Alternatives to Windows, Mac, Linux and online software

AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software. Tell us what application you want to replace and we give you suggestions on great alternatives! Instead of listing thousands of more or less crappy applications in a category, we make each application into a category. Think of it like forever evolving blog posts about good alternatives to the software that you're not satisfied with. And the "blog posts" are generated by you through suggestions, comments and votes.

Categories for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Web-based applications are listed. On each platform page, there are tabbed listings for recent additions, most viewed, and most liked software (I'll skip "OMG FAIL", since you're likely not looking for a "worse alternative" anyway). You'll find all the usual suspects listed, like Photoshop, Nero, Word, as well as user-recommended replacements.

Unlike most software guides, where you can look for programs based on a category, AlternativeTo.net is organized by program name.

Clonezilla : OpenSource clone system

Clonezilla, based on DRBL, Partition Image, ntfsclone, partclone, and udpcast, allows you to do bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk. This increases the clone efficiency. At the NCHC’s Classroom C, Clonezilla SE was used to clone 41 computers simultaneously. It took only about 10 minutes to clone a 5.6 GBytes system image to all 41 computers via multicasting.

Features of Clonezilla :

• Free (GPL) Software.

• Filesystem supported: ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, xfs, jfs of GNU/Linux, FAT, NTFS of MS Windows, and HFS+ of Mac OS. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows and Intel-based Mac OS, no matter it’s 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.
• LVM2 (LVM version 1 is not) under GNU/Linux is supported.
• Multicast is supported in Clonezilla SE, which is suitable for massively clone. You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported in your clients.
• Based on Partimage, ntfsclone, partclone, and dd to clone partition. However, clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.
• By using another free software drbl-winroll, which is also developed by us, the hostname, group, and SID of cloned MS windows machine can be automatically changed.

Tools and Utilities for Windows

Desktop Utils

• Bosskey: simple virtual desktop program (Robin Keir. Freeware)
• Count Characters: dump the contents of various combo, edit, list boxes, static, and button fields to the clipboard (Funduc Software. Freeware)
• HoverSnap: free handy snapshot tool with jpg, png, bmp and gif support.HoverSnap can take snapshots of the full screen, active window or a selected area (Hover Inc. Freeware)
• Lens: magnifies the selected area on your screen (Peter Stuer. Freeware)
• Pixie: colour picker that includes a mouse tracker. Run it, simply point to a colour and it will tell you the hex, RGB, HTML, CMYK and HSV values of that colour (Nattyware. Freeware)
• PureText: paste text from a web page, a word document, help , etc. as simple text into another application without getting all the formatting from the original source (Steve P. Miller. Freeware)
• Sizer: allows any window to be resized to predefined dimensions (Brian Apps. Freeware)

