How Many Open-Source Programs Do You Use Weekly? [MakeUseOf Poll]

Last week we wanted to know if readers thought digital pirates purchased more goods than non-pirates. Overwhelmingly, most voters believe the pirates do spend the most money.

Out of 319 votes, opinions were divided as follows: 59% think digital pirates purchase more products than non-pirates; 23% say that the pirates they know don’t pay for anything; while 19% say they aren’t sure.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.

Clearly, the gut feel around here is that pirates are actually making the most money for the entertainment industry.

This week’s poll question is: How Many Open-Source Programs Do You Use Weekly?

We know MakeUseOf readers love freeware and open-source software. So, we want to know how much you really use? Each week, you probably cycle through most of your favorites, so how many are there?

So what are the top open-source applications you use? Are there some things you just can’t use an open-source alternative for? Let us know in the comments!

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14 Comments

Angela Alcorn

Ange is an Internet Studies & Journalism graduate who spends way too much time messing with social networks (see AngelaAlcorn.com or @smange).

The comments were closed because the article is more than 180 days old.

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  • Meena Bassem July 31, 2011
    0 likes

    hmm, let me see, i have these
    chrome
    firefox
    7 zip
    haozip ( almost the same as winrar ) ,I’m just more used to winrar
    virtual box

    well, that’s for open souce
    I can’t find an alternative good enough to replace IDM,
    I use ultra iso , but if i wanted an alternative, i’ll use ImgBurn and WinCDEmulator
    these are the software i use most frequently

    Oops. i forgot to mention vlc. but i’m still more familiar with wmp

    | Like
  • Anonymous July 31, 2011
    0 likes

    since I’m on linux there are probably hundreds of opensource programs I use in background every day…

    | Like
  • Brad Landreth July 31, 2011
    0 likes

    Ubuntu ;-)
    ChromeFireFox
    OpenOffice
    Banshee
    VLC
    Cheese
    Movie Player
    Shotwell
    Skype
    Compiz

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    • Guest August 1, 2011
      0 likes

      Skype isn’t open source.

      | Like
  • Harshad Srinivasan August 1, 2011
    0 likes

    Since I run Fedora 15 on my laptop and Cyanogenmod on my Phone, I run hundreds of FOS programs everyday. Otoh, I have 3 non FOS applications on my pc – dropbox, flash and adobe reader. Probably another 15 or so on the phone. :)

    Edit: Make that 4. I also have the nvidia drivers.

    | Like
  • Jeffery Fabish August 1, 2011
    0 likes

    Just because the software is available in a Linux distribution, doesn’t mean it’s open source, Brad. 

    These are the OS programs I’m using right now.
    Arch/Linux
    Apache
    Firefox
    Open Office
    VLC
    Pidgin
    FileZilla
    NetBeans
    Deluge 
    and last, but not least, MoBloquer.

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  • Petah Piper August 1, 2011
    0 likes

    Netbeans
    Firefox
    Chrome
    FileZilla
    OpenOffice
    Linux
    PHP
    Apache
    Console2
    SSH
    Git
    Notepad++
    Gimp
    Spring
    TightVNC
    POVRay
    Blender
    MySQL
    Xampp
    the list goes on…

    | Like
  • Aibek August 1, 2011
    0 likes

    chrome
    firefox
    7 zipfilezilla
    thunderbird
    imgburn
    pdftk
    Apache
    MySQL
    PHP

    that’s all i can thik of at the time being but I am sure there should be several others

    | Like
  • 12stringman August 1, 2011
    0 likes

    OpenOffice
    Chrome
    Ubuntu
    Firefox
    Gimp
    Banshee
    7-Zip
    FileZilla
    SeaMonkey

    + several others that I use occasionally

    | Like
  • Paul Schuster August 1, 2011
    0 likes

    Slackware
    krusader
    vim
    KDE
    kconsole
    python
    gcc
    and about a fifty random foss programs and daemons that are mostly run in the background

    | Like
  • Jhelmoreii August 1, 2011
    0 likes

    Easily six to 10 since I am using Ubuntu 11.04 and libre office, banshee, VLC, Totem, etc.  In fact I have bought nothing for my main system since I went to Linux.

    | Like
  • King Indronil August 3, 2011
    0 likes

    ubuntu and all programs available for it

    | Like
  • klu9 August 8, 2011
    0 likes

    Launchy
    Everything (file search)
    7zip
    Libre Office
    Media Player Classsic
    VLC
    Sumatra PDF reader
    ATpad (text editor)
    KeePassX (passsword manager
    T-Clock 2010 (clock & alarms etc)

    | Like