What was the first free or open source software you used?

[cowlip]

I was just responding to the poll ( https://dcarf.deakin.edu.au/phpsurveyor/index.php ) posted a few threads below about involvement in the open source and free software community, and one of the questions got me to think about how I first got involved in it. For me it was through forums and eventually bugzillas, which I don't really see a real equivalent in the proprietary world, even though they have blogs and Microsoft has for example, the forum Channel 9.

I think for me it was first the Mozilla Suite which I didn't use very much. However, I used Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox when it was at 0.3 or 0.4 and I remember the great community at Mozillazine which attracted me to open source in general, of course leading to me filing bugs (.....ok, mostly dupes), then that led to an awareness of open source and trying out the various Linux distribs that are in every geek's repertoire. The first GNU/LINUX distrib I tried was Fedora Core 2, at the behest of an online friend who gamed, but who was also really into servers and all that jazz :)

What about you?

[Ubunted]

Firefox 0.8.

[aysiu]

I think it was Firefox. It may have been Audacity, though. Not sure.

[Enigmus]

Firefox 1.3. Even with 2.0 out, I still have 1.3 on my laptop's Windows 2000 installation.

[albeano2004]

For me, it would have to be Open Office - I tried it on Mandrake 9,2 three years ago (my first Linux distro)

[karellen]

firefox, don't remember exactly the version

[tubasoldier]

IN 2002 i started by
trying Red Hat Linux 7
and using firebird 0.2 (now known as firefox)

IN 2003 I
installed Mandrake 9.2 and have been using linux ever since.

[hardyn]

open office 1.x for windows. didn't like it at the time.
dove head first into 2.x for windows, haven't turned back since.

i now get really frustrated when i have to use my windows partition.

[tbroderick]

Red Hat 5.2 that came with a Linux For Dummies book.

[jamyskis]

Red Hat 5.2 that came with a Linux For Dummies book.

Neverball (it was included with a computer magazine I bought, about six years ago)

[Rui Pais]

The first open source software i tried was Red Hat 4.

We had a computer course on university with old Unixs.
They was very hard to deal to us, very used to dos command...
Saw a magazine with the RedHad Cd and tried.
I could managed to make printer print (not bad). My 14k modem (pure speed, lol), of course, never worked.
I work on it to get used to shell commands and forget it as the course was done.

Later when i got a new computer, it came with a lot of disc space, so i decided to give Linux just another tried. It was after a week of fighting the box, trying to install Win98 and W2k on it (the first was very bad but i had paid software specific for it...). My only mistake was that i always installed W2k first and that make w98 installation brake (Microsoft products seems to be generally incompatible with each other!)
Besides a lot of times installations frozen in the middle of process.

I was very irritated when i reboot with a RedHat8 (i think...) on it.
It failed almost at once and report that the device seems to be incapable of read the media correctly so installation would be aborted!
I almost scream. Then calm down, remembered the frozen installs, replaced the cdrom driver with the one from the old computer and things go well. That drive totally died 1 weak later on the old computer. At least Anaconda refused to work on it. Microsoft don't seems to do any test neither on media nor devices :( It would saved me a lot of time.

Installations of Linux was so simple as so easy, specially compared with the nightmare i had the weak before, that even before install ended i was converted! I quick upgrade to RedHat9, then move to other distros, never stop using Open Source software since then.

Never missed Windows, btw.

[saulgoode]

My first would probably be the Public Domain program SPICE (Simulation Program with IC Emphasis), coded in FORTRAN. We used punch cards to enter our circuit descriptions.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Mozilla vanilla, I think it was version 1.0 of it.
I didnt use firefox till it was version 0.7

[tigerpants]

An early version of audiograbber. After that, I tried to replace every MS and proprietary piece of software with freeware. It was a nice to have an entire windows based system with not one piece of paid for software bar a couple of games.

Still, it didn't stop windows being crap, hence the eventual switch to linux.

[bikeboy]

I think it was Firefox 0.7, although it may have been 0.6. The other possibility is Gaim 1.x, I found that while looking for alternatives to msn to avoid the ads that were in MS's client.

[Somenoob]

The first version of the VLC media player

[SlCKB0Y]

IN 2002 i started by
trying Red Hat Linux 7
and using firebird 0.2 (now known as firefox)

IN 2003 I
installed Mandrake 9.2 and have been using linux ever since.

I think you'll find 0.2 was known as Phoenix browser, later to become firebird and then firefox.

