Open Office is a FULL suite of software, which runs on Windows & Linux, and is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED as a real substitute for Microsoft's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (It does NOT have a database program.)

If you choose to use ANY open source software - THIS SHOULD BE IT.

Wherever possible, government agencies and public institutions (ie. schools, etc.) may want to evaluate this office suite as a viable alternative to expensive MS Office installations.

Open Office reads & creates Microsoft Word, Excel & Powerpoint files - so it is fully compatible. Open Office includes a programming/macro IDE just like MS Office. It uses BASIC not VBA. However, they are VERY similar. Also included is a Macro recorder for easy development & learning. (Alt+F11 still applies)

Mozilla Thunderbird is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. It is intended for those who use FireFox (or another stand alone browser) as their primary browser and need an email application that works effectively with the browser.

Thunderbird is effectively a "stripped down" version of the full Mozilla email client, and therefore is cleaner and has better overall performance, as any unnecessary "bells & whistles" have been removed.

Linux is the future of government computing. The issues of cost & security are too easily solved by switching to Linux for government agencies (large & small) to continue to ignore this solution. European governments have been making the transition and committment to Linux platforms for several years already.

The single best thing government tech employees can do for their own job security and advancement opporunities is to learn and be comfortable with Linux. This may not be true immediately - but 5 years down the road, you do not want to be in the position of wondering why you didn't start learning earlier.

For the uninitiated, here are a couple basic links (there are thousands out there, so just dive in!)

Debian is a Linux distribution with a strong emphasis on stability and package management.

This is the distribution our developers prefer, and that works very well with MapServer. Usually this version is designed for intermediate/advanced users. However, a newbie can just as well get it installed and operational.

GIS-Knoppix is a bootable Linux CD with pre-installed GIS software.

There is NO INSTALLATION with Knoppix. Because it boots and runs from the CD, your current Windows operating system (or other) and files are safe and untouched.

To load: Insert the GIS-Knoppix CD and reboot the machine - that's it!

To restart in Windows: Logout of GIS-Knoppix, remove the disk and reboot.

Both GRASS & MapServer are included & pre-configured on the CD.

Knoppix is a perfect (fast & simple) way for Windows users to experiment with Linux and the other Linux based software listed in this guide.

MapServer is a mature, Open Source development environment for building spatially enabled Internet applications.

MapServer runs on both Windows & Linux, but you will find much more support and reference for Linux installations. The email listserve is an invaluable source for information and assistance.

Essentially, MapServer is the open source equivalent to ESRI's ArcIMS. MapServer is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for internet & intranet GIS/mapping applications.

Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a GIS application built for Linux/Unix. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats.

Quantum GIS is an excellent program for basic/intermediate GIS needs. Definately worth a try for all ArcGIS users with access to a Linux installation and familiar with ArcView 3x!

At this point in its development, editing GIS data with Quantum GIS is not feasible.

GRASS GIS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is an open source, Free Software Geographical Information System (GIS) with raster, topological vector, image processing, and graphics production functionality. It can run in Windows, but is much better in its native Linux environment.

The program is quite robust (excellent raster analysis tools) and has been in development since 1982 with hundreds of implementations around the world.

Because so much of the intermediate/advanced functionality is command line driven, there is a significant learning curve for current ArcGIS and non-Linux users - but it is definately worth trying out. In the least, GRASS can be a valuable tool to have available in any GIS work environment.

The email listserve is used heavily with excellent response time and user involvement.

GIMP is an excellent substitute for PhotoShop that runs great on Windows & Linux. The application works with layers and can do most of what other commercial image editing/graphic design packages offer.

Why spend hundreds on a graphic design suite, when the GIMP does such an excellent job for free?

AVG Antivirus is a FREE antivirus program and includes lifetime FREE updates. It does everything all the other antivirus packages do, and it is free! There is some limited ability to schedule updates, which is not a problem for the majority of users.

Every high-speed connection to the Internet MUST have a firewall. A good firewall will monitor and can block both incoming and outgoing traffic. Unlike the Windows XP built-in firewall, ZoneAlarm does it all and will notify you of trouble before anything can happen.

Installation and setup are very easy, but their is a small learning curve in figuring out the application. If you want an even more robust solution (mainly for handling network traffic), you can purchase the PRO version online. For advanced users, the ~$40 price is worth it.

Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.

If you are selling your hard drive, or want to eliminate the possibility of anyone retrieving the data on a drive - you MUST run a tool such as Eraser!

AutoClave securely destroy the contents of a hard drive. If you need a tool to wipe EVERYTHING from an an entire hard drive, in an extremely secure, fast & simple way - this is the tool to use.

AutoClave will boot from a floppy/CD and essentially write random zeroes and ones multiple times over EVERYTHING. Once completed, unless you have an electron microscope and a LOT of time, the data cannot be recovered (and even that is highly questionable).

A Thawte Personal E-mail certificate allows you to secure your e-mail communications by digitally signing and encrypting your e-mails.

By securing your e-mail, you ensure the safety of all your outbound e-mail communication. Furthermore, those communicating with you will be able to verify that mail coming from your e-mail address is in fact from your e-mail address.

Personal E-mail certificates can be used to sign your e-mail so that people know the mail came from you and encrypt your e-mail.

SpyBot Search & Destroy removes spyware/adware from your system. It is a very good program and simple to use. It is recommended that you use additional anti-malware software in order to capture what this application misses.

