Table of Contents
Zero-cost Software
Many software and technologies companies make their commercial software or services available at no cost to university students:
- Amazon's AWS Educate
- GitHub's Student Developer Pack
- JetBrain's Desktop IDEs (including IntelliJ IDEA)
- Microsoft's Azure for Students
- VMWare products at OnTheHub
Besides VMWare products, other packages are available from OnTheHub. Search for JMU and choose either “James Madison University” or “College of Integrated Science and Engineering” as the department to find other packages.
Important: The above offerings are “free as in beer” not “free as in speech” (for more info, see “gratis vs. libre” and the Free Software movement). For the most part, these companies make their software and services available for free with the goal of acquiring you or your employer as a paying customer after you graduate.
Free/Libre Software
Here are some popular “free as in speech” alternatives to commercial software:
- Audacity - audio editor
- Blender - 3D creation suite
- Eclipse - development environment
- GNU Image Manipulation Program - image editor
- GNU Octave - scientific programming language
- Inkscape - vector graphics editor
- Krita - painting program
- LaTeX - document preparation system
- LibreOffice - office suite
- Scribus - desktop publishing
- VirtualBox - desktop virtualization