Mine would be Redhat 5.1 or possibly Caldera something or other. Both were in 1997.

[Erik Trybom]

I had heard of Linux before, but I tried it myself for the first time in 2002 when I leased a laptop from my university. It had some custom Red Hat 7.3 version on it called "Flying Linux". Í wasn't that impressed when comparing it to Windows 2000 (which was also installed on it), but at least I got to try it and everything worked, including the wireless network card.

We were forced to use Linux and Emacs in an early Java course, and I think Emacs was what actually made me read about the FSF and the GNU project. I didn't care much about it until later when I realized that GNU software generally was a lot better than the crap you got from Download.com.

In 2005 I decided to give Linux another try and chose Ubuntu, which I haven't regretted.

Edit: Wait a minute! I used ZSnes and CDEx long before that, without realizing what the GPL was. Could have been as early as 1998.

[claudex]

It was Firefox 1.5

[AndyCooll]

The first open-source app I can remember deliberately using would be Firefox (don't remember the version).

The first "free" app would probably be something like Winzip.

Of course, with both these answers I need to include a disclaimer. Since I've been using computers for many years I may well have been using an open-source app and never realised it for instance.

:cool:

[slimdog360]

firefox 1.something, I remember the big 1.5 update deal so it would have been in between realease 1 and 1.5

Though I did use netscape a couple of times back in the day, but I didnt really know much about it.

[bonzodog]

it would have to be.....Pine, the mail client running on an SLS Linux server way back in 1996. It was the way we had native mail accounts.

[Kateikyoushi]

BSD or VMS university servers I am not sure which one I used first but the was same week anyway.

[Luffield]

Pine (but I didn't know it was OSS then). Then I used CDex (and I still do!) and then Firebird 0.6 or 0.7 I think. It was Firebird/Firefox that got me interested in Open Source and eventually to become an Ubuntu user, and I'm grateful to the guy who told me about Firebird for it.

[Rhapsody]

Probably the Mozilla Application Suite, way back in 2002. I used it a lot, and eventually switched to Phoenix. The rest is history.

[MethodOne]

Mine was ZSNES (GPL), back in 2002. In 2003, I used a GameCube Action Replay cheat-code decryption program called GCNcrypt (GPL). The first time I read the GPL was in the GCNcrypt documentation. I got more aware of open-source when I started using Firefox.

[fuscia]

audacity, or zinf, though it wasn't until firefox 1.0 that i was even remotely aware what 'open source' was.

[laxmanb]

Tux Racer... followed by The GIMP.

[manmower]

I used a lot of stuff from sourceforge, too much to remember which was the first. Of the "big names" probably first Mozilla and later Phoenix (now known as Firefox).

[mostwanted]

One of the earliest versions of Mozilla a long time before Phoenix, now Firefox, was even out.

[qazwsx]

1. OpenOffice.org 1.0
2. Firefox <1.0
3. Thunderbird <1.0
4. Gimp 2.x
. Some
. minor
. programs
n. Ubuntu with GNOME (june 2006)
n+1. Ubuntu with KDE (currently in use)
I have ditched Firefox to Konqueror and Thunderbird to KMail.

[Interestedinthepenguin]

The Xvid codec. ...I think.

[Sunflower1970]

Dear me. I really don't know. I've been trying freeware programs on and off for quite a while.

I know a few years ago I was looking for something to help me begin to do some video editing. I didn't want to pay for them since I didn't know how often I'd be using the programs. I found VOB edit, dvdshrink, dvd decrypter (and I do miss it...wish it could be used in Linux :( ) to name a few. Then I remember hearing about Mozilla, so I installed it, and not long after that I switched to Firefox.

[the.dark.lord]

Firefox 1.something. Loved it, and it later got me hooked to FOSS.

[qamelian]

Emacs on the Atari 512 ST. Although I had been programming for a couple of years on both 8- and 16-bit Atari computers, and everything I wrote myself was distributed with source code whether it was coded using an interpreted language like Atari Basic or a compiled language like Lattice C or GFA Basic. I didn't now what F/OSS was at the time, but I always just sorta felt right giving away the source code too!

[der_joachim]

Probably vim 4 or 5 or pine. It was back in 1997. Hmmm... Getting old. Must chase those dang neighborhood kids from my lawn. :)

[qpieus]

Firefox (I don't remember which version, it was about 1.5 years ago)

[Pikestaff]

Firefox 0.8/0.9... can't remember exactly, it was quite a few months before the first official release though. Actually now that I think about it, I believe I had tried Mozilla about a year earlier but didn't find myself particularly impressed with it. It wasn't until Firefox came around that I started getting really interested in free software/open source.