File Analysis

• BinText: small, very fast and powerful text extractor that will be of particular interest to programmers (Foundstone. Freeware)
• CDMage: performs different tasks with a common CD image files on your harddrive (TWoeMS. Freeware)
• DBF Viewer Plus: view DBF database files (Alex Nolan. Freeware)
• DefragNT: presents the user with many options for disk defragmenting (Andrei Gaceff. Freeware)
• Dependency Walker: scans any 32-bit or 64-bit Windows module (exe, dll, ocx, sys, etc.) and builds a hierarchical tree diagram of all dependent modules (Steve P. Miller)
• Disk Investigator: view and search raw directories, files, clusters, and system sectors. Verify the effectiveness of file and disk wiping programs. Undelete previously deleted files (Kevin Solway. Freeware)
• DiskView: shows you a graphical map of your disk, allowing you to determine where a file is located or, by clicking on a cluster, seeing which file occupies it (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• DupeLocater: find duplicate files (Midnight Blue Software. Freeware)
• ExamDiff: visual File Comparison Tool (Prestosoft. Freeware)
• Explore2FS: WIN32 explorer for Linux ext2fs partitions (John Newbigin. Open Source)
• File Analyser: lists your fixed disk after file types (Kurt Zimmermann. Freeware)
• File List Generator: collects the information about all files and subfolders located under your specified path and generates the list in various file formats (Piyo. Freeware)
• Folders Report: scans a drive or a base folder that you select, and displays essential information for each folder that it finds (Nir Sofer. Freeware)
• Gemulator Explorer: read Atari ST and Apple Macintosh formatted disks (Emulators Inc.)
• HashCalc: fast and easy-to-use calculator that allows to compute message digests, checksums and HMACs for files, as well as for text and hex strings (SlavaSoft. Freeware)
• Lister: file viewer (Christian Ghisler. Freeware)
• MDB View: view mdb files on systems without Microsoft Access installed (Mattia Campolese. Freeware)
• Media Checker: helps you check all your media or only a folder on these media and ensure that all your precious data that you store on them are safe and can be accessed successfully. (Noel Danjou)
• PEiD: executable files identifier (Jibz, Qwerton, snaker, xineohP. Freeware)
• Space Monger: tool for keeping track of the free space on your computer. Each file or folder on a given drive is displayed in a box in the main window whose size is a relative comparison to all the other files in your system (Sean Werkema. Freeware (v1.4))
• Tiny Hexer: hexeditor for binary files (Markus Stephany. Freeware)
• Virtual Floppy Driver: mount a floppy image file as a virtual floppy drive and directly access the contents (Kenji Kato. Open Source)
• WinInterrogate: file system and process enumeration/integrity tool (vacuum. Open Source)
• xTeq X-Find: find what you are looking for fast (Xteq Systems. Freeware)

File Management

• 1-4a Rename: very easy to use file renamer (1-4a Software. Freeware)
• A43: file management utility with lots of features (B. G. Miller. Freeware)
• CD2ISO: extract .iso images from your cd or dvd disk (Rene. Freeware)
• CdManipulator: read, burn, copy and master CD-ROMs (Y. Kanechika)
• DelOld: remove files matching a certain age and specification (Savilltech. Freeware)
• Disk Wipe: securely delete whole floppy disks or hard disks (Roadkil. Freeware)
• DrvCloner XP: clones disk partitions (Lexun Freeware. Freeware)
• DrvImager XP: creates and restores drive images of FAT32 and NTFS partitions (Lexun Freeware. Freeware)
• dsCrypt: AES/Rijndael file encryption software with simple, multi-file, drag-and-drop operations (Dariusz Stanislawek. Freeware)
• dsDel: a secure file deleter. It overwrites target files with a bit pattern before deleting them (Dariusz Stanislawek. Freeware)
• Easy ISO: create ISO images and burn data to your CDs (Dirk Paehl. Freeware)
• Express Burn: create and record audio or data CDs with any Windows PC with an installed CD recorder (NCH Swift Sound. Freeware)
• ntouch: modify timestamps of files and directories (Florian Balmer. Freeware)
• Pablo Commander: clone of Norton Commander with the look and feel of Windows Explorer. Includes an FTP client (Pablo Software Solutions. Non-commercial Freeware)
• PageDefrag: see how fragmented your paging files and Registry hives are, and to defragment them (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• RawWrite for Windows: copies an image of a floppy disk to/from a file (John Newbigin. Open Source)
• Replace in Files: quickly replaces strings matching your search string with the replacement you specify (Emurasoft. Freeware)
• Roadkil's Disk Image: copies an image of a disk to/from a file (Roadkil. Freeware)
• Small CD-Writer: small cd-burning program with nice GUI (russian version) (AV(T) Lab. Freeware)
• Splitter light: splits files or whole directories (Martin Stoeckli. Freeware)
• UUD32 Windows: extract binary files encoded in a variety of formats commonly used to send data through Email and the Internet (UUENCODE, XXENCODE, BINHEX4, MIME BASE-64, MIME Quoted-Printable, MIME Text/Plain, yEncode) (Mark Spankus. Freeware)
• WinTidy: finds backup, object & temporary files that might be candidates for deletion and allows the user to delete one or more of these files. Can be automated (David J. Taylor. Freeware)

