Awesome Platform-Agnostic Apps

Free Software magazine has a list of their picks for some of the best platform-agnostic programs. There’s a lot of ones we use here (OpenOffice, Firefox, Azureas, Audacity), others we’ve messed with and liked (GAIM, GIMPShop, Thunderbird), and others we should probably check out (Blender, Sunbird, Scribus). It’s so amazing that there are so many truly outstanding free, open source, and cross-platform applications. The topic discussion following the article has some good reader-recommendeds too, such as the VLC Media Player and MoneyDance, a checkbook/finance program I just might have to…ah… check out.

BTW: If you’re on OS X and want to run OpenOffice, we recommend NeoOffice instead. It is built on OO but is native to the Mac (does not require an install of the X11 Window System) and has more of a Mac look n’ feel — of course, that sort of blows the whole platform agnostic concept, but if you’re only working on a single platform (Mac), it’s likely your best bet. And it’s been surprisingly stable, even at the Alpha dev stage.