Free Operating Systems
Free and Open Source Platforms for your computer
Free / Open Source Operating Systems
Welcome to thefreecountry.com's directory of free and open source operating systems, platforms and environments that you can use on your computer.
Free / Open Source OS
- Free Alternative Operating Systems
- Free Windows Clones, Emulators and Emulation Layers
- Free Linux Distributions
- Free Linux LiveCD Distributions - Live Linux on a CD or DVD
- Free BSD-based Operating Systems
- Free DOS-compatible Operating Systems (MS-DOS/PC-DOS Clones)
- Free BeOS and BeOS Clones
- Free Network Attached Storage (NAS) File Server Operating System Distributions
- Free Web Operating Systems (WebOS)
Useful Tools for OS Management
- Free Partitioning Software - Copy, Create, Move, Resize, Convert, Undelete Partitions
- Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities
- Free x86 / PC Emulators and Virtual Machines
- Free 68k and PowerPC Macintosh Emulators
- Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Software
- Free CD and DVD Burners and Copying Software
- More Free Software Tools and Utilities
- More Free Emulators and Virtual Machines
Free Programming Resources
- Free Source Code and Programming Libraries
- Free Compilers and Interpreters for Programming Languages
- Free Programming Tools
- Free Online Programming Documentation, Frequently Recommended Programming Books
Other Resources of Interest
- Free Security, Privacy and Anonymity Resources
- Free Web Hosts, Budget Web Hosts
- Free Perl CGI Scripts
- Free PHP Scripts
- Free JavaScript, AJAX, DHTML and Web 2.0 Scripts
- Free Script Hosting Services
- JavaScript: Free Scripts, Tutorials, Articles
- Free Tutorials and Articles for Webmasters
- More Free Webmaster Resources
New Pages on thefreecountry.com
- Free / Open Source Non-SQL Database Servers and Engines
- Free Royalty Free Music and Sounds
- Free Programmer's Fonts
- Free Font Manager Software
- Free Text User Interface Programming Libraries and Source Code
- Free Alternative Operating Systems
- Free Autorun/Autoplay DVD and CD Menu Creation Software
- Free 3D Software Box Image Makers
- Free DVD and VCD Players, Free Movie and Video Playing Software
- Free DVD Authoring and Creation Software
- Free Antivirus Software and Free Online Virus Scans
New Pages on thesitewizard.com
- How to Rescue Your Website from the Clutches of a Bad Web Designer or Bad Web Host
- How to Created Rounded Corners for Your Box Borders in CSS
- How to Add a Feedback Form to Your Website with Dreamweaver CS5
- How to Manage and Auto-Update Multiple Pages on Your Website with Dreamweaver CS5's Template System
- Dreamweaver CS5 Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Dreamweaver CS5
- What is MySQL? What is a Database? What is SQL?
- How to Create Bulleted Lists (Unordered Lists) for Your Web Page with KompoZer
- How to Point Multiple Domain Names to One Website: And How to Avoid Search Engine Problems When Doing So
- Should You Choose a Linux or a Windows Web Hosting Package? Is There Such a Thing as a Mac Web Host?
- How to Add a CAPTCHA Test to Your Feedback Form Script: Reducing Spam in Your Contact Form
- How to Point a Domain Name to Your Website (Or What to Do After Buying Your Domain Name)
- What Does It Mean to Park a Domain Name? Domain Name Parking Explained
- How to Install Apache 2.2 on Windows Vista
- What is HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Perl? Do I Need to Learn Them to Create a Website?
