In an effort to both provide all Students with easy & free access to many of the programs used in their school and in an effort to save the district money, the CPS Technology Department has installed many Free & Open Source programs on District Computers. These programs are provided free by their respective contributers.


A listing of many Free & Open Source Software that have been installed on District workstations can be found below. All of these programs can be downloaded and installed on your computer for free.

 

Links to the webpage and download for each program can be accessed by clicking the underlined program name. An alternative link is also included next to some of the programs, which has been designated by the "+."

CD & DVD Burning

 

  • ImgBurn – (+) Utility for creating and burning CD/DVD Images (ISOs, NRGs, etc), as well as creating Data CDs/DVDs (Freeware)

  • InfraRecorder (+) – Data/Audio CD/DVD Creator & Burner (Open Source)

 

Image Manipulation

 

  • The Gimp (+) – Advanced Image Editing Program (Open Source)

  • IconLab (+) - Tool for Creating/Editing Program Icons (Freeware)

  • Inkscape (+) – SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) Image Editor (Open Source)

  • Irfanview – Graphics Viewer & Editor (Freeware – Windows)

  • Paint.NET (+) – MS Paint/Photoshop-like Image & Photo Editor (Open Source)

  • Picasa (+) - Image & Photo Organizing Program by Google (Freeware)

 

Media Players

 

  • VLC (+) - Plays Pretty much any media format including DVDs, Video files, Audio files, etc. (Open Source)

  • K-Lite Mega Codec Package (+) - Same as Above, but includes the ability to play Real Player, Quicktime, and many other media files without the need for the normal bloated media players (Allows you to play those files in any media player. (Freeware)

 

Multimedia Editing

 

  • Audacity (+) - Audio editor that can record, play, import, and export sounds (Open Source)

  • Avidemux - Video Editing/Authoring/Encoding/Filtering (Open Source)

  • Blender (+) - 3D Animation & Graphic design (Freeware) [To see a few examples of videos made in Blender, Click Here.] 

  • Google Sketch-Up - 3D Modeling Program (Freeware)

  • Hydrogen – Drum & Beat Machine (Open Source)

  • Photo Story 3 – Allows you to create a slideshow presentation with music from photos, and export to a movie file (Freeware)

  • Virtual Dub (+) - Video Processing Program (Open Source)

  • CamStudio – Record your computer's screen or sections of the screen to a flash or video file. (Freeware)

 

Office Suites

 

  • AbiWord (+) – MS Word Alternative (Open Source)

  • OpenOffice.org (+) - MS Office Alternative (Provides programs similar to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) (Open Source)

  • Scribus (+) – Similar to MS Publisher (Desktop Publishing) (Open Source)

 

Programming &Web Authoring

 

  • Alice - 3D Programming Environment for learning Object-Oriented Programming (Open Source)

  • NVU (+) - Create/Edit Web pages (similar to Frontpage & Dreamweaver) (Open Source)

  • Kompozer – Updated Version of NVU (Open Source)

 

Space & Science

 

 

Text Editors

 

  • Notepad++ (+) - Sophisticated Text editor, far superior to MS Notepad. Designed for programming (Open Source)

 

Tux Games

 

  • Tux Paint (+) - Painting program designed for children (Open Source)

  • Tux Math – Math Game for Children

  • Tux Type - Touch-Typing Game for Children

  • Tux Racer – Racing game in which one races a penguin on its belly down a hill to gather herring (Open source)