10 open source Windows apps worth checking out

How many applications are out there in the wild that you’ve never heard of or tried? Even as a consultant, I come across them on a daily basis. With all those applications, it’s easy for some real gems get overlooked — including a lot of excellent open source tools.

I understand that most people associate open source with Linux. But there are quite a few solid applications for the Windows operating system, developed and maintained by the open source community. Oh sure, there’s OpenOffice and Firefox; but it doesn’t end there. I’m going to introduce you to 10 open source applications for Windows. You may never have heard of some of them or knew the port existed, but they’re definitely worth a look.

1: VLC

VLC is one of the most flexible multimedia players available. It supports a vast number of audio and video formats, including H.264, Ogg, DivX, MKV, TS, MPEG-2, mp3, MPEG-4, and aac, and it supports streaming and TV capture cards. VLC isn’t limited to viewing multimedia files, either. It can convert and transcode formats, too.