OpenDisc project

David Heath
Wednesday, 23 September 2009 10:09

Business IT - Open Source

Microsoft Office 365

The project aims to "provide a free alternative to costly software, with equal or often better quality equivalents to proprietary, shareware or freeware software for Microsoft Windows" and "to educate users of Linux as an operating system for home, business and educational use.  The majority of programs featured on OpenDisc are also available on Linux."

Available as a downloadable .iso the OpenDisc is freely distributable and presents the user with an easy-to-use front end that simplifies the process if installing and learning about the programs contained on it.

Software is categorised into six groups: Design, Games, Internet, Multimedia, productivity and Utilities.  There are all the 'obvious' applications; Gimp, OpenOffice, Firefox etc, but there are also some more obscure, but very useful packages such as Audacity, Scribus VLC media player and Stellarium.

The great thing about this package is that it comes complete.  As an IT professional, I can simply burn a disk and hand it to anyone knowing that they can use it immediately – giving them the benefit of a number of best-of-breed open source packages.

In addition to OpenDisc, the team have also produced OpenEducationDisc which contains pretty-much all that is on OpenDisc along with a slew of additional educational programs such as NASA's Worldwind, TuxGuitar and Piano Booster.

Both packages are listed as being version 09.05 and can be downloaded from the website.  Note that they also recommend the free InfraRecorder to burn the image to DVD.