1 - Blender

Savings: $995.00 (Rhino)

Blender is a free 3D graphics application. It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, water simulations, skinning,animating, rendering, particle and other simulations, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications. Blender is available for several operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, IRIX, Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD with unofficial ports for BeOS, SkyOS, AmigaOS, MorphOS and Pocket PC. Blender has a robust feature set similar in scope and depth to other high-end 3D software such as Softimage|XSI, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, Lightwave and Maya. These features include advanced simulation tools such as rigid body, fluid, cloth and softbody dynamics, modifier based modeling tools, powerful character animation tools, a node based material and compositing system and Python for embedded scripting.

Block buster movie made with Blender:
http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/

Blender Home Page:
http://www.blender.org/

Blender Featured Examples:
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/feature-videos/

Download Blender:
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

2 - GIMP

Savings: $899.95 (Photoshop)

The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a free raster graphics editor used to process digital graphics and photographs. Typical uses include creating graphics and logos, resizing and cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing unwanted image features, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images inGIF format. It is often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop, the most widely used bitmap editor in the printing and graphics industries; however, it is not designed to be a Photoshop clone. The project’s mascot is named Wilber.

The project was started in 1995 by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis and is now maintained by a group of volunteers under the auspices of the GNOME Project. The current version of GIMP works with numerous operating systems, including all modern Linux distributions, all recent versions of Microsoft Windows, and Apple’s Mac OS X.

The GIMP Screenshot(s):

GIMP Homepage:
http://www.gimp.org/

Down The GIMP:
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

3 - OpenOffice

Savings: $310.00 (Microsoft Office)

OpenOffice (OO.o or OOo) is a free cross-platform office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others.

OpenOffice.org was originally derived from StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000 with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office by providing a free, open and high-quality alternative; later versions of StarOffice are based upon OpenOffice.org with additional proprietary components.

The project and software are informally referred to as OpenOffice, but this term is a trademark held by another party, requiring the project to adopt OpenOffice.org as its formal name

OpenOffice Applications:

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org application	Writer OpenOffice.org Writer application
Base OpenOffice.org Base application	Calc OpenOffice.org Calc application
Chart OpenOffice.org Chart application	Draw OpenOffice.org Draw application
Impress OpenOffice.org Impress application	Math OpenOffice.org Math application

OpenOffice Homepage:
http://www.openoffice.org/

OpenOffice Download:
http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

4 - VirtualBox

Savings: $185.00 (VM Ware)

VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software package, originally created by German software company innotek, now developed by Sun Microsystems as part of its Sun xVM virtualization platform. It is installed on an existing host operating system; within this application, additional operating systems, each known as a Guest OS, can be loaded and run, each with its own virtual environment.

Supported host operating systems include Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp, Windows XP or Vista, and Solaris, while supported guest operating systems include FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, Windows and Solaris.

According to a 2007 survey by DesktopLinux.com, VirtualBox is the third most popular software package for running Windows programs on Linux desktops.

VirtualBox Screenshot(s):

VirtualBox Homepage:

http://www.virtualbox.org/

VirtualBox Downloads:
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

5 - Cinelerra

Savings: $699.00 (Adobe Premier CS4)

Cinelerra is a free and open source software non-linear video editing system. It is designed for the GNU/Linux operating system, but has also been successfully ported to Mac OS X. No support is provided for any version of Microsoft Windows. It is produced by Heroine Virtual, and is distributed under the GNU General Public License. Cinelerra also includes a video compositing engine, allowing the user to perform common compositing operations such as keying and mattes.

Cinelerra was first released August 1, 2002, and was based in part on an earlier product known as Broadcast 2000. Broadcast 2000 was withdrawn by Heroine Virtual in September 2001.

Cinelerra Screenshot(s):

Cinelerra Homepage:
http://cinelerra.org/

Cinelerra Downloads:
http://cinelerra.org/getting_cinelerra.php

6 - FileZilla

Savings: $54.95 (WS FTP by IPSwitch)

The main features are the site manager, message log, file and folder view, and the transfer queue.

The site manager allows a user to create a list of FTP sites along with their connection data, such as the port number to use, the protocol to use, and whether to use anonymous or normal logon. For normal logon, the username is saved and optionally the password.

The message log is displayed along the top of the window. It displays the console-type output showing the commands sent by FileZilla and the remote server’s responses.

The file and folder view, displayed under the message log, provides a graphical interface for FTP. Users can navigate folders and view and alter their contents on both the local and remote machines using an Explorer-style tree interface. Users can drag and drop files between the local and remote computers.

The transfer queue, displayed along the bottom of the window, shows the real-time status of each queued or active file transfer.

As of version 2.2.23, FileZilla uses Unicode internally. As a result, it no longer runs on Windows 9x/ME.

The current binary versions of FileZilla for Mac OS X no longer support Mac OS X v10.4 ‘Tiger’ or earlier. Running FileZilla with versions older than Mac OS X v10.5 ‘Leopard’ requires compilation

FileZilla Screenshot(s):

FileZilla Homepage:
http://filezilla-project.org/

FileZilla Download:
http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client

7 - WINE

Savings: Priceless!

Wine is a free software application which aims to allow Unix-like computer operating systems on the x86 architecture to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows. Wine also provides a software library known as Winelib against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like systems.

The name ‘Wine’ derives from the recursive acronym Wine Is Not an Emulator. While the name sometimes appears in the forms “WINE” and “wine”, the project developers have agreed to standardize on the form “Wine”.

The Wine developers released version 1.0 of Wine, after 15 years of development, on June 17, 2008

WINE Screenshot(s):

WINE Homepage:
http://www.winehq.org/

WINE Application Database:
http://appdb.winehq.org/

WINE Downloads:
http://www.winehq.org/site/download

8 - AVG Antivirus

Savings: $45 (Name your product here)

Simply put AVG Anti-Virus program in every sense of the word.  They have been giving away their watered down version of the program for years on Windows and now on Linux.  It’s a great program, and it’s not to resource intensive.  However if you’re running Linux in the first place, I would say it’s probably more to work TRY and get a virus on Linux then it would be to remove it.

AVG Free Download:
http://free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition

AVG Free Homepage:
http://free.avg.com/

TOTAL SAVINGS: $3187

Today the demo for the highly anticipated FPS zombie horror title Left 4 Dead has become available. Any individual who has already purchased the title will be able to access the demo, the full demo will become available to the public Nov. 11th.

Left 4 Dead is the first person Zombie shooter published by Electronic Arts. It has generated a great deal of buzz for it’s concept, and type of game play.  The game will feature a four person co-op, and you will have the option to play as the living or the living dead.

For fans of FPS, and Survival Horror games this demo should help curve the hunger for zombie carnage, until the games release date.  The full demo goes worldwide Nov. 11th, and  will run through till Nov. 18th. Left 4 Dead will hit the shelves Nov. 17th.

Here is a link to Steam to download the demo

Download Free WarPath Demo

WarPath is a budget-priced first-person shooter computer game developed by Digital Extremes, who previously developed Pariah. The game was originally being developed as a sequel to Pariah, but since Pariah was a commercial flop, WarPath continued development as a whole new game. However, the similarities between the gameplay of both games are very apparent.