And while we are doing these discussions, here are some very capable freeware programs that can take the place of Microsoft, Adobe, and Corel applications if you do not want to get trapped in the "annual subscription" loop:

LIBREOFFICE replaces Microsoft Office (Word and Excel and PowerPoint).

GIMP or KRITA (or both) replaces Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements

PDF24 replaces Adobe Acrobat

DIA DIAGRAM or FLUENT FLOWCHART replace Visio

PENCIL replaces Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator

SCRIBUS replaces Microsoft Publisher or Adobe InDesign

VLC MEDIA PLAYER (and ripper) replaces Microsoft Media Player

ABLEWORD replaces Microsoft Word (single app only)

Other alternatives that seem to work well:

WIN-X YOUTUBE DOWNLOADER or CLIPGRAB to download movies

FIREFOX or OPERA alternatives to Microsoft Edge

THUNDERBIRD alternative to MS Mail.

PC

That is quite an excellent list.

As I am something of a digital packrat; I have files from the late 1990's; Libreoffice was quite capable of opening Word Perfect and 1-2-3 files better than the latest versions of Word/Excel.

Superheater, thank you for mentioning that. I have also found that Libreoffice works with obsolete Microsoft file formats that are no longer handled by Microsoft's own current products, and that is a very valuable feature for railroad history use.

I also wanted to mention that the applications I listed are "free", they are not trials that expire and then want you to buy the product. They MAY ask if you would like to make a donation to the developers, during the installation process. Also, as far as I know, they do not hit you with requests to buy additional upgrades to enable special routines or enhance function.

Note that the Microsoft Store carries some of these freeware programs and surcharges them. There is no need to get them from that store, they all have their own websites and download service without you paying Microsoft to serve as an intermediary.

PC

PC: You are quite welcome.

Two others of potential interest:

Free CAD, available for Windows, Mac & Linux

https://www.freecadweb.org/

And Engage Digitizer available for Windows, Mac & Linux which can approximate X and Y coordinates from a graph.

https://github.com/markummitchell/engau ... r/releases


While some FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is just serviceable, some is actually quite good, and unique-just a matter of dropping old habits.


I have a 7 or 8 year old Acer Travelmate I bought sans operating system and have had multiple Linux Distributions on it. Linux Mint & Linux Lite in particular can revive an old system and have almost no learning curve and make it serviceable, long after Windows and its bloated snoopware would have brought it to its knees.

There’s also Open Office which will replace MS Office. It’s been freeware since like forever.

LibreOffice is a fork (different development path after a certain point) of OpenOffice. If my memory were better I'd tell you exactly when that happened.

Where was the discussion of RLL (run-length limited) drive controllers? ;-}

The pooint of the 'computer museum' discussions is that, to an extent, some of the older formats are better read on more 'native' hardware. I am not pleased at the prospect of connecting a device that uses the parallel printer interface to a VM running in the cloud...