Free softwares which are better than paid ones.

Somebody once said that, "If you want the best, you have to pay for it". Here are some of the softwares which defies the above saying.

1. VLC Media Player - VLC Media player is one of the most stable and reliable media players around. It can play almost any format out of the box. No additional codecs are required. It has all the features one can expect, like subtitles support, support of multiple tracks and chapters, DVD playing capabilities etc.

Alternative to - Windows Media Player, iTunes etc.

2. Kodi - Kodi is one of my favorite media centers and with the right set of add-ons it can fulfill most of your needs. It can be used for most of the stored media content like movies, music, videos, TV shows, photos etc. It has add-ons for popular services like NetFlix, YouTube, Dailymotion etc. It also has a PVR client for live TV. For more info on Kodi refer to my answer on Quora. Here is a pic of my current setup.

 

Alternative to - Plex, Window Media Center etc.

3. Audacity - Audacity can be used for sound recording and editing, mixing tracks and pretty much anything than you can do with sound. Please give it a try before moving to a paid Application.

Alternative to - Adobe Audition, Sound Forge Audio Studio, FL Studio etc.

4. Eclipse - Eclipse is a full fledged IDE for programming languages. It can be used for most of the languages using add-ons. It is one of the most feature rich IDEs around. Give it a try before going for the languages specific premium IDE.

Alternative to - Most of the paid IDEs.

5. MySQL -  MySQL is a Database Management System and is currently being used by most of the startups for handling their data. It can be used for handling large amount of data. 

Alternative to - Oracle Database, MS SQL Server.

 6. FreeMind - It is a mind mapping software for organizing ideas.

Alternative to - Mindjet, XMing etc.

7. Git - Git is a no nonsense Distributed Version Control System written by our beloved Linus Torvalds. 

Alternative to - BitKeeper, ClearCase etc.

8. Stellarium - It is a planetarium for the computer and it is best at what is does. It can be used by both professionals and enthusiasts. 

Other good softwares to consider.

• LibreOffice(Office Apps.)                     - alternative to MS Office.
• Gimp(Photo Editor)                             - alternative to Adobe Photoshop.
• Inkscape(Vector Graphics Program)  - alternative to CorelDRAW.
• Blender(Animation Software)             - alternative to Maya.
• Virtualbox(Virtual Machines)             - alternative to VMWare. 

Four must have Add-ons for Firefox.

Firefox is an awesome browser but the best feature of Firefox are it's add-ons. Add-ons can enhance the features of a browser but, too many add-ons can negatively impact the start up time of a browser.

Here I am listing four add-ons which makes your Firefox even more awesome.

1.Web of Trust - WOT by WOT Services - WOT provides safety against malicious websites by changing the color of the the icon in the add-on bar. It has a little over million users and they vote the trustworthiness of the websites based on their experience of the websites. When clicked on the add-on, it looks something like this.

• when the icon is green, it means that it is safe to visit the website.
• when the icon is red, it means that it is a fraudulent website and unsafe to visit.
• when the icon is yellow, it means that it may not be safe to visit the website.

You can also cast your votes to improve or decrease the rating of a website.

2. YouTube High Definition by Baris Derin  - If you don't have a stable internet connection or just want to stream YouTube videos in hd, YouTube High Definition is a great addition to Firefox . After installation it looks like

You can select

• Default Video Quality
• Player Size
• Default volume
• Autoplay On/Off for playlists

and other options as seen in the image.

3. Video DownloadHelper by mig - It is one of the best extensions I have ever seen for any browser. It can download videos, images, sounds from most of the multimedia websites, it doesn't matter if you have the permission to download the file or not( but you may get in trouble for copyright violations, so use it wisely ). When it detects a media file the icon starts animating and when you click on it, it gives various options for download and conversion.

Bonus Feature :- It also gives ability to capture the screen of the browser.

4. Wappalyzer by Elbert Alias - Another great extension, it is highly productive for web developer and web enthusiasts. It provide details about underlying technologies used to build a website. It looks like this in the address bar,

you can see the icons on the right side, they tell us about the technologies used. When you click

on it, 

it tell us about those technologies in more detail.

Secure your saved passwords in Firefox.

Your usernames and password are saved in Firefox and can be accessed by going to options

 then selecting Security

click on Saved Password

 and click on Show Passwords to show all the saved password.

but the problem is anybody can see it when it is not password protected.

To protect all the password with a master password, select Use a master password and set the new password.

when master password is saved, Firefox will prompt for password every time you launch it.

 It is annoying but secure. You can click on cancel, it will work fine.