WEEK 7 TUTESPARK

USING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

Our goal for this weeks tutespark was to try some available open source software for ourselves and see how we liked that particular software.

While in the progress of completing my Bachelor of IT degree at Griffith university. Ihave had the opportunity to trial many different types of open source software. But two that I have used the most and find the best to operate with are Mozilla Firefox and Notepad ++. The main beauty of using these two particular programs, especially from an IT point of view is that they are both extremely simple to use. Also there layouts are very simple as well which makes them very easy to navigate for the novice user. Firefox as a web browser gives you a great number of customisations and add-ons that browsers like Internet Explorer don't which amplifies the users experience before they even go onto the internet. For an IT person a program like Notepad ++ is a very useful program to have. It is an amazing and simple program that lets you write code for websites, java, PHP amongst others. Why the program is so good comapared to others like it (dreamweaver & jtext) is that it colour codes the different parts of the code you write, which makes reading and troubleshooting your code much easier.

Overall I can easily say all my experiences with open source software have been extremely profitable and happy ones. I can say I have had far less technical troubles with open source software than I have had with so called traditional software from Apple and PC. My final verdict in the case of Open Source Software vs. Closed Source Software is in some cases a ratings winner to open source software that I have found to be extremley user friendly and reliable. If I had to say whether I would choose a traditional piece of software or an open source piece of software in the future to complete a project. This experience in collation with all my others would mean using open source software even if it was only in collaboration with traditional software would be an extremely high possibility.