AdAware removes spyware/adware from your system. It is a very good program and simple to use. It is recommended that you use additional anti-malware software in order to capture what this application misses.

SpyWare Blaster removes spyware/adware from your system. It is a very good program and simple to use. It is recommended that you use additional anti-malware software in order to capture what this application misses.

Unlike the other listed anti-malware software, this application loads at startup and monitors your system to prevent unwanted applications from being installed.

G-Lock SpamCombat uses a bayesian filter & multiple public SPAM blacklists to quickly and easily identify and delete SPAM from POP accounts (not Hotmail, etc.) before you download the mail from the server.

It is perhaps the most comprehensive Free SPAM software available. The only drawback is that you must run the application separate from your normal email client, and the whitelist utility is a bit cumbersome. However, once setup, the program helps eliminate the frequent and tedious process of weeding through hundreds of SPAM in SECONDS.

POPFile is an automatic mail classification tool. Once properly set up and trained, it will scan all email as it arrives and classify it based on your training.

The secret behind this application is its powerful use of bayesian filtering and marvelous integration with Outlook and other email clients to filter and sort email.

This program is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for all email users!

If you are still using Internet Explorer (NOT recommended) - you know what a pain pop-ups are. The Google Toolbar will block almost all of them.

The Google Toolbar only works with Internet Explorer. Once installed, it requires no updating. If you are still seeing pop-ups after installing the Google Toolbar, you likely have spyware, adware and/or viruses on your machine.

After installing the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, we STRONGLY SUGGEST that you install and start to use FireFox as your primary web browser, which has built in pop-up blocking.

FireFox is hands down THE browser of choice and what everyone should be using! It is a lightweight cousin of Mozilla, which includes built-in pop-up blocking, a download manager, and tabbed browsing.

The absolute greatest feature in FireFox is tabbed browsing. Once you start using it (Ctrl+T or Ctrl+Click), it will be difficult to go back to Internet Explorer's numerous open windows.

An important note is that hackers generally don't target Mozilla or FireFox for attack - they prefer to go after an easier target: Internet Explorer.

FireFox does not display streaming video/audio or other flashy web gizmos out-of-the-box. For most users, this is a good thing as most of the annoying crud on a webpage will not display while leaving "good" content intact. To view such gizmos - use Internet Explorer.

Mozilla is a highly-recommended suite of full-featured, Internet applications that includes a Web Browser, Email Client, Webpage Developer, etc. These tools are quite robust and can do essentially everything found in the comparable Microsoft product (if not better).

The Web Browser (Mozilla) tends to be a memory hog and a bit slow to load. For this reason we recommend FireFox (above), which is a lightweight version of Mozilla, for use as your web browser.

The Email Client is very nice with comparible functionality and layout to MS Outlook. Thunderbird is the lightweight version of Mozilla's email client.

The webpage development application (Composer) is very intuitive, easy to use and infinately better than MS Frontpage, as you are not required to host the webpages on a server that implements the proprietary Frontpage extensions.

Unlike Internet Explorer, you can easily develop your own customizations, tools, utilities or extensions for Mozilla.

CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a freeware system optimization tool.

It removes unused and temporary files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space. The best part is that it's fast! (normally taking less that a second to run) and Free.

This utility gets rid of ALL the garbage on your machine. When run for the first time, the utility typically reclaims 100-300MB of hard drive space. It really does get clean up the crap that accumulated on your machine.

DVD Shrink enables you to easily make backup copies of DVD discs.

You can use DVD Shrink in conjunction with DVD burning software of your choice, to make a backup copy of any DVD video disc. If you have the latest version of Nero, DVD Shrink will also burn your backup DVD.

Additionally, the output from DVD Shrink can be saved as files on your hard drive, which you can then burn with software of your choice (primarily for non-Nero users).

DVD Shrink is free software.

TextPad is infinitely superior to Notepad or Wordpad.

TextPad is a powerful, general purpose editor for plain text files. Easy to use, with all the features a power user requires.

The great features of TextPad are the numerous options with managing/editing multiple files simultaneously, macro recording, excellent find/replace functionality, syntax highlighting/formatting, etc.

PDFCreator easily creates PDF files from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in ArcGIS, AutoCAD, Word, Open Office or any other Windows application.

WinAce is an archiving tool that is far superior to WinZip.

With WinAce, you can create/extract from almost any archive format out there (.zip, .ace, .gz, .cab, .rar, .arj, .arc, .lha, and many more...). Plus, it has an excellent, customizable user-interface

The program supports self-extracting archives, multiple-disk archives, password protection, comments, virus scans, AV signatures, testing and repair, variable compression, and more.

Highly recommended!

The download is good for 30 days - then you will get a nag screen to pay for a license ($30), however the program will continue to work indefinately if you do not pay. (Paying the $30 is recommended to support future development in this highly valuable utility).

A visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. Useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions

AWStats is a free powerful and featureful server logfile analyzer that shows you all your Web/Mail/FTP statistics including visits, unique visitors, pages, hits, rush hours, os, browsers, search engines, keywords, robots visits, broken links and more.

phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields, manage privileges, and export data into various formats.

This application makes web DB management a breeze and provides a basic, easy to use interface for MySQL database management.

XOOPS is a dynamic web content management system written in PHP for the MySQL database. It's object orientation makes it an ideal tool for developing small to large community websites, intra company and corporate portals, weblogs and much more.