- How to Design a Two Column Layout for Your Website Using CSS
- How to Create a Website with Dreamweaver CS4 (Dreamweaver Tutorial)
New Pages on HowToHaven.com
- How to Change the Disk Signature of a Drive Without Losing Existing Data or Reformatting
- How to Slipstream Windows XP Service Pack 3 to Create an Integrated XP Setup Disk with SP 3
- How to Back Up Your Hard Disk in Windows
- How to Securely Prepare Your Old Computer for Disposal
- How to Work Around the Missing Up Arrow Button in Vista's Windows Explorer
- How to Create a Bootable "Live" Windows Rescue CD
- How to Delete Undeletable, Locked, Busy or Currently In-Use Files in Windows
- How to Record or Save Streaming Music or Audio
Popular Pages
- How to Create/Start Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
- How to Create a Bootable Windows XP Setup CD/DVD on a Preinstalled Windows System
- Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities
- Free Spyware/Malware Removal, Detection and Prevention Tools and Sites
- Free Antivirus Software
- Free Device Driver Backup and Extraction Utilities
- Free DVD Authoring and Creation Software
- Free DVD/CD Emulators, Free Virtual CD/DVD Drives
- Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Software
- How to Create a Website with Dreamweaver CS4 (Dreamweaver Tutorial)
- How to Design and Publish Your Website with KompoZer
What's New
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Note: this What's New column also includes information from
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- Create your own first person shooter action game with the latest addition to the Free Games Programming Libraries and Source Code page. This 3D game engine features all the usual 3D graphical effects and 3D sound effects, and comes with a wide variety of tools (model editor, level editor, etc), and a scripting language. It also includes a set of customisable weapon types that you can use for your games, letting you get started quickly creating weapons like pistols, rocket launchers, laser blasters, machine guns, etc. A number of games showing off different features of the software are also included in the package. And it's free.
- Convert videos and music between different formats with the newest software to be added to the Free Video Converters or Transcoders page. This one supports a huge variety of formats, from the usual avi, mpg, mov, flv (Flash video), etc, to mobile phone formats like 3gp, 3g2. You can also use it to do simple editing (cut and join video clips) and to extract the audio from DVD or video files. (For more complex tasks, you should get a full video editor like one of those on the Free Video Editors page.)
- New page: How to Rescue Your Website from the Clutches of a Bad Web Designer or Bad Web Host. Is your website stuck with a bad web host or a bad web designer, who is refusing to return your site to you, and leaving it to languish? Here's help on how to regain control of your website and move it elsewhere without their cooperation.
-
Fancy writing a computer program in the C programming language?
The Turbo C 2.01 compiler has been restored to the Free C/C++ Compilers
and Interpreters page. I'm not sure when it got removed from my list, but I think it was around the time Borland sold
its development tools, and the new owners started removing the free compiler suites that Borland used to provide.
Anyway, it's back. For those not familiar with Turbo C, it was a famous C compiler known for its fast compilation,
built-in graphics library and IDE (development environment).
On the other hand, if you prefer a more up-to-date tool so that you can write computer programs for a modern system like Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (etc), take a look at the other free C or C++ compilers on the page. There are now 38 of them listed, so chances are that you should be able to find something you like.
- A new COBOL compiler for Windows has been added to the Free COBOL Compilers and Interpreters page. This compiler implements ANSI-74 COBOL with some features from ANSI-85 and ISO 1989:2002. If you're learning the COBOL computer language or want to write programs in COBOL, check it out.
- A new ping software has been added to the Free Graphical Ping Utilities to Check Network Connections page. Ping is often used as a rough test to see if a particular host (such as a website) on the network is reachable or alive. While most operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, already come with command line ping software , these Ping tools have a graphical interface and often include additional facilities not present in the built-in programs. All the programs listed on the page are free.
- A new screen reader has been added to the Free Screen Readers: Text to Speech Conversion page. Screen readers read whatever is displayed on your monitor aloud, so that the blind can use computers to read and write documents, surf the Internet, etc. If you are a webmaster, you can also use such readers to test your website to make sure it is accessible to the blind.
- New page: How to Created Rounded Corners for Your Box Borders in CSS. Tired of putting retro rectangular boxes with right-angled corners on your web pages? This article teaches you how to create boxes with rounded corners to enclose your text and/or pictures, giving it a more modern look. And you don't even need to do tedious things like slice images: the tutorial uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to accomplish the job.
- Do you fancy creating your own PDF ebook? Or perhaps you simply want to convert a document into the PDF format? Check out the newest entry in the Free PDF Converters, Editors and Printer Drivers page. There are now 11 PDF conversion tools on that page, so even if you don't like the latest addition, there are many others to choose from. Besides, they are all free: you can get them all if you like.
- Another frequently asked question (FAQ) has been added to the How to Add a CAPTCHA Test to Your Feedback Form Script: Reducing Spam in Your Contact Form article. This one deals with how to solve the problem of the ReCAPTCHA service rejecting your CAPTCHA test after you move your site to a new domain.
- Do you have a huge file that you want to send someone but find that it is too large to attach in an email? The newest utility to be added to the Free File Splitters and Joiners page lets you split that file into smaller chunks so that it can be transmitted to someone else and provides an easy-to-use way for them to reassemble the file back together again. It even checks the integrity of the file after recombining it to make sure it's identical to the original.
