article didn't mention in the Anti-virus list Microsoft Security Essentials which is arguably the best free anti-malware program available. Being from Microsoft it integrates beautifully with Windows and doesn't slow the computer like some. It's saved me on several occasions.

For browsers, nothing tops Chrome in my opinion. It also has quite a good program in the web store called Sumo Paint, which works through the cloud. As far as office suites go, Kingsoft Office is probably the closest thing to MS Office and can be found here http://www.kingsoftstore.com/kingsoft-office-freeware.html

Lotus Symphony is also an alternative free office suite

I use Gimp. Not a professional user but I used it for the same things I used photoshop for.

A free "anti-virus" is called "common sense", I've never had a problem with it either.

I tried a few flavours of linux a few years ago. They were simple enough to get going but got stuck on simple things like wifi and sound not working. Perhaps things are better now.

I cannot see them becoming mainstream until all text based commands are no longer necessary. I'm not interested in typing "sudo this sudo that" just to perform some task.

I had a users PC in work and it was so riddled with malware and antivirus. So i used Avast and that is truly awesome, killed the viruses but then malware was resident so tried malwarebytes and it did an ok job. So worst case scenario I downloaded combofix which killed the powerful malware and now its as good as new!

Im all for free programs, expecially with Avast! its heaps better than them pay per year subscription anti virus programs like Norton or McAfee (that is the worst antivirus ever, slows everything down and not very good at removing viruses!)

Open Source software cannot contain spyware or security backdoors, as the source can be reviewed by anyone with the skill to do so. It's true that not everyone has the skills to do this, but most major releases are reviewed. The same cannot be said for proprietary software - which can and on occasion has been proven to have these 'features'. I would not use any security software that was closed source. Great information regarding security and privacy online is available from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Check out the Tor project and I2P.