Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Are you looking for an open source alternative to all the commercial software on your computer? Wondering how you’re going to switch to Linux when all your boxed applications run on Windows? Float over to www.osalt.com, a directory of open source applications that can provide alternatives to commercial apps.

There are featured applications on the front page, but mostly the listings are divided into categories including business, databases, Internet, graphics, etc. The listings. The listings start with popular commercial software — apps listed in the Business category include Adobe Acrobat, Crystal Reports, and of course thousands of Microsoft products. There’s is a listing of open source software underneath that. The commercial apps have red icons, the open source have green.

Pick a commercial app and you’ll get an overview of the product, along with a note of the platforms on which it runs. (Note: several platforms are listed, the ones not supported are crossed out. This is a little confusing at first.) Then you’ll get alternatives to the commercial product. For some listings there are multiple alternatives — Crystal Reports actually had four listed alternatives. Alternative listings have Web sites available as well as platform listings. There is a rating system installed, but most of the software doesn’t have ratings yet. Still worth a look. Check it out.