File Recovery

• Handy Recovery: restore files accidentally deleted from a hard disk or a diskette (SoftLogica. Freeware)
• PC Inspector: a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems (Convar. Freeware)
• R-Linux: file recovery utility for the Ext2FS file system used in the Linux OS and several Unixes (R-tools Technology Inc.. Freeware)
• Restoration: an easy to use and straight forward tool to undelete files that were removed from the recycle bin or directly deleted from within Windows (Brian Kato. Freeware)
• Smart Recovery: the new data recovery program from CONVAR for Flash Card, Smart Media, SONY Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital Card or any other data carrier for digital cameras (Convar. Freeware)

File Transfer

• BabyFTP: very small anonymous FTP server (Pablo Software Solutions. Non-commercial Freeware)
• BabyPOP3: very small POP3 server (Pablo Software Solutions. Non-commercial Freeware)
• BabyWeb: very small HTTP server (Pablo Software Solutions. Non-commercial Freeware)
• DropUpload: very light, simple, strong and usefull Upload spooler for FTP management (Zapman. Freeware)
• File Gateway: Peer to Peer file transfer tool, that is friendly with HTTP proxys/firewalls/routers/etc (SteelBytes. Freeware)
• Freeway FTP: both an FTP server as well as an FTP client (Larry Nezar. Freeware)
• HFS HTTP File Server: HTTP server designed for file transfer (Rejetto. Open Source)
• i.FTP: graphical FTP client (Memecode. Open Source)
• Nullsoft Copy: file copying without overloading the network traffic in order to avoid skipping (Stephen Loomis. Open Source)
• Simple Socket File Transfer: transfer a file between two computers using a TCP port of your choosing. Partially completed transfers can be resumed, and files are automatically checked with MD5 to ensure they were received error-free. (Whitsoft Development. Freeware)
• SMBDownloader: start, stop and resume downloads from Windows shares (Dirk Knop. Freeware)
• Synchronize It! V1.69: provides quick comparison and synchronization of files in different folders or drives (Igor Green. Freeware)
• TFTPD32: TFTP server and client, DHCP, SNTP and Syslog servers (Philippe Jounin. Freeware)
• ThirdDir: directory synchronizer which can optionally copy the newer files to the third directory defined by user (R. Vasicek. Freeware)
• Unstoppable Copier: copy files without giving up once an error is encountered (Roadkil. Freeware)
• Wackget: a download manager for Windows. It maintains a queue of files and downloads them (using wget) in the order you specify (Milweed. Open Source)
• WinSCP: connect to a SSH server with SFTP or SCP (Martin Prykryl. Open Source)

Hardware Info

• AIDA32: system information utility (now Everest Professional by Lavalys Consulting Group) (Tamás Miklós. Freeware)
• Bart Stuff Test: long time heavily stress testing storage devices. Bst5 supports testing at file and device level (Bart Lagerweij. Freeware)
• CD-Bremse: set the reading speed of a CD-ROM drive (Joern Fiebelkorn. Freeware)
• Central Brain Identifier: AMD processor identification utility (Viktor Ishikeev. Freeware)
• Data LifeGuard Diagnostics for Windows: perform drive identification, diagnostics, and repairs on a Western Digital FireWire, EIDE, or USB drive. In addition, it can provide you with the drive's serial and model numbers (Western Digital. Freeware)
• DriverView: displays the list of all device drivers currently loaded on your system (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• DTemp: HDD temperature meter (DaleSoft. Freeware)
• FreeSysInfo: uses WMI to discover system and network information on your local machine or network computer. (Nsasoft. Freeware)
• HD Tune: hard disk utility which can be used to measure the performance or to get important information from the hard disk such as the temperature, SMART parameters, firmware version, buffer size, etc (EFD Software)
• HD_Speed: measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your hard disks, cd/dvd-roms and floppy. Realtime graphical display (SteelBytes. Freeware)
• Monitor Test: displays test patterns for repairing computer monitors (Roadkil. Freeware)
• Nero CD/DVD-Speed: CD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD-ROM drive (Erik Deppe. Freeware)
• Nero DriveSpeed: set the reading speed of a CD-ROM drive (Erik Deppe. Freeware)
• Nero InfoTool: (Erik Deppe. Freeware)
• ReSysInfo: system information viewer for Windows (Dominik Reichl. Freeware)
• SIV: general Windows utility for dumping lots of useful Windows and hardware info (Ray Hinchliffe. Freeware)
• SIW: read-only / display-only system information tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings (Gabriel Topala. Freeware)
• WinAAM: configures Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) of disk drives (Heise. Freeware)
• WinAudit: performs an exhaustive audit of the hardware and software configuration of your computer (Parmavex Services. Freeware)