- A new C library that lets you easily write 2D graphical games (complete with sound) on Linux has been added to the Free 2D and 3D Game Engines, Games Programming Libraries and Source Code page. There are also other free libraries on that page that let you write games for other systems, like Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.
- A new C cross-compiler for the AVR series of microprocessors has been added to the Free C/C++ Compilers and Cross-Compilers for Microcontrollers, PDA, Calculators, Embedded Systems and Other Devices page. This one is hosted on Windows. Note: if you're just looking for an ordinary C or C++ compiler for your computer, please see the Free C/C++ Compilers and Interpreters page instead.
- Do you have this nagging feeling that you have multiple copies of the same file on your computer, possibly under different filenames? Now you can find out, and get rid of the duplicates if you wish, with the latest software to be added to the Free Find / Delete Duplicate Files Utilities. This program checks the file on your system for duplicates, even if those files are in diverse locations, with different filenames and dates. It allows you to clean up your system and free your disk space.
- A new clipboard manager has been added to the Free Clipboard History Managers and Extenders page. This is a minimalistic and lightweight clipboard extender that stores multiple cut-and-paste text snippets. If you've never used a clipboard manager before, check this page out. You'll be surprised how handy such utilities are, and how much it can improve your productivity.
- New page: How to Add a Feedback Form to Your Website with Dreamweaver CS5. Learn how to use Dreamweaver CS5 to add a feedback form to your website, so that your visitors can send you email messages without leaving your site. No programming knowledge is required. This is the final chapter of the Dreamweaver CS5 Tutorial.
- New page: How to Manage and Auto-Update Multiple Pages on Your Website with Dreamweaver CS5's Template System. Dreamweaver makes it easy for webmasters to create and manage multiple web pages on a site. For example, if you want to change your site design, you only have to do it in one place, and Dreamweaver will automatically update the rest of your site to include your changes, even if you have hundreds of pages on your site. This tutorial shows you how to take advantage of this web editor to manage your website in an easy and efficient manner. This is chapter 7 of the Dreamweaver CS5 Tutorial.
- A new open source operating system, designed with security in mind, has been added to the Free Alternative Operating Systems page. Qube OS operates by using security by isolation with the help of virtualisation ("virtualization") technology. Not only are programs isolated from each other, but even some system components (eg networking and storage) are also sandboxed.
- Thinking of creating your own font? Check out the newest font construction tool that has been added to the Free Font Editors, Font Creation Software and Sites page. This latest one is a Mac program, but there are other font creation programs listed on the page for Windows and Linux too.
- New page: How to Customize Your Website's Navigation Menu Bar with Dreamweaver CS5. Learn how to customize the navigation menu buttons of your website in Dreamweaver CS5. Add new buttons, delete existing ones, make them point to important pages on your website, and change the colours of the buttons both when the mouse is hovering over them and when it is not. This is the chapter 6 of the free Dreamweaver CS5 Tutorial.
- A free painting program with a wide selection of brushes (including pencil, charcoal, smudge, ink, etc) has been added to the Free Drawing and Painting Software page. The program, MyPaint, is open source, and works on Windows and Linux systems. There are also numerous other free programs listed on that page if you prefer something else, including Mac OS X programs and free photo editors.
- Another anonymous surfing service has been added to the Free Anonymous Surfing and Proxies page. Such services aim to let you surf the Internet without leaving a trail of particulars about yourself at the sites you visit.
- New page: How to Make Your Images and Text into Clickable Links with Dreamweaver CS5. Find out how to make your pictures and words into links that point to other pages and websites using Dreamweaver CS5. This is the fifth chapter of the Dreamweaver CS5 Tutorial.
- New page: How to Change the Background of Your Website in Dreamweaver CS5. Learn how to use Dreamweaver CS5 to set the background colours ("colors") of your web page or use an image as the backdrop for the various parts of your website in this chapter of the Dreamweaver CS5 Tutorial.
- The STIX fonts, a set of free, open source, royalty-free fonts for engineering, mathematical and scientific documents, has been added to the Free Fonts page. Besides the usual characters found in most fonts, these additionally contain the symbols needed in engineering and scientific documents but are not usually found in the standard fonts. Incidentally, if you don't need a font with such an extensive support for scientific symbols, there are also numerous other free fonts found on that page, including fancy ones (eg, if you want something to adorn your images on your website).
