Steve Oualline and
Grace Oualline
Steve Oualline
San Diego, California, USA
Grace Oualline
San Diego, California, USA
Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s product page, located at www.apress.com/9781484230749 . For more detailed information, please visit www.apress.com/source-code .
ISBN 978-1-4842-3074-9
e-ISBN 978-1-4842-3075-6
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3075-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941973
© Steve Oualline and Grace Oualline 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
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Hundreds of free programs exist that have similar functionality to proprietary software. Here are some of the ones we cover in this book:
Free Program | Proprietary |
---|---|
LibreOffice | Microsoft Office |
Firefox | Edge/Internet Explorer |
Gimp | Adobe Photoshop |
Inkscape | Adobe Illustrator |
Dia | Visio |
GnuCash | Quicken |
Audacity | Many audio editors |
OpenShot | Many video editors |
LibreOffice | Microsoft Access |
In many cases, these free programs are better quality and have more features than their expensive counterparts. So, why aren’t they used more? It’s because the companies that make free software spend $0 on marketing. Microsoft and other companies spend millions .
Personally, I haven’t paid for any software program in the past 20 years, until buying a copy of Microsoft Windows to write this book. As such, I haven’t missed anything.
Proprietary software is written by people who want money. If a feature is not going to bring in money, it doesn’t get produced. Free software is written by people who want programs that work. Because they are using the programs, the features they choose to implement are the ones that are most beneficial to the people using them.
Thus, free software is sometimes on the cutting edge of technology. For example, tabbed browsing first appeared in Firefox in 2001 (back when it was called Mozilla). Microsoft eventually decided to copy this useful feature and include it in its Edge and Internet Explorer browsers.
You will find that the software introduced in this book is not only cheap but highly useful. You are encouraged to download and try the programs presented for free. The publisher’s web site at www.apress.com contains links to the various programs described as well as the examples used in this book.
—Steve Oualline
This book could not have been written without the efforts of thousands in the open source community who gave their time and effort to make the software we cover in this book.
Steve Oualline is an expert Linux programmer currently living in San Diego, California. He is the author of many books concerning Linux, C++, and open source software.
His hobbies include volunteering at the Orange Empire Railroad Museum, where he restored its Acme Traffic signal, one of 13 known to exist.
Grace Oualline is currently a freshman in high school and lives in San Diego, California, with her father, Steve, and his wife Chi. Grace is known by her peers as an art and math prodigy, with a love for learning. She aspires to work in the field of mathematics and design.