[Elena678]

FEDORA CORE 4

so great :)

[kanha]

gud old firefox 1.0
:popcorn:

[muguwmp67]

About 25 years ago I was addicted to two ascii games, nethack and empire.

[androxxl]

For me it was firefox and openoffice. :)

[Nils Olav]

The X Window System

[tbodine]

I know that it was either Mozilla (not Firefox) or The GIMP.. I can't remember which though, I believe it was The GIMP.
The first three I remember using on Windows before I made the switch were Mozilla, The GIMP, and Audacity.

[finferflu]

Firefox 1.5! (if I can remember correctly)

[tnseditor]

The first open source program I used was Firefox 1. something after reading about it in Yahoo News. About a month later I was reading in Yahoo News about OpenOffice and since I didn't have Microsoft Office I decided to try OpenOffice 2 beta. I loved it and immediately installed it on all of our computers. Next up was Audacity. By the time I had used these programs in Windows I had become comfortable enough to try an Open Source operating system and I did some distro trying until I came upon Ubuntu Breezy Badger. I used it a little and Windows a lot. When Dapper came out I started using Ubuntu more and when I got my new computer I put the Feisty beta on it. I have been using Ubuntu nonstop since January 12! :)

[Xzallion]

Zsnes Ftw!

[picpak]

It was either one of the early Firebird builds or Gaim 0.x. Can't remember right now.

[zAo]

My first open source app was Pine I think.
First open source OS was Red Hat 8.

[bone_saw]

At first, I was going to say it was Firefox 0.7 (I think), but I forgot about Gnucleus that I was using for about a year or so prior to that. I may have used some open source stuff prior to that, just not aware of it.

Honestly, I had been using FF for a while before understanding what open source really was.

[dbbolton]

is notepad ++ open-source ?

paint.net, OOo, firefox and audacity are up there for me.

[macogw]

It was Mozilla after I read in the newspaper about how a bunch of websites were compromised but you were only in danger of being infected if you used Internet Explorer.

[Clay_Banger]

ff ftw! like version 1.0.1 or sumthing like that.

[xXx 0wn3d xXx]

Firefox (can't remember version) on Windows XP.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Not open source, but the first totally free computer program I used was a little 3D renderer called Anim8or, then I soon afterward started using Wings3D for modelling.

[bwingbob]

Tcl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcl) a company I worked for used it to develop a HMI for a quality control system the ran on SCO Unix or NT4.0, around 1994.

[FuturePilot]

For me it was Firefox. I started using it shortly after 1.5 was released.

[karellen]

mozilla browser

[Kujen]

Either gaim or mandrake linux. Not sure if I started using gaim before I tried mandrake a few years ago. (I think it was mandrake first)

[K.Mandla]

The Gimp. I was looking for a free alternative to Photoshop for our offices, and that was what came up first in Google. Little did I know. ...

[nalmeth]

Audacity, I didn't know the difference other than that I could use it for free.

[Quillz]

Hmm... I believe the first open source application I ever used was Mozilla Firefox 0.8. The first Linux distro I ever tried was SuSE 9.3 Professional.

[Bavo]

phoenix 0.2 or something like that. (later known as firebird, now known as firefox)
or maybe OOo, don't remember which one was there first.

Before that I tried redhat 7, but never really used it. Later I switched to gentoo, and after that I never went back to windows again. (after gentoo i tried Arch and then when ubuntu 4.10 came out i switched to ubuntu, and i'm still here :))

[Frak]

Netscape Navigator, when it became open source, not before.

[Stickymaddness]

Redhat 6.2

[Watson]

firefox also for me. can't remember what version tho

[Freakazilla]

I went to the library and checked out Linux For Dummies
it was a old distro I cant even remember the name but then I went out and bought Red Hat 7.2 and Mandrake 8.0
and I read the book's that came with them and took it from their

[lyceum]

The first ones I heard about were Firefox and OOo. One of my friends tryed really hard to push me into useing them, and another friends told me they were not that good, as they were free. Guess which one I believed? So the first one I used was Blender. My friend that talked me out of OOo and Firefox told me about it (ironically). He said it was not very good, but that the interface was very natural. He said that if Maya (the program he used) had the same interface it would be better but that Blender would never be as good as Maya. After making a few renders with Blender I was so impressed I desided to give Firefox a try. Blender was also the first one I gave any sort of money to (I bought their book, even though it was free on line).