Vista SP2 beta due next week

The next update to Windows Vista will enter beta testing next week, bringing with it support for Blu-ray drives, among other enhancements. In a blog posting, Microsoft confirmed that a beta version of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 will be released next week.

"Because we've adopted a single serviceability model, these improvements are integrated into a single service pack covering both Windows Vista (client) and Windows Server 2008 (server) versions," Windows executive Mike Nash said in a blog. "This should also minimize deployment and testing complexity for our customers."

The software maker said earlier this week that it was working on Vista SP2, but wouldn't go into detail. A support document posted this month, however, suggested a beta version was in the offing.

In addition to Blu-ray, Vista SP2 will add support for Bluetooth 2.1 as well as include Windows Search 4.0, the latest version of Microsoft's desktop search technology.

Microsoft encouraged those thinking about upgrading to Vista not to wait for SP2, however.

"One question I know that you will ask is 'should I wait for SP2?'," Nash said. "The reality is that Windows Vista SP1 is a great platform that is both available on new Windows PCs and available as a free download for systems that are running the 'gold' release of Windows Vista. While we will recommend SP2 when it ships, your best bet today is Windows Vista SP1."

Update: Asked about when Microsoft might ship SP2, a representative responded that "it is too early to talk about SP2's final release date."

"As always, the final release date is based on quality and we will track customer and partner feedback from the beta program before setting a final date for distribution," the representative said.

The announcement comes ahead of next week's Professional Developer Conference, where Microsoft is expected to detail Windows 7, as well as give developers a pre-beta version.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available

We’re excited to release IE8 Beta 2 today for public download. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8. Please try it out! You’ll find versions for 32- and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. In addition to English, IE8 Beta 2 is available in Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and German. Additional languages will be available soon.

While Beta 1 was for developers, we think that anyone who browses or works on the web will enjoy IE8 Beta 2. Before the team blogs about our Beta 2 in detail, here’s an overview of what you’ll find in IE8.

• Smart Address Bar: IE 8 beta 2 includes a Smart Address Bar, that, like Firefox 3's "AwesomeBar," drops down suggestions as-you-type a web site URL gleaned from your favorites, feeds, and history. Unlike Firefox, IE 8 includes headers so you can see where each suggestion comes from.
• Tab Grouping: Ever open a bunch of links from a single page in new tabs, and then lose track of which tabs came from what page? IE8's got a nifty "tab grouping" feature that colors your tabs based on their source. Here's what a few tab groups—one from Lifehacker, one from the MSN homepage—look like.
• InPrivate Browsing: What with the Smart Address Bar pulling up every site you've visited recently in plain view in its History suggestions, there may be times when you visit a site and have the browser forget it ever happened. IE 8 beta 2's "InPrivate" browsing mode adds an icon to the address bar, and forgets you were ever at a web page when it's enabled.
• Tab Crash Resolution: Several commenters point out that IE8 offers a feature no other browser has—the ability to restore a crashed web site on a tab by tab basis.
• Favorites Bar: Getting to your bookmarks and feeds is a little easier with a button to expand your Favorites bar, a one-stop bookmarks shop. In the Feeds tab (not shown), any feeds you're subscribed to with new items show up in bold, and any "Web Slices" with new content also appear in bold.
• Suggested Sites: When you enable the "Suggested Sites" feature, an item on your toolbar drops down a panel of web sites like the one you're on. This feature is great in theory, but in practice not so much. Lifehacker's suggested sites were totally off the mark.
• Find on Page: This one's a yawner for anyone who's used to Firefox, but apparently IE doesn't already have "find on page," the ability to hit Ctrl+F, type a keyword, and see any instances of it highlighted on the current page.