Articles about Free Software

dotPDN LLC has released the fourth beta of Paint.NET 4.0, the latest pre-release of this eagerly anticipated freeware image-editing tool for Windows.

The fourth beta -- build 5628 -- sees the Line/Curve tool restored, having previously been incorporated into the Shapes tool. It also sees a number of rendering quality and performance improvements alongside a slew of other minor tweaks and bug fixes as Paint.NET edges towards its final release.

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Moonchild Productions has released a relatively major update to its Firefox browser variant for Windows with the release of Pale Moon 24.6 and Pale Moon x64 24.6.

Version 24.6 comes with a major overhaul of the graphics rendering engine to boost stability, plus a number of important fixes, including all latest security fixes. It also adds support for animated personas.

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G’MIC (GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing) is an exceptionally powerful image processing tool for the command line (or via GIMP, if you install it via a plugin). It’s aimed very much at experts, but has features which can be used by just about everyone.

At its simplest, you might use the program to view a series of images (gmic pic1.jpg pic2.jpg pic3.jpg) or convert an image from one format to another (gmic ThisPicture.png Output.png).

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BillP Studios has released WinPatrol 31.0.2014, a minor refresh of its Windows snapshot-based security tool. WinPatrol monitors key system areas for changes, alerting the user to program attempts to make significant alterations.

Despite the jump to version 31, the latest release is a relatively minor one, with the most significant changes made to its browser-monitoring SQLite database.

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Changing your DNS servers can be a smart way to block phishing scams, protect your children from inappropriate websites, maybe even improve your browsing speed.

Figuring out how to do this can be a challenge, at least if you’re a network beginner. Fortunately tools like NirSoft’s QuickSetDNS and ChrisPC DNS Switch can help to simplify the process, and Smart DNS Changer extends the idea further with some clever touches of its own.

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Glorylogic has issued updates to three of its free (for non-commercial use) tools for Windows PCs. Both ISO Workshop 5.4 and True Burner 2.3 gain various burning enhancements -- including the ability to set the burn speed, while batch-processing tool Image Tuner 4.8 offers an updated preview method.

ISO Workshop and True Burner share the same burning engine, which is indicated by the number of shared improvements in their latest builds.

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FileAlyzer is a file analysis tool from Safer Computing, the developer of Spybot -- Search & Destroy. Its focus is on helping experts check unknown executables for signs of malware, but has many other uses and applications.

Launch the program, open an EXE and FileAlyzer opens a report window with no less than 21 tabs. It’s a little intimidating, but the initial "General" tab is gentler, focusing on a few basic details: location, size, version, create/ last access/ last write times, attributes, and a few hashes (CRC-32, MD5, SHA-1).

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LavaSoft has released Ad-Aware Free Antivirus 11.2, a significant update to the Swedish security developer’s range of free and paid-for PC security products.

Version 11.2 tweaks its malware engine and improves the disinfection process, but also introduces a new option that enables users to install it alongside existing security software.

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Install most security suites and you’ll get some form of web filter, blocking sites according to their content, a blacklist, or both. This works well enough on a single PC, but performance can be an issue, and it’s not going to help if you need to protect your whole network.

NxFilter is a DNS-based web filter, so there’s no text-based content filtering. But the program can block access to websites based on domain, category, user, time, quota and more. There’s built-in phishing protection, updated every two hours, while packet inspection can detect malware and bots. One installation can protect your entire network -- and it can all be yours for free.

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Jovial Notepad is a portable Notepad replacement, exceptionally small (32KB download, a single 64KB executable) yet still managing to cram in plenty of interesting features.

The program looks at first much like the standard Notepad, but you’ll soon spot some differences. URLs become highlighted and clickable as you type them; the status bar displays the date, a character and line count; and a Symbols menu allows you to enter useful symbols (copyright, pi, degrees, various currencies) in a couple of clicks.

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XCopy is one of the most useful Windows command line tools, an easy way to copy files, folders, folder trees and more. There’s support for copying only files which have changed, and if a network connection fails then XCopy can even resume later, just where it left off.

The program is still a little basic, but if you need more power then there’s always XXCopy, a free-for-personal-use tool which supports all the usual XCopy features, and then adds a whole lot more.

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Digital photos often include metadata, hidden tags which hold more information about them: camera name, model, date taken, maybe the place (if the camera was GPS-enabled), the flash mode, ISO speed, image thumbnail and more. Add others – title, author, comments -- and these can be a great help when organizing and searching for photos later.

These tags also increase your image size, of course (if only by a few bytes), and can include personal information. If you’re thinking of sharing any photos with others then it could make sense to remove them with JPEG & PNG Stripper, first.

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The Pirate Bay saga is one that has been running for a number of years now, and the latest chapter sees one of the founders arrested in Sweden. Peter Sunde had been on the run for two years after failing to make an appearance having been sentenced to two years in prison. He had been handed an eight month term for aiding and abetting breach of copyright laws, although those associated with the site have long-maintained that they should not be held responsible for the sharing of copyrighted material as no data was stored on the site.

Sunde had been sought by Interpol and his arrest coincided with the eight-year anniversary of the police raid of Pirate Bay servers. He had been living in hiding in Berlin, but having family in Sweden meant that he often returned to the country. Torrent news website TorrentFreak reports that the arrest was a joint operation between Swedish and Polish law enforcement agencies.

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FileSearchy is a free-for-personal-use desktop search tool with one or two interesting and unexpected features.

After a quick and easy installation, launching FileSearchy displays a very straightforward interface. Enter part of a file name in the Search box, and the results are updated instantly, just as fast as you can type. You can then double-click any file to view it, or right-click for the usual Explorer context menu.

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Open-source, cross-platform desktop publishing package Scribus 1.4.4 has been released. Despite the seemingly minor version number, it includes a number of significant changes.

The new build -- also available in portable form -- adds support for exporting documents in the PDF/X-1a format. It also improves image handling, introduces a new image-alignment script and features a number of stability improvements.

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