[Cloudy]

Firefox, and the first Linux distro I used was either OpenSuSE or Ubuntu 5.10.

[beefcurry]

Oh my, there were just too many Open Source programs to remember which ones which. But for first Distro its Feather Linux. Good philosophy but not made well enough.

[metalkr]

i'm new linux (six months) and i had to work with linux because my work on "XVI Verano De la Investigacion Cientifica". I developed a asp.net application with Mono 1.1.13 and apache 2.0 on Ubuntu Brezzy Server. I used Kate like editor and Firefox:guitar: .

[daynah]

Red Hat, but I didn't really USE it, I just tried it out on my dad's computer.

The first I used was Gaim. Fell in love. Now I use Kopete. ;)

[euler_fan]

probably LyX or Firefox while I was still a windows user, shortly followed by Thunderbird and OO.org.

[ryamar1177]

Abiword- long time ago!

[lawrens]

Redhat 5.2 I think, I can't remember if it was 5.2 or 7.2, it has been a while, and I can't say I 'used' it, I just install it and played with it for 2 weeks, took me a few days to get the modem, soundcard/display card drivers and everything to work, browse the web, listened to some music... until Lilo messed up and I decided to go back to windows whichever the version was.

Then I guess it's not til Firefox I've used another open source software if you don't count all the programs that comes with redhat.

[DC@DR]

Eclipse and Firefox! When I used those, I realized that how good OSS could be, so I started google around and found out Ubuntu. That's how I got in bed with GNU/Linux/Ubuntu/OSS :-)

[Adamant1988]

Red Hat 7.2 was first, and anything included in it.

[DirtDawg]

TADS! (http://www.tads.org/)

[OrangeCrate]

Firefox, Thunderbird, and OOo. All while still 100% Windows. Linux finally, and obviously the switch was then pretty easy.

[%hMa@?b<C]

firefox, back when it was called "firebird"

[MattSMiddleton]

Firefox I believe, I can't remember what the release number was though.

[smbm]

Some version of BSD on work computers in the late 90s.

[quick_dudley]

mozilla (before it broke into firefox, thunderbird, etc). I forget the version, but it was one of the ones that worked on mac-os 9

[the_darkside_986]

As far as I can remember, my first encounter with free open source software was Dev-CPP because I was trying to learn C++ and needed a free compiler (not the impossible to use Borland thing). I glimpsed over the GPL included with it, and I thought that it sounded really cool. I was unfamiliar with GNU/Linux until we had to install it in lab PC's Computer Organization class my freshman year of university.

[BWF89]

Firefox. It was either 1.0 or one of the versions right before it changed to the first official stable release. I was in 9th grade. Currently in 11th.

or possibly GIMP. Or maybe, LimeWire?

[use a name]

Must've been SuSE Linux 6.2. I needed LaTeX and c/c++... And I paid for it. :)

[blueturtl]

The Mozilla web browser. When it got discontinued I moved to Firefox. Big disappointment, since Mozilla was actually lighter while it carried more features at the same time.

[fdrake]

firefox

[samjh]

Gnome 1.x, running on Sun Solaris at university (one could argue that X Terminal was technically the first). They changed to KDE later on.

For personal use, it was the installer for Red Hat 3. But the installation was not successful (couldn't detect HDD). A few years afterwards, I stumbled across Blender3D. Shortly after that, I used GIMP as well.

[Kujen]

Actually I think I lied. I think I was using Firebird (Firefox original name.) before I tried Mandrake.

[Hendrixski]

Red hat in high school... I didn't get it... then I went to college and did all of my programming on a UNIX box (hence the icon) and of course used GCC... didn't know it was open source, or what that meant. But now I'm like "wow, that's awesome"

[blackened]

I used lynx to browse the web with back in '94 at university. After that the next time I really dove into open source stuff was with the GIMP in '97 followed shortly by Mandrake and Redhat '99. Think RH was in version 5 or 6 at the time, don't remember for Mandrake as I didn't use it for very long.

[wncben]

Anyone remember tandy? I cut my teeth manually entering line after line of code into an old tandy model III in grade school, you can't get any more open source than manually typing 2500 lines of code ;) I used to write BASIC choose your own adventure stories. Remember BYTE magazine? I had an old ATARI 800XL- like a c-64 with better graphics, and a subscription to byte... I still remember the frustration of typing code, and debugging, but the thrill of figuring out how the program worked, and the power to tweak things....

