Looking for websites to download free software [closed]

Question

I am only interested in freeware.

What websites should I be browsing to find great software for free?

Answer 1

SourceForge is the first that comes to mind. Free and open source software.

Answer 2

Download.com has a nice Freeware section - fast servers and well polished.

Answer 3

Filehippo ftw!

Answer 4

The site Giveaway of the Day gives away commercial software for free, but with a twist (they actually pay the software publishers) :

Basically, every day we nominate one software title that will be a Giveaway title of that day. The software will be available for download for 24 hours (or more, if agreed by software publisher) and that software will be absolutely free. That means – not a trial, not a limited version – but a registered and legal version of the software will be free for our visitors*.

Answer 5

Old Version, because Newer Isnt Always Better.

Answer 6

portableapps.com is a great source of popular freeware software packaged for USB devices etc. I actually use Windows Live Sync to sync all my portable apps.

Answer 7

Try portablefreeware.com for software that can run from a usb drive (or for when you just don't want to install a lot of unneeded crap on your machine.)

Answer 8

Freeware Genius is a great blog that reviews a ton of free software. I've found the software they recommend to be pretty good.

Answer 9

freshmeat.net is "the Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform software", mostly open source, searchable and browsable by tags.

Answer 10

www.MajorGeeks.com

Answer 11

Download Squad is worth keeping an eye on for pointers to new stuff and updates, more often than not freeware

Answer 12

I like http://cleansoftware.org. They link to software which are free from spyware or other types of malware.

Answer 13

TinyApps.org is one of my favourites. Simple and well-maintained, and all of the software listed is exceptionally lightweight. First place I stop when I need something.

Answer 14

Big ones have already all been mentioned, but recently I've also been using AlternativeTo if I'm looking for a free, recommended program for a specific activity (word processing, music player, IM client, etc).

As an example, you're easily able to filter all Linux programs similar to Adobe Photoshop that are free and/or open source, as ranked by user recommendation.

The site is nice and clean, and it does a good job of categorizing its list of programs while making sure to filter out the junk that inevitably crawls into larger sites like Download.com (for the record, I actually go to Download.com more often).

Answer 15

2 more for the list: BetaNews and CHIP (international)

Answer 16

osalt.com provides a bunch of Open Source Alternatives to well known proprietary software. Open Source is both free as in beer and as in speech.

Answer 17

This is slightly off the Windows mark, but if you are ready to get a Cygwin installation,
you get a free unix-like environment on your Windows and
a ton of free 'software' from the unix community.
From simple scripts, command line applications and 'X Windows' based GUI
right up to compilers and cross-compilers.

If you are a Unix user,
you will probably get a unix environment in your Windows machine as part of your installation sequence.

Answer 18

www.dottech.org/category/freebies for a great way to get commercial software for free. www.dottech.org/category/freewaresr for reviews and recommendations on awesome freeware software.

You can access both from http://dottech.org.

Answer 19

There are plenty of them. My favorites are Filehippo.com, Fileforum.com, Snapfiles.com and Softpedia.com. Filehippo is purely freeware, the others have booth shareware and freeware.

Answer 20

Gizmo's Freeware Reviews compares and recommends freeware in loads of categories such as Security, Disk and file tools, Multimedia. It's regularly updated and has been a great source of finds for me over the last few years.

Answer 21

FileHippo - a very cool, no fuss site.

Download.com

Answer 22

For windows

www.filehippo.com #1 for Windows

www.majorgeeks.com - Has a lot of software for both Windows and Mac

www.tucows.com - Has both Windows & Mac

Answer 23

I would suggest i use this for Windows. Has counts of how many people have marked an app as using it as well as comments and other useful features. If I ever am looking to fill a need, I go here first. Though, it does include some not-free apps as well. I usually check their comments for free alternatives.

Answer 24

nonags.com

From the about page:

Tired of software that doesn't work? Tired of installing software that was nothing more than a sales pitch for some overpriced utility? Did someone ask you to pay more than you paid for your operating system for a utility that took 10 minutes to produce and could be substituted with a three line batch file?

Tired of removing demos and crippled programs that never really un-installed completely and left your your hard disks with dozens of unneeded files?

Did someone tell you to download free software and after you downloaded and installed you found it doesn't work unless you paid $100?

At NONAGS we try to sift through all this, we do the work of selecting what really works, what's really free, what really is worth your time and effort. So we have put together a large collection of 32-bit Windows software that has no disabled features, nags, time limits, or any other tricks.

We download, virus scan, install, test, rate and list... You just enjoy the programs.

Nonags is absolutely free of charge. Please note that software in Nonags is for the Windows platform, we may expand to include Linux in the future but no date has been set yet.

Answer 25

DVDVideoSoft has a big collection of freeware applications that works damn well. If you need anything done, they'll do it right, without any ads or badware.

Answer 26

If you're not specifically looking for some kind of program, but rather something to try, you can use StumbleUpon.

Answer 27

• http://100-downloads.com/
• You can search alt.comp.freeware through Google Groups for things you're looking for. They also maintain an aggregate list of programs they find useful, pricelesswarehome.org.
• Also browse through Ars Technica's The "neat application I stumbled across on the web" thread, 67 pages ATOW.
• http://www.nirsoft.net/, only a few things but they can be very useful

Answer 28

Your favorite search engine will point you towards tons of freeware. There is also a site that offers commercial software for free with a catch, you only get a day to download and activate. Give Away of the Day. Unfortunately, you don't get to choose, but check back daily and you might find something useful.

Answer 29

Check out Open Source Windows. They link to all the best free and open source software for the Windows platform.

Answer 30

Try : http://www.portablefreeware.com You can find tons of handy freeware apps.