Recently... in the past few years: Gnutella, gnucleus, firefox, thunderbird, netscape....
My first linux distro: Puppy
Have had ubuntu in one form or another since breezy (though I skipped dapper) am am now really enjoying Feisty!

~Cheers! Ben

[old_geekster]

Open Office about 5 years ago. It took me all this time to convert.

Now, the only thing I do with XP is gaming. Only because I don't want to fight Cedega or Wine.

[LookTJ]

in 2003, it was firefox.

[Xenogis]

Forever ago i tried an early version of slax wanting to know what linux was... i used all the software in there.

[Ptero-4]

Lynx on A/UX (Yes, quite old *NIX on Mac), then MkLinux (more OSS-on-Mac stuff), also RedHat 6 and 7 on school PC`s (those WERE PC`s) and then pretty much all PowerPC distros up until Ubuntu.

[Mateo]

for me it was sylpheed in windows. I hated all of the windows email clients because of the long load times and need for a splash screen. I always thought 'i'm checking my email, not disarming a nuclear bomb. why is it taking so long?' but with sylpheed it loaded in a split second, had nearly every option the others have (at least the options I used). sylpheed is actually one of the things that drove me to try linux (first fedora) because i'm a big advocate of low memory and efficiency even though my computer isn't that old. ironically i don't use sylpheed on ubuntu, evolution works fine enough for me.

[EdThaSlayer]

The first opensource program I used was Firefox. But that was when I still used Windows :) .

[fenian]

Probably some GNU sotware gzip,gnu chess or lynx.This was before OSS so technically not OSS.

[Sunshinelive]

firefox somewhere in 2003

[steven8]

I do not remember the version(s), but it was either Firefox or GIMP.

[kevinlyfellow]

I think Mozilla 1.0 and boy did I hate it!

[smbm]

I also used NCSA Mosaic and Netscape Navigator which were free in price.

[ComplexNumber]

mine was vi in about 1996. the first time i used linux. after i couldn't stand using vi any longer, i used an editor called coral. i remember that it was purplish. it may well have been open source, but i remember thatit was just an ordinary no-frills editor like leafpad.

[AusIV4]

My first exposure to open source was back in middle school when I played half-life. Metamod was GPLed set of libraries that allowed admins to load server-side mods to enhance gameplay or help with server administration. I even wrote a few open source mods to accompany it. I also ran a forum using PHPbb.

The main thing that sparked my interest in Open Source was Firefox. I started using it in probably November of 04. Two and a half years later I shudder at the suggestion of using proprietary software. I'll admit, I do use flash and a few Google apps, but the vast majority of the software on all of my computers is open source.

[jdodson]

debian, my freind introduced me. after that i started trying to find free software to replace my for pay software. staroffice was a first, then the mozilla suite after that.

[fktt]

Blender, and as i like to actually read such webpages, i pretty quickly became aware what oss&gnu/gpl is! :)

[tux_rox]

Tried out Firefox 2 earlier this year... then switched to Thunderbird... then to Open Office.org...

In fact, I only use Windows for my GUI and media center right now - everything else is non-proprietary software. Well on my way to Ubuntu, I think!:lolflag:

[TravisNewman]

what ever version of Slackware that was released in 98 is the first open source software I used. That was a pain, I tell ya

[raja]

Mandrake linux.

[Wight_Rhino]

Firefox 1.0

[graeme_p]

OK, grumpy old man mode on!

If you are talking about seeing the source, then all the software on my ZX80 (bought in 1980, I think) had source available for most software (because it only had a BASIC interpreter).

There was a lot of hobbyist written software back then that you were free to alter, re-use and redistribute in practice, although, as far as I remember, it often came without explicit license terms.

Things closed up after that. More was proprietary on my Grundy Newbrain, and everything on my Atari ST was closed.

When I got my first internet connection in 1996, I think some of the software was properly open source. I remember trying the cello browser to see if it was faster than Netscape, I also remember using a gopher client, and IRC clients. Certainly free as in beer, some of it probably was open source but it was not an issue I thought about at the time.

Also in 1996, I think my first website ran on an open source server. The hosting I used certainly offered access to open source languages and scripts.

[Rutabega]

FireFox

[kevinlyfellow]

The Mozilla web browser. When it got discontinued I moved to Firefox. Big disappointment, since Mozilla was actually lighter while it carried more features at the same time.

If you don't know this already, the Mozilla web browser is now called SeaMonkey... just like them to constantly be changing names on us :-)